Forgive an odd question right from the beginning, but what is your aim in life?
If you dig down, I suspect many people would answer “to be happy”.
Yes, many people seek happiness, but happiness is different for different people, and while there are cheerful people who have a happy constitution, there are also gloomy people who have an unhappy one.
This trend is affected by genetic elements, elements from the environment you grew up in or the environment you are in now, but in the end, how much do the personality and behavioral tendencies of happy and unhappy people differ?
The paper I discuss today investigates the personality and behavioral tendencies of the top 10% of a happiness survey conducted on 222 undergraduate students.
The results showed that the top 10%, who had an extremely strong sense of happiness, had open and agreeable personalities, had very few neurotic tendencies, and maintained good personal relationships.
Interestingly, the happiest people did not exercise that much, did not participate in religious events or social movements to a high decree, and did not engage in behaviors that are objectively evaluated as pleasing, such as travel or shopping.
In other words, people often exercise, participate in events, or amuse themselves to make themselves happy, but people who are happy to begin with do not go to the trouble of doing things like this.
A philosopher once famously said “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone,” but I wondered whether this is actually the wrong way around, and it would be correct to say “unhappy people cannot sit quietly in a room alone.” Of course, I’m included myself in this as well…
Nevertheless, the history of humanity from ancient times to now is a process of increasing happiness (or perhaps rather reducing unhappiness) in society, and I wondered whether those who bear the load for this movement are the unhappy ones, and people whose lives are filled with happiness should not go poking their heads into this.
title: Very happy people.
