Good news about happiness and purpose

Research shows that doing good deeds, makes us feel happy.

I am a Humanist educator. I teach people how and why to be moral and why being moral will help lead to happiness.  This is philosophy. Humanist philosophy.  But it turns out that this approach is backed up by – science.

YourMorals – is a empirically based blog about morality.  They publish and comment on research into morality. They recently published a wonderful article about every day moral life – see (http://www.yourmorals.org/blog/2014/09/some-good-news-about-everyday-moral-life/)

This article is about a study of 1,252 participants who were asked 5 times a day if they had experienced any moral or immoral acts and how they felt.

Their main findings?

Participants reported committing and receiving more moral than immoral acts but learned about twice as many immoral than moral acts. In other words, we definitely experience more good than bad, but we like to gossip about the bad.

They also found that most moral or immoral acts were about three dimensions: Honesty, Liberty/oppression, and Self Discipline.  The first two is how people interact with you – the third is how we ourselves decide to act.

Finally, it’s not surprising to find that “being treated morally increased one’s happiness and being treated immorally decreased it. What is more intriguing is that the greatest increase in a sense of purpose and meaning in life came after reports of having acted morally oneself.”

What can we take away from all this?  Well first, that I am right and you should read my books on Humanism.

2nd, that morality really is all about how we ourselves want to be treated.  And that the best way to ensure that others treat us well is to do and be good ourselves.

But most importantly, if you want to be happy, you have to have a purpose in life that involves being good and helping others.   Or as a Humanist would say – life a life of ethical fulfillment that aspires to the greater good of humanity!

Or to quote the article: “our moment-to-moment happiness depends on (how we are treated by) others, our larger sense of purpose in life is our own doing.” Be good my friends.

Real Life and Minecraft

Humanist philosophy of life when considering how Minecraft is like real life?

My son is addicted to Minecraft. One day he asked me what would it be like if Minecraft were real. So we went to YouTube to find a video on real life and Minecraft.  This is what we found.

And it’s really profound.  Minecraft has no story – no purpose – just like real life.  You can do anything you want. The purpose of what you are trying to accomplish in Minecraft is whatever you decide to do.  My son uses it to build replicas of famous monuments and forts and farms and trading posts and temples and libraries. Right now he is obsessed with Alexandria so he’s working on a lighthouse and a library and some underwater structures.

Does any of this matter in real life? No. When he logs off or deletes his account, it will all be gone.  Just like in real life.  Whatever we do will have no effect on the ultimate outcome.  Except, what we do does impact the people we are playing this game of life with.

To paraphrase Nullitron - Life is a sandbox game. You can do whatever you want and eventually, you will die or quit the game.  While you are there, enjoy it. Don’t worry about the time when you won’t be playing it anymore. And remember, while you might not be playing it anymore, countless others will, after you are gone. So try to make it a game where everyone can have fun.

The Power of Why

Why asking yourself these 3 questions will help you find meaning and purpose in your life. 

Emotive Brands had a blog post about 7 reasons why it’s time to transform your business through meaning. http://www.emotivebrand.com/2012/11/08/7-reasons-why-its-probably-time-to-transform-your-business-through-meaning/

I liked the post. I’m a big fan of being purpose and meaning driven. Having a purpose and meaning gives us a reason to get up in the morning. A reason to do the things we do.

The problem is that not just any reason will do. The best reasons are driven by deep emotions and motivations.  How do you find out what truly motivates you?  By asking yourself questions. We Humanists call this process of asking ourselves deep questions, critical thinking or alternately “freethought.”  The best question to start with is “why.”

This is why this post is titled the power of why.  If you want to know what is really driving you, you need to ask yourself 3 “why” questions.

For instance, if you are looking for meaning in your business.

• Why did you choose this business?
• Why is that needed?
• Why will this help people?

You can obviously use this for personal motivation as well.  When you have drilled down to the why this will help people question that is usually where your deep meaning resides.

As much as we might be motivated to be in business to make money so that we can eat and have things like shelter and transportation, it turns out that this is not a very good motivator.

What really motivates us to get up in the morning to work is to change the world and make it better. So instead of answering these why questions selfishly, focus on how what you do helps others. Once you understand how important your work is to others and how you impact others, your work becomes a calling and a mission. And that’s something that is truly motivating.