Happiness essay

What is Happiness? There are considerable amount of questions to ask about the true meaning of happiness and dozens of different definitions. With all this confusion surrounding happiness, is it possible to achieve happiness in our lives? Perception as they say “is in the eye of the beholder.” Happiness is an emotion developed by consequences of choices and through learned life experiences. Believing that happiness is characterized by a pleasant emotion, ranging from a simple smiling to intense joy would be missing the true meaning of happiness. These characteristics may be true of happiness, but this as the only definition is too vague. Happiness is judged by a wide range of physical emotion, it is judged by actions which bring us to the point of feeling happy. There are triggers that lead to different levels of happiness and those triggers are just as important as the emotion itself. Jamie R. Woods, an Education Teacher, brings out a very good example in her article “Achievement as a Side Effect of Happiness.” She suggests that when people have control of the decisions they make about their education, they showed higher levels of satisfaction and happiness. When they made their own choices they felt like they achieved their goal and in combination, achievement was the trigger for feeling happy. Through daily decision making processes we tend to select the course of action which will make us the happiest. My father always took the long way home from work because he found greater satisfaction when taking the scenic route. He would always have a good story about what he saw on the way home and it was simple to see his decision directly affected his happiness. There is a fine line between choices increasing the level of happiness and what the costs of those decisions have on happiness. In today’s world, there can be far too many choices to make and it can directly affect our happiness. Psychologist Barry Schwartz establishes during his