People all pursue happiness, but what is happiness? There are many misconceptions about happiness. Most commonly, "happiness" is confused with "pleasure".
If a soccer team's striker is one point behind, trying his best to break through the opponent's defence, anxious and stressed, but bravely taking responsibility and fulfilling his talent – is this happiness?
The answer is yes.
Happiness is not only about pleasure, but also about the realization of one's potential, the meaning of life, the help of others, and one's growth. If we look at happiness as a whole as a finished picture, there is a theory that tells us that the five pieces of the puzzle that make up the picture are PERMA, and that is PERMA from Martin Seligman.
The so-called PERMA is an abbreviation of the five elements of happiness, which are:
积极情绪（Positive emotion）
全情投入(Engagement)
正向关系（Relationships）
意义（Meaning and purpose）
成就感（Accomplishment）
The benefit of PERMA is not only that it scientifically deconstructs happiness, but also provides an entry point for us to pursue happiness in our daily lives.
Let's take a look at how you can pursue a higher level of well-being with PERMA.
Broaden the sources of positive emotions
In our daily lives, we are often exposed to the misconception that happiness is synonymous with money, status, prestige, appearance, and possessions.
This idea has become more and more marketable in the past few years. While these things are often pleasurable, studies have found that anxiety and depression levels can increase when too much attention is paid to them. You may think that you will be happy when you are rich, but because you care too much about it, no matter how much money you have, you will definitely think that you are "not rich enough", which affects your happiness.
Falling into the trap of "materialism" and focusing too much on these things is the most direct result of crowding out the opportunity to experience other positive emotions and thus improve our sense of well-being.
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If you care very much about wealth and spend a lot of time doing part-time jobs to earn extra money, you may not be able to experience the comfort of "stealing half a day of leisure"; if you attach great importance to your body and grit your teeth and over-dieting and exercising, you may miss the joy of "showing" a big meal with your relatives and friends; if you spend a lot of time on your mobile phone every day to keep up with the fluctuations of the stock market, you may miss the birdsong, grass leaves, and flowers.
Positive emotions are not only "cool", peaceful, tranquil, comfortable, gratifying, and touched are all positive emotions, and "I am better than others" can only be regarded as an experience based on competition to win, far from encompassing all positive emotions.
Finding "flow"
What do you do when you feel time fly by? Sports, reading, fishing, crafting, or playing with your kids?
No matter what you're doing, when you feel time flying, you're actually experiencing flow, which means you're already "fully engaged".
Flow experiences are often not well-being in the colloquial sense and can also be associated with negative emotions. If you're a skilled surgeon and you're anxious about surgery, you may also get into a state of flow. This is not a contradiction, in a state of flow, you can experience anxiety and tension and happiness at the same time.
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Mihaly Chiksenmihalay, who coined the concept of flow, has asked dozens of experts in the field the question "When do they feel best and perform best in their lives?" and all of them describe the flow experience. This experience occurs when you volunteer for a challenging but tackable task, when you achieve a set of goals, when you are constantly processing feedback about your progress and adjusting your behaviour based on the feedback.
The value of "full dedication" is self-evident, and the integration of talents, overcoming difficulties and achieving value at this moment will have a positive effect on people's happiness.
Harvest happiness from socializing
Family, friendship, and love all contribute to happiness, and the power of positive relationships goes far beyond that.
In fact, it's even hard to tell from a scientific point of view whether happy people are socially friendly or socially happier – studies have found that happy people tend to give social priority and spend more time with others.
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But this causal myth doesn't affect the actions we should choose in life: to communicate, to communicate, to get along with people. Even if you're in a big city and don't feel like you're close to anyone, you can still use this method, because even if you're talking to a stranger, your happiness level can increase. Even if you are really "socially phobic" and tease the dog, it can actually increase the secretion of endorphins, oxytocin and dopamine.
There seems to be a rejection of deep relationships in contemporary culture, with more and more people seeming to reject intimacy from thought to action, or to be determined to "not deal if you can" with others. However, from a psychological point of view, as a creature living in an interpersonal network, even if there is an objective need to be alone, it is difficult for people to reap true happiness from complete social isolation.
Let the meaning of yourself with
Unity of meaning to others
The Finnish philosopher Frank Martella describes the meaning of life as "doing what is meaningful to you and to others".
There is a strong correlation between good altruistic behavior and well-being. Statistically, the phrase "with people with roses, hands with fragrance" doesn't even describe the real objective fact that when you help others, your level of happiness may even increase more than that of the people you help.
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Of course, "meaning" itself can also have a very distinct personality. For example, in your family, it is meaningful to follow the traditional etiquette of elders and children, which can also promote the happiness of family members, or if you come from a military family, a sense of order is very meaningful to you, and you can also reap the happiness experience in the process of keeping your life in order.
In conclusion, aligning one's own meaning with the meaning of others is a great way for everyone to feel happy.
There is more than one way to achieve happiness
In our daily lives, however, we often overlook this: there are many different forms of achievement, far more than one.
Education, wealth, and status may be important, but can they constitute the absolute meaning of our lives? If all people acquiesce to this meaning composition, "volume" will become the inevitable final destination, and happiness will naturally be impossible. Some people, after gaining education and wealth, find themselves still unhappy, and the most likely reason is that they ignore that the achievements they really care about are actually something else.
Be a good father, be able to make tomato scrambled eggs that others can't match, be able to distinguish all kinds of ores, and be proficient in Tang poetry...... None of these achievements can directly replace wealth and power, but they may lead to happiness in life.
Don't be the person who sees someone standing in line and goes straight behind them – they may not be in line for you, or you don't really need it. People can fly on their own achievement track, instead of being dragged into an involuted arena to beat each other.
In the philosopher Bentham's view, happiness is "seeking pleasure and avoiding suffering", but this view does not jump out of the utilitarian thinking that confuses happiness and pleasure. Perhaps in understanding happiness, we should adopt the Marxist perspective: human beings have their social and developmental nature, and at the same time have the right to pursue the reality of happiness in an all-round, free and developed way. Perhaps, you live in an environment where work is hard, competition is fierce, and relationships are complicated, but this does not prevent you from deeply and scientifically interpreting what true happiness is, after all, only by understanding happiness can you be truly happy.
I believe that if you have saved up the above five pieces of the puzzle, you will also be able to achieve heavy happiness.
bibliography
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Planning and production
Author丨Ye Zhuang is a psychologist and a member of the Chinese Psychological Society
Review丨Fan Chunlei, Associate Researcher, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Planning丨Xu Lai, Lin Lin
Editor-in-charge丨He Tong
Reviewer丨Xu Lai, Lin Lin