Happiness is like a full gas tank. It provides a safety net against rough times and helps you weather life’s bumps.
Happier people are more satisfied in their relationships, work, and other areas of life. They tend to have higher levels of humility, patience, and generosity. And they have a positive ripple effect on those around them.
A full mind
Happiness is a feeling that encompasses the totality of your experience. There are the pleasures of your physical body and the pleasures of your mind. When you are tense for hours on end, it doesn’t feel good and casts a pall over your happiness.
On the other hand, when you are completely engaged in a task or activity and are totally in the moment, it feels wonderful. Happiness experts like Martin Seligman, the father of Positive Psychology, have outlined three kinds of happiness: pleasure/gratification; strengths/virtues; and meaning/purpose.
Seligman’s model, based on the virtue ethics of Confucius, Mencius and Aristotle, is a comprehensive approach to happiness that is grounded in scientific research and modern motivation theory. It is important to remember that while pleasure and gratification can give you temporary bursts of happiness, the long term source of happiness comes from the development of one’s signature strengths and the application of one’s virtues toward a larger purpose.
A full life
If you are a leader, it is important to fill your “love tank” so that you can give your team what they need. This may mean bringing them lunch to the office or reworking the length of your meetings. It could also mean taking a moment to breathe deeply or find some other way to calm the stress of the day.
The father of Positive Psychology, Martin Seligman, describes four types of happiness. He says that the pleasant life is about obtaining pleasure and gratification, the good life is about mastering our skills and virtues and the meaningful life is about putting our strengths to work in service of a higher goal.
While the pleasant and good life offer moments of happiness, Seligman says that to truly flourish we need to live what he calls The Full Life. This involves savoring pleasure, building signature strengths and finding meaning in what we do. It’s a balance that can be challenging to achieve, but it seems more achievable than the idea of Beyonce-like wealth or infinite fans.