Happiness Resources
If you are interested in exploring happiness through multiple sources then this is the space for you. We have collected information from different sources available on the web and got them at one place for you to explore. The idea is to help you explore these elements so that you become curious about happiness and become a lifelong learner (Do remember, we have just got this stuff for your consumption & we don’t have any relation with the data/people presented here)
Philosophers
Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Lyceum, the Peripatetic school of philosophy, and the Aristotelian tradition. Aristotle’s concept of happiness consists of achieving, through the course of a whole lifetime, all the goods — health, wealth, knowledge, friends, etc. — that lead to the perfection of human nature and the enrichment of human life. This requires us to make choices, some of which may be very difficult.
Epicurus
Epicurus
Epicurus was an ancient Greek philosopher and sage who founded Epicureanism, a highly influential school of philosophy. He regarded the unacknowledged fear of death and punishment as the primary cause of anxiety among human beings, and anxiety in turn as the source of extreme and irrational desires. The elimination of the fears and corresponding desires would leave people free to pursue the pleasures, both physical and mental, to which they are naturally drawn, and to enjoy the peace of mind that is consequent upon their regularly expected and achieved satisfaction.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
Jose Ortega y Gasset
Through his book, Man and people, Ortega y Gasset explains the differences between biological life and biographical existence. While the former is obvious, the latter signifies an existential category that lies outside the realm of science. We do not experience the interior reality of our lives by being convinced by abstractions but through the essence of personhood. This is one reason why we can say that joy and happiness are interrelated modes of being.
Nietzsche
Nietzsche
Nietzsche was a German philosopher, essayist, and cultural critic. His writings on truth, morality, language, aesthetics, cultural theory, history, nihilism, power, consciousness, and the meaning of existence have exerted an enormous influence on Western philosophy and intellectual history. In his work, The Antichrist, he defines the idea of Happiness as-‘What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome.’
Buddha
Buddha
“Buddha means- one who is awake.” The Buddha who lived 2,600 years ago was not a god. He was an ordinary person, named Siddhartha Gautama, whose profound insights inspired the world. Buddhism pursues happiness by using knowledge and practice to achieve mental equanimity. In Buddhism, equanimity, or peace of mind, is achieved by detaching oneself from the cycle of craving that produces dukkha.
Socrates
Socrates
Socrates was a Greek philosopher from Athens who is credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, and as being the first moral philosopher of the Western ethical tradition of thought. Socrates believed that only people with self-knowledge could find true happiness. Happiness flows not from physical or external conditions, such as bodily pleasures or wealth and power, but from living a life that’s right for your soul, your deepest good.
Al-ghazali
Al-ghazali
Al-Ghazâlî (c.1056–1111) was one of the most prominent and influential philosophers, theologians, jurists, and mystics of Sunni Islam. In his work, the Alchemy of Happiness, al-Ghazali explains that “He who knows himself is truly happy.” Self-knowledge consists in realizing that we have a spirit that is perfect, but which has been covered with dust by the accumulation of passions derived from the body and its animal nature.
Confucius
Confucius
Confucius was an influential Chinese philosopher – who taught a philosophy of correct behaviour, social interaction and kindness towards others. During his lifetime, he sought to educate his fellow citizens on principles of justice, service and personal integrity. After his death, his precepts and philosophy became the cornerstone of Chinese culture and philosophy – widely known as Confucianism.
Happiness consists primarily not in pleasure, but in ethical pleasure; the good life is not a life in which all or most of one’s desires are fulfilled, but a life in which the satisfaction of prudential desires is subject to the constraint of ethical desire; the source of the greatest happiness lies not in the attainment of the greatest political power, but rather in the cognizance of one’s moral innocence.
John Locke
John Locke
The father of liberalism and one of the most influential Enlightenment thinkers, Locke distinguishes the happiness that is acquired as a result of the satisfaction of any particular desire and the true happiness that is the result of the satisfaction of a particular kind of desire. The pursuit of true happiness is equated with “the highest perfection of intellectual nature”, and Locke takes our pursuit of this true happiness to be the thing to which the vast majority of our efforts should be oriented.
Marie Jahoda
Marie Jahoda
Marie Jahoda was an Austrian-British social psychologist. She suggested that 6 criteria needed to be fulfilled for ideal mental health (normality). The six criteria were a positive attitude towards the self, self-actualisation, autonomy, resistance to stress, environmental mastery and an accurate perception of reality.
Mencius
Mencius
Mencius was a Confucian disciple who made major contributions to the humanism of Confucian thought. Mencius declared that man was by nature good. He postulated the idea that a ruler could not govern without the people’s tacit consent and that the penalty for unpopular, despotic rule was the loss of the “mandate of heaven”. Mencius was an idealist who emphasized justice and humanity; proposed the idea of popular rule, and is credited with articulating the famous “mandate of heaven” ideology.
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, Catholic priest, and Doctor of the Church. An immensely influential philosopher, theologian, and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism, he is also known within the latter as the Doctor Angelicus and the Doctor Communis.
William James
William James
Also known as the father of American Psychology, James is considered to be a leading thinker of the late nineteenth century, one of the most influential philosophers of the United States. EMAIL Happiness as explained by William James is reflected in the ratio of one’s accomplishments to one’s aspirations. This suggests, of course, that when it comes to feeling happy in our lives, we can choose one of two paths: continually add to our list of accomplishments or lower our expectations.
Zhuangzi
Zhuangzi
Zhuang Zhou, commonly known as Zhuangzi, was an influential Chinese philosopher who lived around the 4th century BC during the Warring States period, a period corresponding to the summit of Chinese philosophy, the Hundred Schools of Thought. Zhuangzi’s claim that “The perfect happiness is derived from the absence of happiness” designates two key arguments:
(1) Happiness cannot be designed and measured, and
(2) There is no single fixed notion of happiness and meaning-making
Leaders
Gretchen Rubin
Gretchen Rubin
– Gretchen Rubin
She is a five-time New York Times bestselling author, podcaster, and speaker, creator of the Four Tendencies framework, exploring happiness and good habits.
https://gretchenrubin.com/
Deepak Chopra
Deepak Chopra
– Deepak Chopra
He is an Indian-American author and alternative-medicine advocate. A prominent figure in the New Age movement, his books and videos have made him one of the best-known and wealthiest figures in alternative medicine.
https://www.deepakchopra.com/
Barbara Fredikscon
Barbara Fredikscon
– Barbara Fredikscon
She is an American professor in the department of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she is the Kenan Distinguished Professor of Psychology.
http://www.positivityratio.com/
Jay Shetty
Jay Shetty
– Jay Shetty
He is a British author, former monk, and purpose coach. As the host of the podcast On Purpose, his guests have included Alicia Keys, Khloe Kardashian, and Kobe Bryant, resulting in 64 million downloads.
https://jayshetty.me/
Jack Cornfield
Jack Cornfield
– Jack Cornfield
He is a bestselling American author and teacher in the vipassana movement in American Theravada Buddhism. He trained as a Buddhist monk in Thailand, Burma and India, first as a student of the Thai forest master Ajahn Chah and Mahasi Sayadaw of Burma.
https://jackkornfield.com/
Raj Raghunathan
Raj Raghunathan
– Raj Raghunathan
He earned his PhD from the Stern School of Business at New York University and is currently employed as a professor of marketing at the McCombs School of Business, the University of Texas at Austin.
https://www.happysmarts.com/