Happiness fact 43: 85% of best trips were in locations abroad

Go far & away. Monograms' Road to Happiness Study with Shawn Achor revealed that 85 percent (85%) of travelers' best trips over the past five years were in locations outside their home country.

This new research mirrors a recent Twitter study that showed that the happiness levels of tweets increased the farther the post was geo-tagged from home.

Source: Shawn Achor, Monograms' Road to Happiness Study (2014)

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Happiness fact 42: eudaimonia: what is that?

Eudaimonia, sometimes anglicized as eudaemonia, is a Greek word commonly translated as happiness or welfare; however, "human flourishing" has been proposed as a more accurate translation.

Etymologically, it consists of the words "eu" ("good") and "daimōn" ("spirit").
In Aristotle's works (384 BCE), eudaimonia was used as the term for the highest human good, and so it is the aim of practical philosophy, including ethics and political philosophy, to consider what it really is, and how it can be achieved.

It is the spirit of goodness or the good that we seek for its own sake and not for the purpose of achieving any other good.

What about you? Did the "Spirit of the Good" visit you today???

Source: Aristotle (384)

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Happiness fact 41: hedonism = what we learn from ancient Greece about happiness

Years ago, a little argument developed among a bunch of free Greek men with too much time on their hands and too many neurons for their own good. They were trying to create a definitive description of the Good Life.
Their argument stretched across several decades, and many luminaries joined in; Gorgias, Aristotle, Aristippus, Epicurus, Epictetus, Plato, etc.

• Homer represents the hedonic argument, famously defended by Aristippus. Hedonic happiness is getting what feels good and avoiding what feels bad.
• Meredith represents the eudaimonic argument, famously defended by Heart Boy himself, Aristotle. Eudaimonic happiness is working to develop your virtues to their greatest capacity.

Psychologists are working to resolve the question of whether these are different kinds ofhappiness, different routes of happiness, different sides of the same happiness coin, or two names for the same thing, like puma and cougar. For most people, the best life is one that combines the two. Most of us want to feel good, few of us like pain, and most of us would like to be good people and fulfill our potential in the time we have.

Source: Seeking a life that matters. by Michael F. Steger, Ph.D. (2009)

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Happiness fact 40: 60% of employees rate their job as "not very meaningful"

 Source: 1,600 respondents, Authentic-Happiness.com survey

Now, this is feedback, to corporations, to leaders, to direct supervisors and to our "beloved" Human Resource department.

With a more volatile, younger generation entering the job market, the challenge of defining meaningful job assignments will be even more acute and critical to building an experienced loyal workforce.

At the same time, only 27% believe that they spend enough time rate doing what they are passionate about:

• What if we could ignite some new passions and reconnect those with our daily work?
• What if learning and leadership was so engaging that employees would become over time true passionate experts in their field of work: this sounds like Utopia Inc. !

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