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Happiness is big business these days. Walk into any bookstore and you’ll find hundreds of smiley faces peering out at
you from the shelves. There are tricks and tips coming at us from all directions: lose 10 kilos then you’ll be happy. Buy a bigger house then you’ll be happy. Find your ideal woman then you’ll be happy. Get that dream job then you’ll be happy.

But is happiness the be-all and end-all? Many would say it is. But there is also the growing view that it’s more important (and healthier) to embrace all the different emotions we experience in the run of a day.
Before starting to tackle how to get happier, you need to come up with your own definition for it.

What does happiness mean to you?

The Macquarie Dictionary defines happiness as:
1. the quality or state of being happy;
2. good fortune; pleasure, content, or gladness;
3. aptness or felicity, as of expression.

Taking a poll around the MF office on what happiness is, many of the answers were (as you’d expect) fitness related.
That moment on your morning run when the sun pokes up over the horizon. Catching your first wave of the day. Cycling down a monster hill at full speed. That feeling you have when you leave the gym freshly showered after a big
workout. Sitting on your kayak with two rods in and feeling a nibble.

Happiness is all of those things, but there are many more ways to experience those feelings – which could also be called bliss, peace, contentment, joy – in the run of a week, even during your 9-5.

Shiny happy people

On May 5th and 6th, Sydney held the 5th Annual Happiness and Its Causes conference, where more than 2000 people came together to listen to over 50 speakers from around the world – including top scientists, philosophers, psychologists, humanitarians, writers and more.
We asked 10 of the speakers (including Uma Thurman’s old man) the same two questions: What does
happiness mean to you? And how do you create/seek/find/maintain happiness in your own life?

Speakers

Professor Barbara Frederickson

Pioneering positive emotions researcher, University of North Carolina; author of Positivity

To me, happiness is found in the micro-moments, in fleeting moments of positive emotions when I feel connected with others and the world around me. I create it by designing my day to include more of such moments, like running in the woods, sharing a meal with a friend, taking time for myself, writing in my journal or meditating. The key is that happiness can’t be deferred to the future. Each day, these happiness-inducing activities are as important to me as getting things on my to-do list done

Petrea King

Founding Director, Quest for Life Foundation

Happiness is a quiet mind and an open heart! Our ability to embrace each moment of life regardless of its challenges, with a mind free of chatter and chaos and a warm and generous heart, creates a foundation for real and lasting
happiness.
You don’t arrive at a place called Peace and unpack. The mind makes a wonderful servant and an appalling master so happiness becomes a moment-by-moment choice and lies in our mastery of the mind. It’s also important to not take our own lives so personally and not to let the outer circumstances of our life dictate our inner reality. The necessary elements to maintain mastery of the mind lie, for me, in solitude, in nature, in silence, in meditation, in meaningful work and in deep and profound relationships. It’s my responsibility to make sure that Idivvy up the 168 hours I get eachweek to make sure that those things happen first.

Professor George Vaillant

Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School;
Director of the Study of Adult Development,
Harvard University Health Service

I have devised two bumper stickers: “Happiness is love. Full stop!” and “Happiness is drive reduction. Joy is connection.” To spell it out: happiness is all about me; joy is all about the other. Happiness is masturbation, and as Woody Allen says, “Even a bad orgasm is right on the money.” Joy is having realbabies and making others “happy”.
Positive Psychology is still learning that it has to shift its focus from “me” to “others”.

L-Fresh

Mentor, The Street University (a not-forprofitthat helps young people in Western Sydney), Ted Noffs
Foundation 

I am happiest when I am free. Freedom makes me happy. The problem is, however, that I am rarely free. I, we, live in a society which continually takes from us and gives us nothing but shit in return.
So moments where I can experience pure and real freedom are moments of happiness: when I’m making music in the solitude of self, in the deep complexities and intricaciesof my mind; when I am with my family eating dinner, for example, with nothing on but a pair of shorts and looking like a complete grub; when I am speaking freely with my peers and my elders with no fear of being silenced, restricted, judged or looked down upon – these moments are when I am truly happy. So Iseek these moments and attempt to maintain them because I cherish them. In these moments I am able to be ME. The real ME. Not the fraction of me that our society demands.

People need to understand that while we are continually being conditioned to live in a certain way, we can never be free to be our real selves and we can never truly be happy.

Dr Sara Lazar

Neuroscientist and leading meditation researcher,
Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School

Certainly I enjoy spending time with family and friends, going out and doing fun things, but I think what I “seek” is contentment rather than happiness per se. Unhappiness comes from wanting things to be different than they are. Finding contentment with whatever the situation is usually results in greater happiness and enjoyment. That is why I do yoga and meditation – it helps me see the silver linings, to appreciate people’s good qualities rather than just finding fault with them, and to more fully appreciate whatever is happening.

Philip Adams

Presenter, Late Night Live, ABC Radio
National; Australian Living Treasure

Happiness? Just one of a smorgasbord of emotions, and not necessarily the most important.
Happiness is best achieved by not worrying too much about whether or not you’re happy, but if you insist, try worrying about the happiness of others.

The Honourable Michael Kirby, AC, CMG

Former Justice of the High Court of Australia; Australian Living Treasure

Happiness for all human beings includes love and sexual fulfilment.
The patriarchs in society want to deny this, and to put down gays and other minorities. I have not let this happen in my life. We have to
face realities about ourselves and be more truthful. If one thing really pains me, it is the hypocrisy of the media that reinforces shame about sexuality. The Tiger Woods saga is just the latest illustration. It was entirely a matter for him and his family. Instead, it was turned into an outrageous

James O’Loghlin

Host of The New Inventors, ABC TV; Presenter, Sundays with James O’Loghlin, 702 ABC Radio

For me, happiness is doing something I find emotionally, physically or intellectually interesting, exciting, challenging or rewarding. Or doing anything fun.
It is also about sharing ordinary times with the people who are most important to me.
Finding happiness first of all means being open to it. That is, actively being aware of it as a priority in your life. To seek happiness you have to try to work out what makes you happy and what doesn’t, and then seek out the things that do and avoid the things that don’t.

Being happy is also about learning to accept, and adjust to, circumstances that are not as you would like them to be, but I am not very good at that bit.

Dr Robert Thurman

Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies, Department of Religion,
Columbia University;
Co-founder and President, Tibet House, US; Author of Why The Dalai Lama Matters

Happiness for me is whatever inner bliss wells up naturally from a feeling of oneness with the universe of beings and things.
It is normally constricted by a feeling of alienation from those around, isolation, anxiety and self-preoccupation. Paradoxically, it develops proportionally to the degree that my focus turns away from self toward others and empathic preoccupation with ameliorating their condition by whatever means.

Matt Noffs

Foundation Coordinator, The Street University, Ted Noffs Foundation

One day I was walking my dog in the park. He started chasing his own tail. He wouldn’t come home – not even for dinner – so I left him in the park. He’s there to this day – exhausted.


All illustrations by Anthony Calvert: www.anthonycalvert.com
 

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