The journal's description reads:
The peer-reviewed Journal of Happiness Studies is devoted to scientific understanding of subjective well-being. Coverage includes both cognitive evaluations of life such as life-satisfaction, and affective enjoyment of life, such as mood level. In addition to contributions on appraisal of life-as-a-whole, the journal accepts papers on such life domains as job-satisfaction, and such life-aspects as the perceived meaning of life.
The Journal of Happiness Studies provides a forum for two main traditions in happiness research: 1) speculative reflection on the good life, and 2) empirical investigation of subjective well-being. Contributions span a broad range of disciplines: alpha-sciences, philosophy in particular; beta-sciences, especially health related quality-of-life research; and gamma-sciences, including not only psychology and sociology but also economics.
The journal addresses the conceptualization, measurement, prevalence, explanation, evaluation, imagination and study of happiness.
In 2006, the Journal of Happiness Studies published an article entitled Is gratitude an alternative to materialism? The definitions of materialism include placing a "high value on the possession of wealth and material goods", and "personality traits such as envy, lack of generosity, and possessiveness". Gratitude, on the other hand, is based on two concepts: "(a) that one has obtained a positive outcome and (b) that an external agent is responsible for it". The paper's authors propose "that gratitude may have the potential to reduce materialistic strivings and consequently diminish the negative effects of materialistic strivings on psychological well-being." The whole article is very interesting, but it was the definitions that grabbed me on first reading.
It makes sense that if you are grateful, you must be grateful to someone or something. Gratefulness is something you send out from yourself; materialism - possessiveness - is about taking things in, so the direction of the emotion involved is the opposite. And this is where my personal interest lies.
I find that in times when I'm really down, I retreat inwards. I put up emotional barriers, I have difficulty interacting with the world, and when I do, it can be quite aggressively (which is really a defensive move). I sometimes don't see other people's pain, and I often quite consciously refuse to get involved even if I do, because I feel I can't use what few internal resources I possess to help someone else, when clearly (or so my thoughts go at the time) I need every resource and scrap of energy to help myself.
When I'm in what I like to think of as my 'normal', positive state, I turn outwards. I talk more, I instigate more social interaction, I notice what's happening around me and try to do what I can to help people who are going through difficulties. I listen, I'm available, I enjoy doing little things to help them through (and I don't expect anything in return).
For me, this is an important key, and perhaps I can put some thought into ways I can focus outwards when I recognise the downward spiral beginning.
On to today's list of things I am grateful for:
- the rain! We've been in drought for a long time, and while I doubt this is the end of it, when we do get some rain, it's a wonderful thing :)
- the opportunity to do something unexpected for a friend, who said it made her day :)
- private health insurance - which coughed up nearly half the cost of the CPAP machine, and will continue to pay part of the ongoing costs of replacing the attachments as needed :)
- children who, even when they've been moody and demanding fro most of the afternoon, go to sleep in fairly short order once the lights are out, giving us some quiet time in the evenings :)
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