Before starting our journey to find happiness, let us briefly consider what happiness itself is. Interestingly, despite everyone looking for happiness, it can be surprisingly difficult to define it precisely. It’s like the difficulty of trying to define “beauty”. For example, when one thinks a flower is beautiful, one may not be able to precisely say “why” one thinks it’s beautiful. We all know what beauty is, but putting it into words can often be difficult.
While happiness, like beauty, can be difficult to define precisely, let us, for the purpose of our mission to find happiness, consider a simple definition.
In our daily lives, we all face a variety of challenges, including unpleasant situations and problems. Perhaps it is a health issue, job loss, romantic breakup, boredom, financial issues, or any of the countless other possible problems. Such problems and challenges can bring one’s mood down and cause stress and anxiety. A simple definition of happiness is a state of mind in which, despite facing various problems and challenges, one remains calm and positive. In this state, one remains generally content and not in distress. The goal of this website is to help you find this state. We are, of course, all different, and you may have your own version of happiness that you desire.
It is also worth understanding the difference between happiness and pleasure. People often get these two things mixed up. Pleasure can be thought of as a short-lived positive experience. Good examples are certain foods (e.g. chocolate), warm showers, a joke, and sex. While pleasure can be great, it doesn’t work continuously. Imagine the negative consequences of eating a chocolate every five minutes for the rest of your life! You would soon get sick of it.
Happiness, on the other hand, is a much longer-term contentment. I would suggest that finding pleasure is great, but finding happiness is even greater.