What is Happiness

What is happiness? Why is it every person's goal? If someone walks up to you and ask you to define happiness, how will you respond to the question?

According to wikipedia: "Happiness is a state of mind or feeling characterized by contentment, love, satisfaction, pleasure, or joy."

Different religions have their own versions of happiness. Buddhism has "nirvana," and Catholicism has the "blessed happiness."

Numerous philosophers also came up with their own definition of the word.

The Muslim Sufi thinker Al-Ghazali (1058-1111) wrote the Alchemy of Happiness, a manual of spiritual instruction throughout the Muslim world and widely practiced even now.

The Greek Philosopher, Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC), wrote about happiness in his work Nicomachean Ethics.

Science, of course, has its own versions. Psychology has positive psychology, the evolutionary biologist Bjørn Grinde presented it in his book, Darwinian Happiness.


I personally like one article written by Bo Sanchez about being happy. He mentioned that happiness and pleasure are two different things. He added that happiness is not the absence of problems nor happiness is an emotion. But rather, happiness is a way of life.



He came up with what he called the 7 tools of happiness which are as follows:

1. Happy people create their destiny

2. Happy people like themselves a lot

3. Happy people nurture connections

4. Happy people find delight everywhere

5. Happy people embrace change

6. Happy people trust deeply

7. Happy people work their purpose daily

I do agree with Bo Sanchez that there is no single ingredient for being happy. And happy people are people of strong characters.

In my own desire to be a happy person, I choose to follow a daily exercise where I will look into positive things that happen in my everyday life. I will be updating this website of the experiences, articles, movies, or anything that make me feel good. And it is also my hope that this exercise will develop into a good habit.

And as I embark on this journey, I am also hopeful that I can be able to help the readers to feel better by simply reading my blogs. So come and follow me.

I firmly believe that no matter how bad you think your day is, there is always something good and positive that you can get out of it. You just need to realize, recognize and acknowledge them.

Have a wonderful and blissful day!