Happiness

4 Pages 1121 Words

The Biggest Lie in Today’s Society
One of the biggest lies in society is the definition of achieving true happiness. What is happiness? According to Michael Argyle, the author of “The Psychology of Happiness”, people may describe happiness in terms of contentment, satisfaction, peace of mind, feeling fulfilled, or in terms of enjoyment, pleasure and having fun” (Argyle 2). According to the Webster Dictionary, happiness can be defined as feelings of joy and pleasure mingled together. To me happiness is more than just an experience of joy or pleasure. It is a state of mind where the individual feels that “life is good”.
Despite how popular happiness really is, psychology has more often focused on negative emotions. From 1967 to 1994, “Psychological Abstracts” (a readers guide to psychological literature) included 5099 articles mentioning anger, 36.851 mentioning anxiety, 46.380 mentioning depression. For every 17 abstracts on these topics, only one mentioned satisfaction (2340), or happiness (2389).
There is a tendency for most people to explain happiness or unhappiness in terms of the external events of their lives. They explain happiness by pointing to the positives; they explain unhappiness by pointing to the negatives. The implication is that events determine whether or not they are happy. I have always thought that our attitudes have far more to do with how happy we are than any external circumstances. Today, research supports such views.
For instance, Sergeant Wilson (an active duty army soldier) served in Iraq and Afghanistan for about one year and a half dealing with numerous horrific experiences. Before he left, like many soldiers, he had a positive yet proactive state of mind. He told himself that regardless of where life and its circumstances took him, he would not allow it to diminish his spirit. Like many people today, by setting a standard in which one does not allow happiness itself to be affec...