It is difficult to give an unambiguous answer to the question of what a person needs to be happy. This is too individual, although researchers have repeatedly tried to identify the main factors that are important for most people. In their opinion, satisfying a person's needs brings him closer to a state of happiness.
Happiness as the satisfaction of one's needs
Happiness is a rather subjective concept. Often, a person feels unhappy while he lacks something that he really needs or that he considers necessary for himself. In the 40s of the 20th century, the American psychologist A. Maslow proposed to society a theory that was called "Maslow's Pyramid of Needs".
The pyramid includes the following seven levels of human needs in ascending order:
- physiological (sleep, nutrition, health, clothing, housing, sexual relations); - the need for security (protection, stability and comfort, a sense of confidence); - social (communication, belonging to a social group, joint activities, family, friends, love); - self-affirmation and recognition of others (success, career, prestige, self-respect, power); - cognition (search and receipt of new information, acquisition of various skills); - aesthetic (beauty, harmony, order); - self-actualization (self-expression and realization of one's abilities, self-development).
As Maslow said, people are usually motivated to move to the next level when the needs of the previous level are at least partially met. At the same time, a person can strive and work to achieve several goals at once, but the most urgent need of the basic level is always more important than higher matters. If you follow this logic, a person should be the happier the more fully his needs in different areas are satisfied.
Individual approach
Despite the rationality and consistency of all kinds of theories, human individuality plays an important role, therefore, different people have different needs expressed in different ways. For example, extreme lovers need little security. For a scientist, sometimes getting new information can be more important than social needs and comfort. For some, the desire for beauty prevails over the desire for self-affirmation. Someone is more self-sufficient, while someone needs a constant stay in the company of people. Someone sees the meaning of life in children, and someone is absorbed in their ideas. There are also people who live as hermits and are content with the minimum. Also, according to Maslow himself, the priority of certain needs depends on the person's age.
Obviously, everyone has different concepts of happiness and desires. But whether happiness depends on the satisfaction of desires is a moot point. After all, there are people who are in high spirits most of the time, and there are those who are almost always unhappy, regardless of the circumstances. Often a person thinks that having received something long-awaited, he will finally become happy, but in practice it turns out differently, because people's desires are endless, and when one goal is achieved, another comes. From this we can conclude that for happiness it is important to see the good in what is already in life, and to appreciate it, while striving for more. You need to be able to enjoy the moment. And you also need to know what you want, i.e. to distinguish their true desires from those imposed from the outside.
Physiology also affects the subjective feeling of being unhappy or happy. People suffering from endogenous depression have low levels of serotonin and endorphins, hormones of joy, so they are constantly in a depressed psychological state. Thus, good health and a balance of hormones, vitamins and minerals in the body can also be considered essential for happiness.
