The root of happiness, what we humans consider happiness, is founded in the teachings of two great philosophers, Epicurus and Aristotle.

Transcript:

Welcome to Everyday Happiness where we create lasting happiness, in 2 minutes a day,  through my signature method of Intentional Margins® (creating harmony between your to-dos and your priorities), happiness science, and musings about life. 

I'm your host Katie Jefcoat and I was taking a course on happiness and the instructor, from The Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark was lecturing on this idea that we’ve always been talking about happiness, in some form or another and in fact 2,000 years ago two great philosophers had two different approaches to happiness.  Both of which we see in todays world.  In the next show, we’ll talk about these two different philosophies and perhaps you will be able to see if you lean more toward one or the other.  

2,000 years ago, and for most of the time we humans have been alive, we have been trying to just stay alive.  This goes back to the caveman days and this feeling of fight or flight.  Someone had to keep guard in the night to watch for lions for fear of being eaten in our sleep.   

Now, today, we don’t worry if we’ll be eaten by a lion in our sleep, but that DNA has been passed down to us.  

The great majority of the population was trying to stay alive, except for a select few of humans who were very rich, and didn’t have the daily struggle of trying not to die, either because of safety, food or other basic needs. 

And then, more recently, we had the industrial revolution.  Ordinary people started to feel like their daily needs were met.  They were not scared of dying of hunger or safety.  And yet, they were still not as happy as they thought they should be. 

And we come to the present time, with excess in parts of the world and basic needs are a given in most of the world and yet, as a human population we are still asking ourselves:  Are we happy? Is this it? 

So our present selves look back to the teachings 2,000 years ago by two great philosophers: Epicurus and Aristotle.  Tomorrow, we’ll discuss their differences and how we come to what we think of happiness in today's world. 

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