Happiness…

Seligman gave an analog about happiness. 180 nuns at her early career at 20’s have been asked to write a brief description about their live… some of them has wrote about their positive emotion sort of “really fun”, “very enthusiastic”, etc, and another describe the opponent. It was found 90% of the nuns who write their cheerfulness or positive emotion still live until 85 years old, 34% of nuns who less cheerful reach 85 years. 54% the more positive emotion reach their 94 years old, while only 11% of them who have less positive emotion reach 94 years old.

It makes new question for me, does the happiness reflected in their writings make the different? It looks like a cheerful one will have long life… the people believe the positive emotion is related with happiness.

What is happiness? It is intangible thing. But some people try to develop a formula for happiness. According to Seligman, the formula is the long term happiness is the summary of happiness, environmental, and controlled consciousness. And other describes happiness as expression of public good or public welfare, of the contentment of the people (NY Times.com, Oct 4th, 2005). It is more close to the happiness term to the most of people;- money…fortunately it proved that happiness and GNP doesn’t have correlation.

Another term that related with happiness is Gross National Happiness or GNH. It was coined by Bhutan’s King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, in 1972 (Wikipedia). This term has four pillars, promotions of equitable and sustainable sosio-economic development, preservation and promotion of cultural values, conservation of the natural environment, and establishment of good governance. This is that I think will be really great to be applied in Indonesia… Jennie S. Bev, has an interesting article regarding GNH.

Anyway, try to test your happiness level based on modified Fordyce questioner about emotions bellow… It is a “mirror” that will show your self…
Choose one of this sentences that described your happiness generally everyday…
10. Extremely Happy (very enthusiastic, cheerful, fantastic)
9. Really Happy
8. Very Happy (feel very good)
7. Fair enough
6. Almost happy
5. Neutral
4. Less happy
3. Little bit happy
2. Not happy
1. Very unhappy
0. Not happy at all

Done? Are you the one who pursuit for happiness** now?

* Martin E.P. Seligman is the founder of positive psychology.
** The Pursuit of Happiness is also a movie title with Will Smith, and Jaden Smith as the main casts. It is very inspiring drama based on true story about Chris Gardner.

00.37 a.m. now…