Chapter one 

 Introduction

Why do many people feel unhappy and are not able to steer their lives in such a direction that they become more happy?

The fundamental answer is that happiness is a very complex thing and has so much to do with our feelings. To a certain extent we may understand why things do not work out as we expect them to do, but it is often much more difficult to understand why we feel happy or unhappy. Our feelings are so hard to control and change every day, hour or even minute. The borderline between being happy and being unhappy is rather vague, it seems.

This website attempts to answer the question: what makes us happy? It is especially written for those of us who want to know how happy they are and how they can improve their happiness. People who are always unhappy can benefit from the site by gaining useful insight in the underlying sources of their unhappiness. In this way they might be able to stop the vicious downward circle.

The site is not a scientific study and does not provide any deep philosophical insights. The old Greeks have tried that already and their insights are still useful and often very precise. However, as there are so many people still struggling with their happiness, there is probably still no solution available. Moreover, modern time give us plenty of new opportunities, influences and challenges, which have profoundly changed the way we can deal with happiness.

The approach of the site is rather light. This does not mean that the site is superficial; no it is rather accessible. Many people recognise the way happiness is treated here and appreciate the attempt to provide answers rather than philosophy.

Starting point of the approach is that it should be possible to measure with a number how happy we should be: objective happiness.

But then there is also the way we experience our happiness: the subjective happiness. If you do not like reading a lot and simply want to learn how happy you are, you may prefer to go to the interactive questions first. Perhaps after filling in the questions and receiving the response, you would like to know how to improve your situation.

This chapter starts with the objective happiness. Which factors determine how happy a person should be; both according to himself and to others.

Chapter two deals with the subjective happiness. How does one experience happiness and which factors determine these feelings?

Chapters three and four combine objective happiness and subjective happiness into one grand score for total happiness.

We will then distinguish between six different types of people.

Chapters five and six are the therapeutic part of the site. What can we do to obtain an certain control over the subjective and objective factors. Or, to keep it simple, how to become happy.

 Good luck with reading

(c) Fred Lafeber, 2000

Chapter 1: Objective happiness

There are many factors which determine how happy we are. Many of these factors can be linked to the different activities we perform during our lives. Working, loving, creating and moving are all activities that may contribute to our happiness. In this way happiness is nothing more than to gain satisfaction from the things we do.

As it is quite possible to measure these activities in ones life and as it has not much to do with somebody's character and feelings, we call these factors objective. If someone else would have to evaluate how happy you are on the basis of these factors, then it should not differ toomuch from our own evaluation. Often it is even possible to measure the amounts and quality with respect to these factors.

The following factors can be distinguished

1. Financial situation (amount of money you have)

2. Material situation (quantity of stuff, the house, quality)

3. Love (how much and how good)

4. Family life (yes or no, does it fit you well)

5. Social life (number of friends, quality of relations)

6. Creative life (hobby's, arts)

7. Working life (availability of job, quality of job)

8. Physical life (being healthy, quality of moving around)

9. Humor in life (yes/no, quality)

10. Other lives (own objective factors)

When discussing these factors we can use some well-known sayings.

Money

"Riches alone make no man happy" is the first saying. "But also not unhappy" many of us would like to add. Most modern people have experiences that money helps to finance nice things. It enables you to finance your hobby's, make some travels and visit other people. Modern poverty is misery and can lead to a lot of stress.

On the other hand everybody agrees that money alone is not sufficient. We soon leave the right track when we focus on pecunia only, and forget about other things in life.

Nevertheless we start by assuming that a good financial situation may contribute to our happiness and that it is our first objective happiness factor. The better our financial situation, the more we are able to realize our goals in life and the more happy we can become.

Stuff

"To have one's house in order" and "know one's stuff" are sayings that emphasize the importance of things in our life. Most people in the 20th century aim at a large house when they have only a little bit higher income. Often they overlook the fact that you also need stuff to decorate the house. In this way they will be busy earning money their whole life to pay off the mortgage and buying furniture. But probably it makes them happy so we also count this as an objective happiness factor.

Love

What a pity, I already hear many of you say while reading this site. What a pity it has to start with money and stuff. There should be more in life.

Alright, let's move quickly to something from which we at least have the illusion that it has nothing to do with money: Love. "To be lucky in love" is the appropriate saying here. And indeed, luck plays a main role in Love. You need luck to find love and you need love to be happy.

But what in fact is love? When asking different people about their love life, they may think about totally different things. One attaches most inmportance to emotional strings, the other to family life and again another to sex. Hence, love is a complex concept and not objective at all.

Basically, the most objective aspect of love is sex. Regular sex brings stability in one's life and makes that during depressions we grasp our partner rather than the bottle. And to make it more scientific: it has been proven that a man who is still alone at a certain age will die earlier than his chained equal.

Family

First money and now sex, you will complain, what a primitive sense of happiness this guy has. So let me soon turn to another aspect of love: the family. "They are one great big happy family" is a saying that empasizes how important families can be in our sense of happiness. Coming home and finding your loved ones waiting for you is a feeling most of us enjoy. A good family can contribute to happiness.

Of course not all of us like to have people around them all the time. So, if you are perfectly happy to live in a one-person family you can attain a high score on this factor also.

When you are the family, the family can make you happy as well. But remember that it is an exception. Even people who tell they prefer to be alone, often start hunting again.

The need for a family is more deeply rooted than we often think.

Friends

This brings us to the rest of the social contacts with friends and family. "A good neighbour is worth more than a far friend" means that we need people in our neighbourhood. And that those people should also be close to us. being able to tell your story to somebody, to undertake activities together and to be able to be yourself with other people is extremely important for our happiness. This person (or persons) can be a sister, a partner, a good friend or a good neighbour. People without partner often have more need of a large circle of friends than people who have a good relationship with their partner. Good friends can compensate for the lack or loss of a partner. It seems logical, but cannot be stressed enough.

And so we covered also the last part of love. Love is more than marriage, which is still the focal point in our modern society.

Art

Money and love are only worldly pleasures. Especially artists do not need this kind of lower needs. To "live for their art" is the appropriate saying for them and theay are often associated with poverty and attic rooms. Many artists are also structurally unhappy.

So artists are a special category in our survey of happiness. They chose intentionally for an unhealthy, poor way of living. But what makes even the most melancholic entertainer happy is of course the art he or she makes. Happiness is being stimulated by creative activities.

But I am not an artist at all, most people will say. Perhaps, but as soon as you define art related activities in a broad way, all of us are artistic performers. Not only painting, but also playing soccer, writing an article and knitting can be expressions of art. Art is nothing more than creating unnecessary matters or movements.

Labour

According to this definition of art - creating unnecessary matters or movements - most people are artists the whole day. Not in the art, but in their work, as most of our labour activities are really not necessary at all. But most people cannot do without their job. The slogan of the first Dutch government with PM Kok was jobs, jobs, jobs. "There is nobility in labour" is the older version of this saying, although one has to remark that the nobility often does not work at all.

A person who has written very interesting things about work is Karl Marx. In his young years he wrote that through their labour people can give depth to their life. They even need labour to give depth to their life and to become happy. Only when the assembly line was invented and we had to work for a boss, people became alienated from their own work. An dbe honest, in this harsh 19th century the guy was even right.

Nowadays it is not so bad anymore in our highly developed western society. Many people can chose their profession and there have never been so many jobs which require creativity. Many people feel committed to their company, even when they only have to repair cars, clean offices or restock the shelves. "They set to work at full tilt".

Health

What do we most pray for and for what we spend most of our money once we finally have the house and the stuff? Health care of course. "Health is better than wealth" means that you can better be healthy than have a lot of money. Illness can seriously affect our happiness. Good health is a precondition for a happy life.

Partly health is already integrated in the factors above. Sick people are less able to work, love, create and meet other people and need to spend their money to make the high priests of health care happy. Not yet counted though is the physical effort we are doing to remain healthy. Sport and moving around clean up the spirit and make life more beatiful. Who does not know the feeling that you are dazed and feel good again after a walk, even when you really had to urge yourself to do anything at all.

Physical life, defined as health related movement is therefore also an important objective happiness factor.

Humor

Then there is the humoristic aspect in life. "Laughter is the best medicine" and "he who laughs last lauighs longest" are sayings emphasizing the importance of humor for happiness. To laugh and to relax make life easier, happiness more intense and put bad luck into perspective. Sure, somebody who is unhappy will laugh less and of course people have different senses of humor. But that we will deal with later, as it is rather subjective.

Important here is the amount of humor in your life and environment. It does not matter whether it is at home, on the job or on television. Is it possible to enjoy other people around you. Is there a television programme you like to watch very much. This kind of things is important.

Rest

The other factors determining our happiness are not included here. All of us are different and we all perhaps have other things which are rather objective and contribute to our happiness. Perhaps health, although already included in other factors, can be included here again.

In the questionnaire, you can give marks between 0 and 10 to all of the lives and add the numbers. The total score will be between 0 and 100. Divide the total score by 10 and this will give your objective happines score.

Now suppose your average mark is a 9. Perhaps this will suffice and you can stop reading here. However, if you have only the slightest doubt that you should be more happy or that you are this poor beggar who nevertheless feels happy, please also read chapter 2 (soon to be translated). We will look to our feelings and emotions there. What determines our subjective happiness?

Home (questionnaire)
Chapter 1: objective happiness
Chapter 2: subjective happiness
Chapter 3: combining objective and subjective happiness
Chapter 4: six types of happiness 
Chapter 5: Influencing subjective happiness
Chapter 6: Investing in objective happiness