- Happiness is:
10% Situational
40% Intentional Activities
- Adversity is not the enemy of happiness. One key ingredient to being happy is being able to recover from adversity more quickly. You can't know pleasure without pain, happiness without adversity.
- Our culture says you need money to be happy but in the last 50 years we are about twice as rich but the happiness lever remained stagnant. Hedonic Adaptation says when we get stuff, we adapt to it, and want more... this is the enemy of happiness.
- Happy people have close friends and family rather than things.
- We are motivated by two types of goals:Extrinsic Goals (money, image, status) and Intrinsic Goals (personal growth, relationships, desire to help). Extrinsic goal driven people are less happy and content because they get stuck on that Hedonic cycle.
- There are a set number of dopamine receptors in your brain. They die if they aren't used. If too many die, then Parkinson's Disease sets in. The act of cooperating with other human beings releases dopamine, the same neurotransmitter released when high on narcotics.
- Denmark is consistently ranked the happiest country. The majority of the country lives in co-housing communities where all of the responsibilities are shared by everyone. (Another conformation of what God has been telling us to do)
So in conclusion, we should intentionally focus on personal growth, while building relationships with friends and family, and cooperate in our co-housing community so we don't get Parkinson's, and move to Denmark... ok well maybe not that last one lol