Is There A Recipe For Happiness? Eduard Punset And Rojas Marcos Respond
Eduard Punset and Luis Rojas Marcos have been researching for years the elements that give meaning to happiness. A few months ago, the newspaper “El Mundo” presented a compilation of interviews with different professionals who spoke about their “recipes for happiness” and among which the reflections of these two authors stood out.
This week, the Institute of Psychological and Psychiatric Assistance Mensalus tells us about the recipes of Eduard Punset and Luis Rojas Marcos with the aim of extracting practical guidelines for the entire public.
What is the recipe for happiness according to these authors?
If you want to be happy, according to Eduard Punset:
According to Luis Rojas Marcos, if you want to be happy:
Being happy: a chimera?
“Satisfaction with life” is a term that Rojas Marcos usually uses to describe happiness. What meaning can we extract from it?
Talking about satisfaction with life to refer to happiness is a great success. According to this psychiatrist, satisfaction is part of our self-preservation instinct. Unconsciously, memory helps us relativize because we are programmed to feel good and remember the good.
This primitive system focuses special attention on what makes us personally. Furthermore, it is very comforting to know that we can train it through the exercise of positive thinking and the recognition of achievements, skills and personal resources, among others. Satisfaction with life, in part, depends on us and our attitude. It is in our power to enhance those elements that make it possible.
How to do it will be another objective. Now, positioning ourselves in action instead of contemplation, without a doubt, from the outset offers us the reins of our own life and, with them, the privilege of feeling and enjoying it.
How can we put the recipes of the two authors into practice?
Both recipes summarize headlines that are useful for everyone and can be extrapolated to any context, which is why they become life “mottos” rather than concrete instructions on what to do to achieve happiness. Thus, these recipes can guide us to create our own recipe since there will hardly be a “magic recipe” that gives us the key to happiness.
To be more precise, if we take Eduard Punset’s recipe as an example, we see that the first point is “don’t look back”. This phrase can be translated as “focus on the here and now, do not get caught up in messages from the past that are far from your current reality.”
Looking back is helpful when we extract meaning and learning that offers us useful information in the present. When looking at the past becomes an emotional burden, that is when the wings of our freedom and happiness are cut. An example of constructive reflection on the past would be the following:
These questions exemplify how we can focus on the needs of the present instead of generating ruminative thoughts about the past.
On the other hand, the recipes presented highlight the responsibility of the individual as an engine of change. Responsibility is a “star ingredient” that takes shape when we answer: “what can I do?” (This is when the recipe becomes a practical guideline).
The “everything” is hardly true. Now, attitude will determine the vision we have of the world around us. For Rojas Marcos, talking about exact percentages is somewhat risky but, leaving the data aside, we can affirm that our ability to be happy depends, to a large extent, on our posture towards life. The vision we have of ourselves and others will determine the quality of our relationships. Likewise, the quality of our relationships will determine our “degree” of happiness.
There are many personal skills that play a role in this regard. Specifically, the capacity for emotional expression is a capacity that strengthens ties and allows established communication to enjoy a deeper component.
And what impact has emotional expression had on happiness throughout history?
Happiness is related to the ability to give and receive and, as we said, emotional expression connects people on a deeper level.
In this case, Eduard Punset points out the importance that the expression of feelings has had on emotional well-being and happiness, something that today occupies an important place in education (the famous Emotional Intelligence) but that, some time ago, It was considered a “hinder” and even a limitation of one’s own strengths (“crying is for the weak” or “expressing emotions is useless”).
Thus, happiness is linked to this capacity for emotional expression, a capacity that allows the person to give their feelings a name and surname, share them and, thanks to this, create bonds. Eduard Punset also relates emotional expression and new technologies. This scientist presents the technological advances of the 21st century as a tool that facilitates human relationships at a new level.
That being said, how can we understand this new tool?
Without a doubt, technology has opened a new communication window. Perhaps the smartest thing is to know how to use the different channels that are available to us depending on the moment and the context in which we find ourselves, so that our needs are covered and we find a personal and collective balance.
In short, happiness is that state of satisfaction in which we actively participate in the present, learning from the past and looking toward the future, living each of the experiences that our relationship with ourselves and with others gives us. others. Finding an exact recipe is complicated, but today we have been able to see some common points that, adapted to who we are, position us in an active role to be happy.
