Last update: December 16, 2018
Engaging in activities that give us satisfaction and motivation can increase our happiness. But Before analyzing the ingredients of happiness, an important question must be answered: what is happiness?
This dimension largely depends on what we do and think. You cannot be happy without enjoying what you are giving or always thinking negative. Let's see why satisfaction and motivation are the ingredients of happiness.
Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.
-Herman Cain-
What is happiness?
When we are happy, life seems to smile at us. But what exactly is happiness? Answering this question is important because the different ways of describing this condition help us understand what to do to feel happier. Professor Paul Dolan believes he has the answer to this question.
Paul Dolan is known around the world for being an expert in happiness, behavior and public policies. Professor of behavioral sciences at the London School of Economics and Political Science, he was a visiting researcher at Princeton University in the team of Professor Daniel Kahneman.
According to this author, happiness is the sum of feelings of pleasure and motivation experienced over time. When we are happy, everything runs smoothly. According to the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, pleasure is the only positive sensation, which is opposed by pain which is the only negative sensation. However, some specialists prefer the terms joy and suffering.
In principle, each of us can be classified according to the predisposition to different types of sensations. Happy people are more likely to feel positive than negative. Wanting to use Bentham's language, these people experience a lot of pleasure and little pain.
The more frequent and intense this feeling of pleasure is, the happier the person will be. However, there are other emotions that are just as important: motivation and lack of meaning.
The ingredients of happiness according to the principle of pleasure and motivation
Pleasure and motivation are to be understood as abbreviations for a much wider range of positive and negative feelings. Among these sensations we certainly find completeness, feeling useful and satisfaction on the one hand and boredom and feeling useless on the other.
If we think about work or study, we realize that these activities sometimes seem to have a sense or at least a purpose and at other times they don't. Well, these positive and negative feelings are just as important as those of pleasure and pain.
Writing a book is the perfect example of an activity that seems to have a meaning, a purpose. Drinking a beer with friends, on the other hand, simply gives us a feeling of pleasure. These are two different sensations, both capable of giving us happiness.
To be truly happy, you need both pleasure and a goal to aspire to. There are different ways of being happy (or unhappy), in some cases pleasure predominates, in others motivation. The important thing is that both are present: pleasure and motivation. It is from this concept that what Paul Dolan calls the Pleasure and Motivation Principle takes its name.
Negative emotions can have a positive impact
The above principle explains the human tendency to seek fulfillment and a goal to pursue to avoid pain and nonsense. But it actually also explains why some naturally negative emotions can become positive when they have a specific purpose. Anger, for example, has the function of curbing selfishness and encouraging cooperative behavior.
Therefore, we don't always want to have only positive feelings. Life, but also people, can be cruel, so sometimes we feel the need to get angry. But in reality we also happen to get angry for no reason, in a natural way. This happens for example when we are stressed by many small, but continuous disturbing elements.
Lost happiness cannot be recovered
Day after day, moment after moment, we happen to feel satisfied, motivated, saddened, empty. Clearly, the times when we experience a greater amount of positive feelings that go on for a long time are the times when we feel happiest.
In short, happiness depends on the proportion between pleasure and motivation over time. And time, as we know, is not infinite. In fact, it is really curious that only a few researchers believe that happiness depends on the use one makes of one's time.
If we look at the long term, the best thing to do is try to use our time in such a way as to obtain a feeling of global well-being and motivation that lasts as long as possible. Since there is no way to make up for lost time, it goes without saying that lost happiness cannot be made up for.
Continuing to do boring work or pursuing a relationship that has nothing left to offer us only prolongs our malaise and future happiness is unlikely to fully compensate for what we have lost. The happiness we don't take advantage of is lost forever.
The main reason we're not as happy as we could be is that we pay too much attention to the wrong things. It is not difficult to understand why we are unhappy when we consider that we often let ourselves be guided by our instincts in determining what are the things that could motivate us and make us happy.
Now we know, if we want to be happier we must try to devote more time to activities that make us feel fulfilled and motivated. And, above all, we must not forget that we must prefer activities that last over time. Only in this way will we be able to maximize our happiness.
