Why happiness is important in life

Happiness is so important in our lives that it has it's own field of research called positive psychology. Experts in this field have found that there are key things that make people happier:. We all like to have these positive feelings. Besides feeling good, positive emotions do good things for our brains and bodies.

They lower stress hormones, help ease anxiety and depression, and improve our immune system. Feeling some positive emotions every day has a big effect on our happiness and well-being.

That's why it's so important to do things that give us positive feelings. Even simple actions like playing with a child or a pet or going for a walk outdoors can inspire these feelings. Knowing how to manage our negative emotions is also key to happiness.

Difficult emotions are a fact of life. But the way we handle them makes all the difference. The things we're good at, and like to do, are our strengths. We all have strengths, even if we haven't discovered them yet. Happiness increases when we discover a strength and practice it.

The more we practice a strength, the better we get until we really master it. When we get really good at doing something we enjoy, we can get lost in it. That's called flow. Experiencing flow helps boost happiness.

Finding daily ways to use our strengths is a key ingredient for a happy life. The people in our lives matter. Good relationships are one of the best ways to enjoy happiness, health, and well-being. Developing certain emotional skills can help us form and keep good relationships. This article will answer many questions, like why happiness is more important than money and why more happiness will result in a more sustainable planet. What is happiness exactly? What is there to learn about happiness?

This article is a part of the most in-depth guide on how to be happy , which answers these questions in the first section: What Is Happiness? For example, I find my own happiness important, because… well. But there are also reasons why your happiness is important for the greater good. There are already plenty of studies and articles out there that support the correlation between happiness and living longer and more healtily.

Happy people tend to live longer and healthier lives. Want more proof? Yes, there is. For example, this study found that employee happiness is correlated to employee productivity and performance. The page continues with some interesting observations about whether or not policymakers should focus more on the happiness of people. This brings me to the more interesting question: what makes happiness so important for the greater good? But what about the impact of personal happiness on society as a whole?

The impact of personal happiness on our society as a whole is something that — I feel — should be a much bigger topic these days. If I told you that the human race is currently on a pathway to self-destruction, would you believe me?

Whether or not we as the human species are destroying this planet is not the topic of this article. The decisions we make are generally controlled by our desire to profit. Capitalism demands efficiency, in order to increase profits and stay ahead of the pack. Google has known this all along, thus their awesome office design and environment, plus company perks. A research team from the Department of Economics of the University of Warwick validated this fact, too and their findings would be published in the Journal of Labor Economics this year.

Simply put, those employees who were given special treats like free comedy movie viewing, ice cream, chocolate and drinks showed a higher percentage of productivity versus those who were taken in and questioned about family issues, bereavement and similar topics.

Recently the advertising agency that I work at provided happiness training lead by Eric Karpinski. We were given techniques to help us make a happiness a habit, and how to share it with others. We all left the training feeling more motivated and connected. When you are happy, working hours seem to fly by. You channel your high energy into your tasks, finishing off your to-do list faster and more efficiently.

But that raises the question of why we should even make happiness such a priority for kids in the first place. Any reader of this blog knows that, by the way I define happiness , I think it is critical for a meaningful life. But I realize that there are plenty of parents out there who see a meaningful life defined by accomplishments and success, not happiness and other positive emotions.

Even these people should take note: Happiness is a tremendous advantage in a world that values performance and achievement. On average, happy people are more successful than unhappy people at both work and love. They get better performance reviews, have more prestigious jobs, and earn higher salaries. They are more likely to get married, and once married, they are more satisfied with their marriages. Happy people also tend to be healthier and live longer. In her groundbreaking research on positivity, psychologist Barbara Fredrickson has found that positive emotions:.

Just how happy do we need to be? It turns out that among very happy people, those who are a tad less joyful than the happiest of happy actually have higher incomes, academic achievement, job satisfaction, and political participation than the happiest people.

It follows that those with some feelings of discontentment—whether it is dissatisfaction with the status quo, or an inclination to improve things—are probably more motivated towards action and, therefore, success.

At work and in civic life, the desire for something better sets us in motion—to elect a new leader, to secure a better job, to negotiate a raise. But it also turns out that uber-happy people tend to have more friends and be luckier in love. Dissatisfaction with an intimate partner or friend isn't often a big relationship strengthener.