“Self-happiness” refers to a sense of happiness or satisfaction with oneself. Although the term is not used very frequently, it is often associated with self-confidence, self-esteem, and other concepts that marry “the self” with feeling content and happy. In broad-spectrum, it means that you are pleased with yourself and your choices, and with the person that you are.
What Creates Personal Happiness?
When we take all theories and findings on happiness together. We will find out that there are at least a few sources that are very important for our overall happiness:
- Individual income;
- Labor market status;
- Physical health;
- Family;
- Social relationships;
- Moral values;
- Experience of positive emotions
All of these elements can contribute to a happy life. However, research has found that good relationships are a vital component because when we are happy in our most important relationships, we tend to be happier.
Moreover, we have some control over how our relationships go, so, that leads us to an interesting and important question: can we increase our happiness?
Can We Learn How to Be Happy?
The answer is YES! You can learn how to be happier because there is always room for individual improvement. The easiest method to improve your overall happiness is to look at the list of sources above and work on increasing the quality of your experiences in each one of them. For instance, you can work on getting a higher salary, improve your health, work on developing and maintaining high-quality relationships. And overall, find ways to incorporate more positive feelings into your daily life.
Those physical methods and components are very important in our life, so it’s important that you try to improve the quality of them as it contributes to your happiness. But that’s not everything… these are only the physical aspects of our life…
However, at least equally important is the work you are putting into yourself and your personal development. In order to be happy and to feel it in much more depth, and to make happiness more permanent and more stable in your life, it cannot be something external. You cannot look for external validations to your happiness. Happiness needs to come out from you. It is your happiness, not anyone else’s.
The Relationship between Mental Health and Happiness
Although there is a strong relationship between mental health and happiness! When happy people are healthier, have better relationships, make friends more easily, and find more success in life, it’s easy to see why happiness and mental health are related.
The sources that contribute to happiness are the same as those that provide people with a buffer or protection against mental illness. And that explains the close relationship between the two.
However, the close tie between mental health and happiness is reason enough to make happiness an important priority for yourself.
This article is based on my book, “Grow into your happiness”. If you are interested and what to find out more about it, you can find it in the link below: