happiness on Activities

We long to see our lives whole, to know that they matter. We wonder whether our many activities might ever come together in a way of life that is good for ourselves and others. Lacking a vision of a l...

What Determines Happiness?  Imagine a movie theater full of a hundred people. These hundred individuals represent the full continuum of happiness: Some are exceptionally happy, others less so, and ...

In an article for The Atlantic, social scientist Jean Twenge shares the results of a study on the activities of American teenagers and their impact on happiness. Some of these activities included scre...

The oft-used front door to happiness is the one described by the advertising companies: acquire, retire, and aspire to drive faster, dress trendier, and drink more. Happiness depends on what you hang ...

Rules for Happiness: something to do, someone to love, something to hope for.

We are constituted so that simple acts of kindness, such as giving to charity or expressing gratitude, have a positive effect on our long-term moods. The key to the happy life, it seems, is the good l...

Happiness is essentially a state of going somewhere, wholeheartedly, one-directionally, without reservation or regret.

Go, as God’s people of joy, carrying in your hearts the good news that our God delights to seek and save all who are lost. May you know how deeply Christ values each and every person who you encounter...

Research by Gallup shows that the more hours per day you spend doing what you’re good at, the less stressed you feel and the more you laugh, smile, and feel you’re being treated with respect. Eric Ba...

Father God, you come to us in the everyday. You give us your Word and your Spirit that we might hear your voice, and follow your ways. We confess that we have neglected your words to us and pretended ...

[T]hose persons who are on the leading edge of evolution realize . . . that the greatest happiness in life comes, not from the comforts and pleasures that money can buy, but from the investment of the...

It is a mark of the essential morality of fairyland (a thing too commonly overlooked) that happiness, like happiness anywhere else, involves an object and even a challenge; we can only admire scenery ...

Your well-being is more dramatically affected by the people you see every day, people who live within a few blocks of your house, people who live within a few miles, than it is by distant connections.

There is a constant mental pilgrimage towards that Mecca of the human heart—happiness. . . . Everybody wants to be happy, and thinks, strives, wishes, and lives to that end.

There was a period when I believed stuff meant something. I thought that if you had matching side chairs and a sofa that harmonized and some beautiful lamps to light them you would have a home, that e...

I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.

One day an ad from one of my favorite stores showed up in my email inbox. Splashed across the top in big letters was the phrase “JOY MAKERS.” Of course, the ad was pointing shoppers to deals on toys, ...

Jesus promised his disciples three things—that they would be completely fearless, absurdly happy, and in constant trouble.

What do you think would make you happier? Take a moment to consider. Might it be . . . A relationship? More flexibility at work? A new job that better provides for you and your family? An extra bedroo...

The first thing the group of American church leaders noticed about the Central Asian pastor they were meeting was his smile. It was huge. It was so big that anyone who looked at it had to smile too!...

We cannot be happy if we expect to live all the time at the highest peak of intensity. Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go

While it might seem obvious in retrospect, one of the latest discoveries in the psychology of happiness has to do with gratitude. Multiple studies have shown a positive correlation between gratitude a...

The most essential and active desire in human nature is to happiness. . . . There is nothing more uniform and inviolable than the natural inclination to happiness.

There’s a cartoon that makes a profound statement about happiness. The first panel shows happy schoolchildren entering a street-level subway station—laughing, playing, tossing their hats in the air. T...

Ancient lens What’s the historical context? Wisdom Song It is not too far a stretch to imagine an eager young person sitting at the feet of a well-seasoned elder and receiving the words of thi...

In a commencement speech at Rice University around the turn of the century (the 21st century to be precise) the author Kurt Vonnegut shared some of the wisdom of his life. He went on to share a story ...

Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.

Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.

"A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered…What it will be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days till then-that is the real meeting. The other is only...