For many years my beliefs about happiness overfocused on the type of happiness that was energetic, expressive and actively joyous. While happiness can be defined using those terms, recently I have been exploring a subtle and almost unexpressed form of happiness. I call this form of happiness serene happiness.

Serene happiness is about contentment, enjoyment and appreciation. The only outward expression of this type of happiness may be a closed mouth smile, and sometimes not even that. The state is defined not by outward expressions, but by a state a mind. A state of mind where focus and attention is brought to positive thoughts about something in particular. It is serene happiness.

This serene happiness is akin to the happiness obtained by people who meditate. I want to draw a bright line between 1) a neutral state of mind and 2) a serene positive state of mind. While the two states share many similarities, I want to create a distinction between a neutral state and a serene happiness state of mind.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 3:48 pm and is filed under Happiness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.