Happiness is a state of mind. Can we retain this state even in the case of sadness, depression, or a dire situation through training? What methods could one use in order to train the brain to retain the happy state?
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1$\begingroup$ Children. Children is what you need to look at. Personally, I've often pondered over this question. And the children around me appear as the perfect examples of the people who are persistently happy. Sure, they may be angry and cry sometimes, but they are never depressed or sad like us adults. A look into the psychology of children might be revealing on the issue. Besides, a lot many adults who behave like children also appear to be persistently happy. $\endgroup$– shivamsCommented Apr 14, 2015 at 18:22
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1$\begingroup$ Don Miguel Ruiz, the Toltec wisdom's propagator, use for this purposes few concepts from the Humanistic psychology. Whether You looking for training, see him The Four Agreements (look at the same Wiki page) publication. $\endgroup$– Spira's developersCommented Apr 20, 2015 at 16:38
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1$\begingroup$ @Spira'sdevelopers I have read his book. Is there a scientific basic for the four agreements? $\endgroup$– Alexander SuraphelCommented Sep 30, 2015 at 7:58
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$\begingroup$ Related: psychology.stackexchange.com/questions/23588/… $\endgroup$– micCommented Jul 26, 2019 at 2:15
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4 Answers
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I'm not sure about the trained part, but there have been cases where people have spontaneously shifted into a very enjoyable state of mind for a very long time, for example: Eckhart Tolle, who supposedly spent 2 years in utter bliss.
answered Jan 6, 2015 at 20:27
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$\begingroup$ Staying in Nirvana or bliss by spiritual enlightenment is considered a transformation beyond the body and science. My question is more pertaining to this constrained world and mind we have. Could bliss or Nirvana be scientifically explained? $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 7, 2015 at 7:10
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$\begingroup$ Did he become sad after 2 years? :) Just curious $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 7, 2015 at 7:15
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$\begingroup$ He published a bunch of books, sold like 5 million copies and became super rich :) $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 7, 2015 at 22:53
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$\begingroup$ Now we know what happy people do :). But I feel that enlightenment would not direct people towards money or materialistic aspect of the world. If they act so, it posses to be a cooked up story :) $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 8, 2015 at 5:15
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This is a big question, but here are a few thoughts.
While we could argue about the details, concepts around set points and the hedonic treadmill have reasonable empirical support. The general finding is that life satisfaction ratings are fairly stable from year to year (Lucas & Donnellan, 2007) which suggests that there are relatively stable individual differences in the tendency to be happy or sad and such individual differences are only weakly related to factors in the external environment (see this discussion of subjective well-being. There have also been studies that have looked at the effect of particularly negative (e.g., divorce, unemployment, disability) and particularly positive (e.g., winning the lottery) events (e.g., Lucas, 2007). Longitudinal research looking at these events tends to show a short term effect of the event on well-being followed by a fairly substantial recovery of well-being levels over time. That said, research is conflict about whether such recovery (or return to base line in the case of positive events) is complete, there are individual differences in the recovery, and the recovery may take several years.
It's also worth noting that when surveyed, most people tend to report being satisfied with their life and generally happy.
More generally, emotional experience and well-being can be viewed as a functional homeostatic process. This is related to the idea that emotions serve functional purposes (e.g., Keltner & Gross, 1999). Such theories and the empirical evidence suggest that sustained experience of extreme happiness would be very unusual and possibly maladaptive.
Of course, there is evidence for the effectiveness of drugs and psychotherapy in treating depression and related disorders, where arguably the capacity to adaptively use emotions has broken down. But this is more about restoring people to normal levels of emotional functioning.
While I can't deny the possibility that such mood enhancement training could exist, I would be highly sceptical of any programs that promised to offer you long term ecstasy.
References
- Lucas, R. E. (2007). Long-term disability is associated with lasting changes in subjective well-being: evidence from two nationally representative longitudinal studies. Journal of personality and social psychology, 92(4), 717.
- Lucas, R. E., & Donnellan, M. B. (2007). How stable is happiness? Using the STARTS model to estimate the stability of life satisfaction. Journal of Research in Personality, 41(5), 1091-1098.
- Keltner, D., & Gross, J. J. (1999). Functional accounts of emotions. Cognition & Emotion, 13(5), 467-480. http://www.personal.kent.edu/~dfresco/CBT_Readings/keltner_&_gross.pdf
answered Feb 18, 2015 at 6:44
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You could try meditation. Meditation practices have been shown to have an effect size similar or higher to antidepressants.
"During the course of 2to 6 months, the mindfulness meditation program ES estimates ranged from 0.22 to 0.38 for anxiety symptoms and 0.23 to 0.30 for depressive symptoms. These small effects are comparable with what would be expected from the use of an antidepressant in a primary care population but without the associated toxicities. In a study using patient-level meta-analysis, Fournier et al81 found that for patients with mild to moderate depressive symptoms, antidepressants had an ES of 0.11 (95% CI, −0.18 to 0.41), whereas for those with severe depression, antidepressants had an ES of 0.17 (−0.08 to 0.43) compared with placebo."
http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleID=1809754
"The richness of present-moment experience is the richness of life itself."
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I would say it is impossible.
Being unhappy is a necessary experience to make the feeling of happiness arise. Maybe there is some joyful state that can persist over time without unhappiness but I doubt it.
As I see it, unhappiness at times comes with the deal of living.
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$\begingroup$ wesserbisser, I think what OP means is increased baseline happiness not something that is permanent.. $\endgroup$ Commented Sep 30, 2015 at 7:57