the.com/happiness
a chemical bribe your brain pays to keep you alive and reproducing
means A state of feeling pleased, content, or joyful — the good mood you wish would stay longer than it does.
from From 'happy' plus the noun-forming suffix '-ness.' 'Happy' itself grew from the Middle English 'hap,' meaning luck or chance (the same root buried in 'happen,' 'hapless,' and 'perhaps'). So happiness was once literally a matter of good fortune — what befell you, not what you built. 'Hap' likely traces back to Old Norse 'happ,' meaning luck or good chance. The leap to an inner emotional state came later, as if we slowly decided contentment was something we could possess rather than merely stumble into.
- set point
- 50% of yours is genetically fixed at birth
- peak age
- life satisfaction bottoms out around age 47
- money cap
- buys more joy up to roughly 75k yearly
- contagion
- a happy friend boosts your odds 15%
- warm hands
- holding hot coffee makes people judge others kinder
costa rica — ranked #1 on world happiness report 2023 despite being middle-income country
denmark — consistently top 2-3 on world happiness report since 2012