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What does it mean to be happy? i kinda realized while making this is happiness can be so many different things to everyone. I kinda went on a journey to find what makes me happy but sometimes everyone shares the same happiness contributors. Which i believe is a save space, love, good relationships, and risk. Life without a good relationship with someone can feel boring and lonely. For you may have many aquantainces but how many can you trust on to be there for you. This connects with love too for a good relationship can radiate such a power that influences everyone which is love. Love makes everyone happy cause its an inexplainable feeling that one can not live without. But to attain this love you gotta take risk to talk to that person that is super cool to you or to be able to start friendships with people. and sometimes when you feel drain after a long day filled with test and stress its always great to have a "safe space" but this can be many things to me for example it can be sorta a safe escape like music or a safe room like that secret room in your house were you can relax and do what you want with no fear of judgment. So what does it mean to be happy, it means taking risk without fear or having love to share and received or having a great friend. So how one obtains true happiness is through having no fear of what if and if i fail now but of i am going to do this and not being afraid cause everything always works out in the end

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Music is a beautiful thing to me. Music shows a lot about a person. I don't think a lot of people know this but music can show a lot of a person for it shows someones character because music brings out the true you and that brings so much joy too many people. Being able to dance to your favorite song and forget about every little thing in the world and only pay attention to now and only now. Listeing to each little instrumental in the song and letting the song take over you is liberating. So listening to your favorite songs and dancing with people or yourself is an amazing feeling that can not be replaced. Music can bring happiness to many people

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In The Great Gatsby we see a lot of people happy in the book and movie. There were many factors that contributed to the happiness in the book for example the risk people took to get what they want or to do something they aren't suppose to. For example Gatsby doing everything he can to get with daisy and also him opening up speakeasy. But risk isn't all that played a part because the biggest player was love. Gatsby love for Daisy brought him a euphoric feeling when he was sleeping with daisy. this is also shown with Tom being in love with his ego/image. Tom always did everything to keep that image with always acting tuff around people and not letting daisy leave him mostly because of his image. This tuff image of himself made him happy in my perception.

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in a study conducted by Harvard they said that the main reason to live a long happy life is to have good relationships. I also believe this is important because when you now that you have someone to trust and to go talk to when you are feeling down is a huge thing. Even if it may be a small thing it is always a good feeling to have someone to rant to. Not only are good relationships good for when you are feeling down but to share this amazing moments in life. Being able to share an amazing moment with people you love is the best thing in life

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What Makes a Good Life? Lessons from the Longest Study on Happiness | Robert Waldinger | TED

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Love is really abstract to me but for others not. for there are some who are in love with their soulmate or the idea of a soulmate. Love is essential to being happy for me. The feeling of waking up to do what you love or to see the love of your life brings a joy like nothing else. Love just brings the best out of everything. this is also shown with the great Gatsby and the catcher in the rye with Gatsby being in love with daisy who made him happy and Holden with phoebe. They went through many things just for them to be happy and didn't want ti lose them.

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as i was reading the article it talked about how no one should always be happy for the brain likes to be in familiar territory and how that their is a lot that goes into what makes you happy. for example when people say money its vague for you can have $500 with you but happiness with money is like finding a $20 bill and there is a difference between the usual and the unusual and the article made me think on how when we take risk and it is a good outcome the feeling is immeasurable like talking to someone you like or trying something new so i think a way one can be happy is if they take the risk they want to whether its trying the new menu item at a restaurant or a skydiving

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It's human nature to want to be happy, but people know relatively little about the science behind the emotion.

Scientists are only just beginning to grasp how the human brain processes emotion - the chemical processes and how they affect our thoughts and behaviors. What does it mean to be happy? And what's actually happening in people's brains when they are?

These are the questions neuroscientist Dean Burnett set out to explore in his new book, "Happy Brain: Where Happiness Comes From and Why," an attempt to understand one of humanity's most potent emotions. He recently spoke with U.S. News about what he discovered. Excerpts:

It's clear the brain's process of forming emotions is incredibly complicated. Do you have a unified theory of what makes us happy?
The process itself is incredibly complicated, a reward pathway deep in the middle of the brain. We share it with lots of other species. It's a small circuit, but it's incredibly important and it allows us to experience pleasure. The brain recognizes that as a good thing, saying, 'You should do that again, here's some pleasure.'

And it can be anything. For instance, it happens when we experience something bad, where we experience fear or something scary, but then it goes away. People want to know why horror is so appealing. You were scared a minute ago and but now you're not. Every experience can be traced back to that process, so many things that can determine how powerful it is and to what degree it's triggered, like if something is familiar or not.

Novelty is a big part of that. Humans need money so we can purchase what we need to survive. And you'd think the more money we have the happier it tends to make us, but it's not that straightforward. If you have $500 that goes into your account every two weeks in your paycheck, that's nice but that doesn't really excite you, whereas if you find $20 in the pocket of your jeans, that's brilliant. It's a lot more rewarding. But familiarity can makes us happy, too. There are a lot of things in the environment that lead to stress and fear and terror and anxiety, and the brain is primed for threat detection, but in our homes we're surrounded by things that calm us down. We're more content, we know what goes where. The brain goes, 'I've been here before and at no point have I died.'
The 'pursuit of happiness' is in the Declaration of Independence as an inalienable right alongside life and liberty. Why is happiness such a powerful motivator?

The evidence that has accumulated is that happiness is a reward, the brain telling us that something has gone right or we've done something which is beneficial. The reward part of our brain identifies sources of pleasure in our lives. You want to do things that make you happy, and the quest for happiness is a big part of who we are, and it's a way for our brain to tell us when things have gone right, what things are beneficial.

It all comes down to the fact that it's a positive sensation. We have a lot of other emotions - embarrassment, fear, guilt - but they're unpleasant, they're meant to discourage us. At the most basic level, emotions are the shortcut the brain uses rather than having to think through a scenario every single time, weighing the pros and cons. The brain can think rationally and logically. Emotions are the shortcut we have to that. I tried something, but it made me feel guilty. Or there's something we enjoy, we like, we want to feel good.

But happiness isn't necessarily the most powerful emotion. Fear, for example, is about survival - we don't want to be happy for a few minutes but then end up dead.

As for the pursuit of happiness, the pursuing itself is a good thing. In modern culture, we think happiness should be the default state, otherwise something is amiss. But that's not how the brain works. The brain adapts to anything: You could have a favorite meal that makes you happy, but if you have it all day, every day, you'll be fed up with it in literally every sense.

Your brain stops paying attention, it doesn't idle well. So while you don't have to do anything to make yourself happy, it loses all its potency. The pursuit is a good thing. It's all about motivation. People who are born into wealth, great privilege and power, they don't seem particularly happy because they don't have to strive for anything.

If you're constantly happy, you're avoiding all sorts of experiences. The more emotions you experience, the more you develop emotional competence. Something bad will happen to you eventually. If you've always been happy, you don't know how to deal with it and your brain gets really confused. It's the same as if you were to only exercise one muscle - you might end up with a really strong leg, but you'd have trouble getting around. It's not great.
A lot of our brain is set up for the purposes of survival. Most of us no longer constantly face mortal threats. How has that changed how our brains process happiness?
Modern life, counterintuitively, can actually cause more of a problem. Since survival isn't necessarily a big deal anymore - we don't really have life-or-death situations, no predators, no readily immediate fatal dangers - there's so much more opportunity to indulge ourselves, our basic hedonistic instinct.

All of this stems from the fact that the human brain evolved very rapidly. The cortex was half the size it is now 3 million years ago. That is phenomenally fast for evolution. But the underlying parts of the brain - the reptile brain - is the same as it's always been. It keeps us alive. The incredibly complex, highly advanced part of the brain and the more primitive part of the brain don't always work together easily. It's like trying to install Windows 10 on a 5-year old laptop - you can do it, but neither side really enjoys it.

As a result, there are lots of different parts of the brain that rival other parts of the brain. The basic instinct to seek out basic pleasures competes with the survival instinct - conflicts like that are often coming to a head inside the brain. The instinct to binge eat comes from the need for survival in the wild. When you came across a plentiful, nutritious food source when food was otherwise scarce, the instinct is to eat as much as you can beyond your fill. The pursuit of happiness can make us blind to more long-term advantages.
Why is so much of our happiness contingent on our relationships with others?
We are such a social species, perhaps the most social species of all, and that's part of what drove our evolution. We don't tend to kill each other. That's a really strong selling point of the human race. In New York, there are 8 million people and relatively few murders. If you put 8 million chimps in New York, in a few days you'd have 4 million chimps, and then 2 million. They're an aggressive species in that regard, whereas we can happily live side by side.

Other people are such a big part of how we experience emotions. Guilt and embarrassment only exist in the context of other people. So if your bathrobe falls off when you get out of the shower, no big deal. But if it happens in a hotel lobby, it's terribly embarrassing because there are other people around to see and judge you. Rejection is such a huge part of our make-up.

We're a pair-bonding species, and we seek out partners. Not everyone's the same, of course, but it's the human norm, as it were. When we find the one person who we want to settle down with, it causes all manner of reactions in the brain. We've evolved to encourage us to maintain a link with one person. It means that when you first fall in love, you spend a lot of time not aware of that person's tics and flaws. Your hazard-detection system is shut down. That can be harmful, such as when people cannot recognize that their partner is awful. It can be really quite disturbing, when people are maintaining relationships they shouldn't. The part of your brain that can recognize that is suppressed, and the longer you stay with someone the harder it is to leave. It's a form of self-sabotage.

On the other hand, we're able to form that kind of connection with more than one person. We've detached it from pure mating instinct. We can have friends now, a strong emotional bond with someone we'll never mate with. Friends make us happy because we can form that strong connection.
You write about how the chemical oxytocin, for example, is important to creating meaningful bonds between people - mothers and babies, lovers, friends. How does it sometimes backfire?
There's an impression that these things are straightforward, but the brain is so incredibly diverse that these chemicals can sometimes have radically different effects. We're evolved to make friends but not necessarily with all other people. There's an ingroup and an outgroup. The outgroup, who aren't part of us, can be perceived as a threat.

We're a tribal species. To a degree, the only thing that's really a threat to a human is another human. Oxytocin enhances emotional bonds, romantic bonds, friendship bonds, familial bonds. But not every bond is helpful. It can make us more negatively predisposed to people in the outgroup, even racist.

We have a strong sense of status. We want to be top dog, respected, looked up to as much as possible. We have a strong instinct, rooted in the amygdala, which regulates emotions like fear, that anything that boosts our state, we seize upon it. If you have a goal, say, to be the world's best sprinter, that's fine as a goal. But it means nobody else can have it. It's a zero-sum thing. A lot of what makes us happy is dependent on making other people less happy. We are a hierarchical species. For us to go up, someone else must go down.
Presumably, you get asked a lot for advice on how to be happy. What do you tell people?
There are two things I try to emphasize.

First, happiness isn't the default - expecting it isn't realistic. Happiness should be a goal rather than a permanent state. The brain has to work hard to be happy - to be happy all the time would be exhausting. High energy, extroverted people can be pretty tiring to be around. It's nice to try to aim for happiness, but it's not something we can ever get to permanently. The closer you get, the harder it is. Sure, there should be more times that you're happy than you're not, but you shouldn't be happy all the time.

And, second, because it's not easy to be happy, the theories about a secret to happiness aren't realistic - or at least they're a huge oversimplification. Anyone offering a quick-fix solution - and there are plenty of self-help books that do - should be taken with a massive grain of salt. For every person they help, there's at least one for whom it won't work, because the brain is the most variable thing in the world. There never will be any simple answer.

And one other thing: The cultural notion that you can find happily ever after, that when you find the one person you should be with, that's it. That's an ironically romanticized version of love, and it doesn't really work that way. It sets you up to fail. It's unhealthy, and it sets an ideal that isn't going to happen. When you buy a car you've always wanted, you don't just park it in the driveway and look at it, you drive it and put fuel in it and service it. The same is true in a relationship - it should be used and appreciated.

All these ideas of constant happiness, they're culturally induced rather than biological. There's no guarantee that you should be happy constantly.

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It's human nature to want to be happy, but people know relatively little about the science behind the emotion. Scientists are only just beginning to grasp how the human brain processes emotion - the chemical processes and how they affect our thoughts and behaviors. What does it mean to be happy?

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according to Webster dictionary the definition of happiness is a state of well being and i agree with it but it doesn't explain what you really happens when you are happy like how vocabulary.com says on "vocabulary" their definition on happiness is that feeling that comes over you when you know that life is good and you cant help but smile. the reason i like a sorta combination of these two definitions for i believe that being happy is feeling content but true happiness is when you cant help but smile. they're is two tiers to happiness and there is usually a outside factor that leads to true happiness.

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the article talks about what makes one happy and what takes it away. like Buddha said that wanting more than what you have makes one sad. and that t change this mindset is just to live a meaningful life not a life of wants

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What makes people happy? This question takes us to the heart of Buddhist economics-to our true self.

According to Buddhist economics, human nature is generous and altruistic, even as we also care about ourselves. Buddha taught that all people suffer from their own mental states, with feelings of discontent that come from desiring more and more. The Dalai Lama tells us that the feeling of not having enough and wanting more does not arise from the inherent desirability of the objects we are seeking, but from our own mental illusions. Buddha taught us how to end suffering by changing our states of mind, which translates into finding happiness through living a meaningful life.

In contrast to Buddhist economics, traditional economics holds that human nature is self-centered and that people care only about themselves as they push ahead to maximize their incomes and fancy lifestyles. According to this approach, buying and consuming-shopping for new shoes or playing a new video game-will make you happy. But soon you grow tired of the shoes, become disappointed with the game, and are off shopping again. In this endless cycle of desire, we are continuously left wanting more without ever finding lasting satisfaction

Traditional economics is based on hedonic happiness, or personal pleasure with the avoidance of pain, which focuses on pursuing money and buying things that make you feel good, at least in the moment. This short-lived happiness fits in well with our materialistic, goal-oriented economy. We chase our dreams of large wealth or great power or awesome sex or a major championship in the belief that they will bring us lasting happiness. Our purchase, or promotion, or love affair gives us a high. Yet that high soon wears off, and we are off chasing the next high.

Buddhist economics rests upon Aristotle's eudaimonic happiness, where happiness comes from self-realization, and living a worthy and moral life in service to others and the community. Aristotle teaches us, "He is happy who lives in accordance with complete virtue and is sufficiently equipped with external goods, not for some chance period but throughout a complete life." He also says, "The contemplative life is happiest."[i]

The Dalai Lama warned that material gain is based on an erroneous assumption that what we buy "can by itself alone, provide us with all the satisfaction we require." He teaches us that "genuine happiness is characterized by inner peace and arises in the context of our relationships with others."[ii] In Buddhist economics, people strive to act ethically, which includes not harming others, even not ruining others' experiences or happiness. For example, you cause harm when your words or actions anger others, or make them (and yourself) feel desire or attachment, hatred or aggression, delusion, pride, and envy, or other mental poisons (called kleshas in Buddhism).

Finding inner happiness is one of the goals of Buddhist economics. Buddhism holds that we attain true freedom and peace only when we quit our mental habits of reacting with cravings for stimuli ("I've got to own that!" "Win this game!") or reacting with aversion ("I can't stand that!" "Defeat it!"). Instead, Buddhism says to quiet your mind: notice the beauty as you go for a walk, enjoy your food as you eat, connect more intimately with your friends.

Economists have demonstrated that people care about fairness, and want to be part of an organization or society that they consider just and fair.[iii] When psychologists study what makes people happy, they find that being kind to others makes people happier.[iv] People only need moments of compassion to build upon, because there is a positive feedback loop: when you do a kind deed (take your mom to lunch), you become happier, which makes it more likely you will do another kind act (help your neighbor carry in groceries). Kindness makes you happier, and happier people engage in more acts of kindness.[v]

Positive psychology demonstrates how well-being comes from experiencing a life that has meaning beyond merely feeling happy, which complements Buddhist economics. For example, positive psychologist Seligman teaches exercises to promote well-being based on engagement, good relationships, accomplishment and purpose.[vi]

In Buddhist economics, we discriminate between real happiness built upon a fully developed mindful life, and temporary happiness built around money and never-ending desires. In Buddhist economics, people do not aim to maximize their own income, because we want to ensure the happiness and well-being of all people.

Buddhist economics provides guidance both for restructuring the economy to place concerns about inequality, sustainability, and the human spirit at its center, and for leading meaningful, happy lives. "Practice compassion to be happy" replaces "More is better." "Maximize your own position" becomes "Everyone's well-being is connected."

Everyone deserves to be happy. Together we can live meaningful lives in a sustainable world!

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What makes people happy? This question takes us to the heart of Buddhist economics-to our true self. According to Buddhist economics, human nature is generous and altruistic, even as we also care about ourselves. Buddha taught that all people suffer from their own mental states, with feelings of discontent that come from desiring more and more.