Happiness

Happiness and the pursuit of happiness is what motivates everyone's choices throughout their life, so why are so many people unhappy? Well, most of us don't stop and think about what makes us really happy. In many ways we are all too busy doing the things we think will make us happy, rather than appreciating that happiness is how we are feeling now. The scientific study of happiness, and all the bits that come together to make us happy is revealing how the wonderful complexity of our minds works, and how the pieces fit together to make us happy, healthy and successful individuals.

Happiness gives us the energy which is the basis of health. - Henri-Frédéric Amiel

This section started off being called 'Mental Health', but this sounded far too medical, and these words have come to stand for the established psychological model where people who's mental health is poor are looked on as ill, and the medical establishment tries to bring them back to 'normal'.

So we tried 'Positive Mental Health', because we believe that the 'normal' place that the mental health model tries to bring us back to isn't where we want to be, because we want to experience positive mental health, and aim to be above 'normal'. (Just as we want to be above 'normal' in health and success as well).

'Your Mind' was too broad because we only want to cover the areas where your mind affects your health, your success and contributes positively towards your life.

In the end 'Happiness' was the only word that really said it all, because this is the ultimate goal of a healthy mind, and if you aim for happiness, then this covers all the other areas we want to include in this section.

The Happiness Project: Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun Gretchen Ruben's wondeful book about bringing happiness into her life Book from Amazon UK.