How to get and stay happy

Today is a quick review of another happiness measurement tool: Panas Scale As a little bit of review, these are the measurement tools I found for happiness and plan to explore. These came from the site:  Pursuit of Happiness . Existing Methods of Measuring Happiness Oxford Happiness Inventory  (Already explored) Subjective Happiness Scale  (Already explored) Satisfaction With Life Scale  (Already explored) Ryff’s psychological wellbeing-scale  (Already explored) Panas Scale  (Today's Topic) Pana's Scale This tool aims to measure what the researchers call "affect" - which as I understand it just refers to your general emotions. So it doesn't claim to measure "happiness" specifically. That being the case I'm already a bit skeptical about this tool being useful for my purposes. Here it is either way!  Indicate to what extent you GENERALLY feel the given emotion, that is how you feel ON AVERAGE   Scoring   The total score is calculated by fi...

 Today is a quick review of another happiness measurement tool: Ryff’s psychological wellbeing-scale As a little bit of review, these are the measurement tools I found for happiness and plan to explore. These came from the site:  Pursuit of Happiness . Existing Methods of Measuring Happiness Oxford Happiness Inventory  (Already explored) Subjective Happiness Scale  (Already explored) Satisfaction With Life Scale  (Already explored) Ryff’s psychological wellbeing-scale  (Today's Topic) Panas Scale Ryff’s psychological wellbeing-scale Alrighty, so this measurement tool is significantly larger than the last two I've investigated. The full tool consists of 42 questions, the "condensed" version includes 18 questions. Each question is a statement to which the respondent indicates their agreement. I've included the 18 question version of the tool below including my answers. RESPONSE FORMAT 1 = strongly agree;  2 = somewhat agree;  3 = a little agree;...

Today is a quick review of another happiness measurement tool: the Satisfaction With Life Scale As a little bit of review, these are the measurement tools I found for happiness and plan to explore. These came from the site:  Pursuit of Happiness . Existing Methods of Measuring Happiness Oxford Happiness Inventory  (Already explored) Subjective Happiness Scale  (Already explored) Satisfaction With Life Scale (Today's Topic) Ryff’s psychological wellbeing-scale Panas Scale Satisfaction With Life Scale This tool is fairly short, similar to the size of the Subjective Happiness Scale. That being the case I'm going to just include the whole thing here: Instructions: Below are five statements that you may agree or disagree with. Using the 1 - 7 scale below, indicate your agreement with each item by placing the appropriate number on the line preceding that item. Please be open and honest in your responding • 7 - Strongly agree • 6 - Agree • 5 - Slightly agree • 4 - Neither agree...

 Alright, back to the basics of this casual research project. As indicated in my last post: I need to better understand both WHAT happiness is for me, as well as HOW I can measure that happiness before I can continue too far with my musings on the topic. So this post is going back to those topics. Specifically it will explore the next measurement tool for happiness: The Subjective Happiness Scale. As a little bit of review, these are the measurement tools I found for happiness and plan to explore. These came from the site:  Pursuit of Happiness . Existing Methods of Measuring Happiness Oxford Happiness Inventory (Already explored) Subjective Happiness Scale (Today's Topic) Satisfaction With Life Scale  Ryff’s psychological wellbeing-scale Panas Scale Subjective Happiness Scale This tool is short and sweet. Short enough and sweet enough that I can include a version of the whole thing in this post. So here it is: Instructions: For each of the following statements ...

 I know I keep finding new topics instead of returning to the "how to measure happiness" topic. Such is the nature of my journaling mind - never in one spot very long. I have not forgotten the topic and I do intend to return to it eventually.  Today though - I'd like to explore another concept I learned from my Buddhist learnings with the Secular Buddhism  podcast. Specifically I'd like to explore this quote that the podcast mentioned:  "Whatever joy there is in the world arises from wishing others happiness. Whatever suffering there is in the world arises from wishing yourself happiness"    -Shantideva   Selflessness  What I took from the quote above, is that one way to obtain happiness is by trying to create it for others. This concept is not a new one for me - growing up in the Mormon church this sort of platitude is one that I was raised on. I stopped practicing Mormonism years ago, and I will admit that a part of me reacts to this idea o...

 Ok so I know I'm supposed to get back to the "measuring happiness" topic sooner rather than later but... this podcast I mentioned in my last post just has such good content related to happiness and it gets my wheels turning. So today I'm going to kick the measuring happiness can down the road again, and instead talk about what the podcast calls the "two arrows". If your interested in the podcast it's called "Secular Buddhism" and you can find info on it here: https://secularbuddhism.com/. The Two Arrows The two arrows are described in the podcast as metaphors for suffering. Anytime we experience suffering we will consider it an arrow to our happiness. The first arrow is the suffering that results from a fact of life - something that is outside of our control. The second arrow is the potential suffering that can result from our response to that fact of life - this arrow is completely within our control.  To give an example: several months ago I...