Happiness an Emotion or a State of Mind - Research Paper Example

? ‘ Happiness; an Emotion or a of Mind Happiness is composed of momentary feelings people have when things are goingthe right way like when the weather is beautiful or when an individual’s team wins a major game. To many people, happiness is the ultimate treasure sought after for a full and satisfying life; nevertheless, the pursuit of happiness could be a primary obstacle to experiencing happiness. Happiness is a state of mind as opposed to it being a set of circumstances because it is impossible to find happiness through searching which implies happiness is found outside of an individual. Happiness is a natural feeling of an individual’s innate healthy psychological functioning, which an individual can help it grow and maintain when the individual feels it. Happiness can be considered a feeling that originates from within an individual, which is not surprising to many people; therefore, from a general stand point, happiness has two meanings, the initial meaning being a relatively detached assessment of the overall well-being better regarded as mild somewhat intellectualized satisfaction of the way things are going in people’s lives. Lack of strong relation between objective circumstances of life and their individual evaluations continually pose a problem in study of well-being. Therefore, in considering this state of mind happiness is also assessed as an emotion because it is made up of momentary emotions, which are able to change overtime. Therefore, happiness can be considered a sum of momentary emotions because positive emotions increase happiness while negative emotions decrease happiness. The extent to which positive emotions overcome negative ones describe an individual’s overall level of happiness, which is proportional to time and intensity with which emotions are experienced (Manz, 2003). Therefore, emotions, feelings as well as states of mind are the basis for studying happiness since they are universal and common to people because many biologists agree that men like other animals share basic emotions lie fear of an enemy. Nevertheless, while experience and expression of emotions and feelings is universal to humans, the display of emotions varies across cultures. There is little harmony between psychologists and philosophers concerning dynamic of sentiment regarding well-being or emotion of happiness. An extended process of striving and making progress regardless of how fast brings about happiness or slow it is toward achieving goals and this way of looking at the basis of happiness contrasts attaining of goals. This is so because the success of getting what people think they want is apt in producing only short-lived satisfaction. This form of triumph often leads to suffering since people are often inclined to over-value what is considered essential (Baucells & Sarin, 2012). Even when people gains appear to be greatly desired, such success soon fades and people cannot live happily in the past; thus, happiness and satisfaction about a person’s well-being are leavened by realities of living. The state of mind could even be mixed with sadness since gaining one goal may interfere with gaining of another goal which must be sacrificed in an attempt to achieve competitive success at the expense of social approval or family love. The insight that happiness about well-being are by-products of a continuous process of doing and striving implies, which imply there is no sensible way of seeking this state of mind as a life goal. Thus, happiness does not depend on objects of enjoyment because it is a state of mind and an emotion resulting from contentment, inner peace, joy and fulfillment (Baucells & Sarin, 2012). Various people in the past have attempted to define happiness throughout history with philosophers and religious thinks often considering happiness in terms of flourishing, living good life instead of an emotion. Positive psychology on the other hand considers happiness to be amalgamation of positive emotions as well as positive activities since it involves positive emotions, meaning and engagement. Moreover, happiness is considered a choice an individual makes and a state of being only an individual can create; however, happiness is not pleasure even though they may appear similar. The significant difference among the two lies in the source of each; for instance, happiness has an internal source while on the other hand pleasure has external sources. Therefore, happiness is a belief an individual is born embed in his or her mind; thus it is not satisfaction of irrational wishes an individual may blindly try to enjoy. Moreover, is state of non-contradictory joy without penalty or guilt, which is possible to rational man; hence by extension, happiness is long lasting pleasure of life. For long time happiness as been considered a state of well-being and satisfaction; a pleasant and pleasing experience. Drawing from this definition, some researchers consider happiness to be outstanding in nature moreover they believe happiness to be the same to all people, while other researchers consider happiness to be distinct things to every person. Nevertheless, another stream of research indicates that there are various forms of happiness that change in occurrence across age and culture. This research hones on two forms of positive feeling that when they occur are subject to being considered happiness. The first type of happiness includes excitement and eagerness which is considered to be positive and with high arousal. The second involves calm, serenity and peacefulness considered to have positive influence even though it is low in arousal. Although enthusiasm and calm are helpful emotions, the attractiveness of these emotions as well as the chances of being identified as happiness varies across individuals. Specific emotions like excitement that are experienced as happiness aligns with an individual’s prevailing temporal focus; therefore, in addition to different levels of arousal excitement and calm have a different temporal focus. For instance, people are inclined to feel excited by something that they expect to occur in future; however, they are inclined to be calm when soaked in the current moment (Payne & Cooper, 2001). Thus even though, people experience both emotions irrespective of their temporal focus, when an individual’s current feelings align with his temporal focus the emotion can be experienced as positive thus identified as happiness. Thus, when either people focus on their future from situational factors or chronically from of age, enthusiasm tends to be practiced as happiness. However, when people focus on the present either because of the need to focus on the present or because of old age, the feeling of calm is experienced as happiness. To get better sense of how this works is to visualize the nature of emotions relative to one another; moreover, similar to the way heat can be felt with varying densities, the same applies to emotions like happiness. Moment-happiness fluctuates depending on what is prevailing in an individual’s life; for instance, an individual may be contended in a family dinner and be sad after reading news in the newspaper. At this point an individual has a zero value of moment-happiness however after a phone, or a thought of what is likely to happen or an experience can take the individual from the neutral state into a moment-happiness. Therefore, happiness considers all the roller-coaster emotions and the general feelings of pleasant and unpleasant. Momentary happiness is volatile and prone to outside influences therefore happiness in this situation is considered in terms of intensity and duration of moment-happiness over extended period of time (Payne & Cooper, 2001). Happiness is constituted by an individual’s values that are in return constituted by an individual’s sentiments that are dispositions of an individual’s emotions and moods with positive emotion and mood constituting sentiment satisfaction. Therefore, happiness consists of positive emotions and moods that make up sentiment satisfaction, which are tied together by underlying emotional dispositions and the effects emotions have on people’s motivation toward further instances of satisfaction. Psychological happiness offers a broad and long-lasting aspect of a person’s state of mind, which is sometimes distinguished from the discrete emotion happiness. Happiness often denotes one of the various emotions similar to joy and fits naturally along other normal emotions like envy, anger and surprise among others. These emotions are periodic and occur in response to certain events, while in contrast psychological happiness is long-term state central to an individual’s well-being. Therefore, happiness refers to a profound state of mind and a life good to an individual that offers primary philosophical concept of happiness; that focuses on the profound state of mind. Thus, happiness focuses on providing adequate description of the state of mind and shows that an individual has a favorable attitude toward the individual’s life (Wren-Lewis, 2010). Happiness is also considered an agent of emotional condition that entails two distinctions the first being a focus on emotion and moods instead of pleasure and the second being emotional state in contrast to certain emotional or pleasurable episodes. Moreover, happiness involves personal propensity for experiencing several emotions and moods, and such a view is nearly an opposite of anxiety or depression. Happiness is conceived as a long lasting and important state of mind that is universal; even though, it may not be the complete analysis of happiness. The idea of behind the account of happiness is that happiness is made up of on-going fulfillment of an individual’s emotional disposition. Sentiments are important because they offer a link between an individual’s affective states and an individual’s values. An individual’s values are based on the individual’s sentiments in way that it not only affects an individual’s state on sentiments but also contributes to the individual’s happiness. Happiness is constituted by positive emotions and moods based on an individual’s values constituted by sentiments like an individual’s likes and cares; therefore, an individual’s emotions and moods are a result of a person’s sentiments based on values. Positive dispositions as well as feelings are as a result of attitudes that are occur from satisfaction, which is often made up of happiness. Thus, happiness is an individual’s emotional representation of overall condition of the way an individual fares and not the way things are going (Lu & Gilmour, 2004). In conclusion, happiness is constituted by a person’s values that are in return constituted by the individual’s sentiments. Emotions, feelings and states of mind form the basis for studying happiness since they are common to all people; moreover, when people are happy they become emotional thus happiness appears to embrace both views. Hence happiness embraces both the ‘emotional’ and the ‘state of mind’ concept which appears to be inseparable with happiness, with both states pass in a while and the person returns to normalcy. Happiness is mostly regarded as an emotion since it links to a person’s values and sentiments that culminate in a feeling that is considered happiness. Moreover, happiness has been considered a state of well-being and contentment that is pleasurable to an individual. References Baucells, M., & Sarin, R. (2012). Engineering happiness: A new approach for building a joyful life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lu, L., & Gilmour, R. (2004). Culture and conceptions of happiness: Individual oriented and social oriented SWB. Journal of Happiness Studies, 5(3), 269-291. Manz, C. C. (2003). Emotional discipline: The power to choose how you feel : 5 life changing steps to feeling better every day. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler. Payne, R., & Cooper, C. L. (2001). Emotions at work: Theory, research, and applications in management. Chichester, West Sussex, England: Wiley. Wren-Lewis, S. (2010). Towards a complete account of psychological happiness. Praxis, 2(2), 58-81. Read More