happiness

A lot has been said and written about the “good life”, and with some 7.3 billion people on this planet, there are quite possibly as many opinions on what it constitutes. If I have learnt one thing in 36 years, it is the fact that “good” is a very subjective word.
Everyone has a different definition of the word “good”, especially in the context of life, depending on many factors such as where and how we live. One way of examining a different view is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Applying his idea, it can be assumed that as we move through and up the pyramid of needs to reach self-actualization, our idea of the “good life” changes.

For instance, people whose needs for security aren’t met may visualize the “good life” to be a secure environment with meaningful social bonds. However, there are many other factors which play a role.

One of the concepts studied in positive psychology which may explain our different views is the one of values. It can be argued that your values are one of the drivers of what you perceive to be the good life.

Values such as power, security, tradition, or benevolence are a collection of principles that guide our selection or evaluation of actions, events, and people and what we “deem to be correct and desirable in life” (Schwartz, 1992). Again, if security is one of your core values, rather than the freedom to travel to exotic countries, a secure job may be your idea of the good life.

In a study across different countries, Inglehart & Klingemann (2000) found that the kind of values people hold is unrelated to their reported happiness, but the value difference is reflected in what they say is most important in determining their happiness.

So values may, to a certain extent, codetermine what we consider the good life. But once we have the secure job we believe is desirable, do we actually consider ourselves leading the “good life”?