What is Happiness - Define Happiness

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One of the critism often levelled at positive psychology is that it's all about the Big H called Happiness. On superficial level, Happiness seems to be simple, but it is deeply complex and intriguing. The simplest way to define happiness is to divide it into following two initial components.

Hedonic Well-being - In this concept, the goal of life is to maximize pleasure and minimize displeasure or pain. In Positive Psychology Hedonic well-being is used to refer to the happiness you get from the feeling of pleasure in the moment. The first thing what comes into mind after the sense of this type of happiness are very pure and simple like wine, song, women, men, etc. They are kind of short lived and needs to be filled regularly to up our mind full with happiness related things.

Eudaimonic Well-being- Aristotle suggested this concept of well being where he postulated that having short pleasure cannot justify the human happiness. There has to be some true happiness which is only found when it is worth it. In other words finding happiness in doing what is worth doing, not in having a good time. It starts with having meaning and porpose in life, fulfilling our potential and feeling that we are part of something bigger than ourselves creates this sense of happiness in humans.

There are many experts who feel that Eudaimonic well being is not problem free and it has a moral tone in it. A recent study of about 13000 pople suggests that pursuing engagement or meaning are more strogly related to well being than pursuing pleasure.