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What are the most useful techniques to improve happiness

 published on  included in Happiness
When… then…
you are experiencing negative thoughts, stress and anxiety - use cognitive defusion techniques like I notice I’m having a thought (see Acceptance and Commitment Therapy)
- practice mindfulness
- use reasoning and rationality to see if the negative thoughts are likely or not.
you are setting a goal Break goals in smaller and more achievable goals and accept the errors
you do not know how to behave review your values and goals and find what behaviour is aligned with your values.
you are having a pain or a tension in some part of your body due to a negative thought use expansion exercise (see Acceptance and Commitment Therapy)
you are experiencing resistance to change - find your limiting and inaccurate beliefs and try to change them (see Beliefs)
- practice little continuous changes
you are failing to reach your goals - practice self compassion
- reduce the friction that are impeding to reach your goals (see Environment (Behaviour context))
- acquire new competences
- improve your problem solving skills
you are feeling you are not satisfying your needs or you behaved in a wrong way - find your needs analysing your behaviour and your emotions
- define more effective behaviours and habits to satisfying your needs.
- balance your hedonistic needs with your eudaimonic needs
you are criticising too much yourself practice self compassion
you do not what to do in life find your values and define habits and projects that contribute to satisfy them.
you do not feel healthy change your habits to live a healthier lifestyle and in particular:
- do physical exercise
- sleep at least 7 hours per night
- maintain a healthy diet.
you feel unhappy - show gratitude to what you have
- savoring experiences you live

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Why pursuing happiness

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Why pursuing happiness

Because when we experience happiness, we feel good. Moreover what are the alternatives?

  • Not acting or doing nothing. It is like to be dead. We have all the time to be dead during the lifetime of the universe. During our relatively short lifespan compared to the lifespan of the universe, it is better to try something different than to act as if we were dead.
  • Simply acting without considering if what we do bring us happiness or not. In this case, sometimes we may feel good and sometimes not. Isn’t it better to actively search for activities that are likely to bring us happiness? Moreover as suggested by Alex Lickerman in the article Why We Must Actively Pursue Happiness if we don’t make happiness our explicit goal, why would we ever ask ourselves which activities we should choose? Why would we ever wonder if one path might be better than another, and therefore choose it?

Why not

Some articles and researches however suggest that it is better not:

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Can happiness be measured

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  • Happiness is subjective, therefore is hard to find a shared metric.
  • Questionnaires that ask to answer specific questions and rate the happiness level is typically used in research.
  • One of the most used questionnaire is Subective Happiness Scale.

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Is better to pursue Eudaimonic or Hedonic happiness

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There are two main different views between philosopher and researchers. There is who claims that it is better to pursue eudaimonic happiness and who claims that it is better to pursue hedonic happiness.

In the course Finding Purpose and Meaning In Life: Living for What Matters Most is claimed that it is better to pursue eudaimonic happiness because it enriches ourselves and others, while hedonic happiness is related only to our own pleasure.

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What are the differences between Eudaimonic and Hedonic

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Definitions

  • Eudaimonic happiness is the long term happiness and is the happiness we feel when:
  • Hedonic happiness is the short term happiness and is the happiness we feel when we pursue pleasure that is an end in itself.

Characteristics

In the paper Pursuing Pleasure or Virtue - The Differential and Overlapping Well-Being Benefits of Hedonic and Eudaimonic Motives is claimed that:

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