Happiness is a sense of satisfaction. It is people's satisfaction with the achievements they have made. Psychologists believe that happiness includes four dimensions: devotion, meaning, satisfaction and happiness. Here, if you devote yourself to a meaningful thing and get an ideal result, you will feel happy, and the satisfaction is produced after comparing with people like yourself. "Less than the last one, more than the next one" People often say that "contentment is always happy", and this kind of "happiness" is happiness.
A while ago, I watched a wild adventure film "Into the Wild", which tells that explorers will feel very comfortable and enjoy the life of soaking leaves as coffee every time they go to a place and solve their own survival crisis (eating and drinking) under extreme conditions. This is a kind of happiness. From this perspective, happiness can be produced anytime and anywhere.
If we take Maslow's "hierarchy of needs" as a reference, even in extremely difficult situations, we will have a temporary sense of happiness, just like the explorer's feeling in Going to the Wild mentioned above. The seeker's physical needs are not really solved once and for all, but he can have a moment of happiness for a short period of time.
The same is true for the satisfaction of security requirements. No one lives in a safe, and there is no absolute safety. For example, during the intermission of war, soldiers will also have a moment of relaxation and pleasure.
Social needs are the social needs of people. If a person can keep good contact with people around him, exchange information normally and get their friendship and support, he can also be relatively satisfied.
Respecting needs is the advanced demand of human beings. Man is a very social animal. In the interaction with people, a person can get the recognition and respect of the people around him, and also have a sense of value in his heart, which is also a sense of happiness.
The need for self-realization is the highest spiritual need of human beings. Its realization shows that people's value has been best reflected. When a person is in a state of self-realization, all his life needs will be in a state of satisfaction, which should be the most productive period of happiness.
Physiological needs and safety needs are closely related to material conditions, and their absence affects the generation of people's happiness. But this is also relative. Some people are rich in material conditions, but they can't feel happiness; Some people are relatively poor in material things, but full of happiness. This is the truth of "crying in a BMW and laughing in a bicycle".
Social needs and respect needs are people's psychological needs, and their satisfaction is closely related to happiness. It shows people's status and degree of respect in society. But it is also relative. If you can't really understand the meaning of respect, you will mistakenly think that status is the root of respect, fall into the pursuit of status by hook or by crook, and forget that "personality" is the basis of respect.
The need for self-realization is the highest period of human value and should be happy and lasting. But some people suffered from "depression" and committed suicide. Many celebrities, such as Leslie Cheung, a Hong Kong movie star, committed suicide.
In this way, happiness has no standard. At all stages of life, people's needs at any level will produce happiness. But this is not inevitable. The key lies in people's thinking and their understanding of the relationship between their own needs and satisfaction. No matter where a person is, as long as he treats himself and the environment correctly, chooses the most meaningful lifestyle, tries his best and makes contributions, he can find the meaning and value of life, which is happiness.