HAPPINESS, WELL-BEING AND NEURO-SEMANTICS

I have engaged in a group that is working collaboratively towards finding and creating better alternatives in building and developing our country; a more just, balanced, healthy, educated, technological, and productive society. A society that can offer sufficient and better jobs, increased income, wealth, education, health, food, and development for its people. In my group we are working on “happiness and well-being,” not only as a social and personal target, but in the sense of having tangible metrics and benchmarks that could typically identify and describe happiness as a commonly understood state, the various components that can contribute to it, and what kind of efforts can be done.

These are some typical definitions: “Happiness is an emotional state characterized by feelings of joy, satisfaction, contentment, and fulfillment”. Frequently is described “involving positive emotions and life satisfaction”. Some other authors define it as: “Feeling or showing pleasure or contentment”, “Subjective well-being”, "It’s a more comprehensive sense of purpose and feeling of contributing to something greater than yourself”. Sound familiar?