Dr. Steven Reiss survived a liver transplant before he decided to look at what gave him happiness. Although happiness is often based on pain or pleasure, he found after a survey of 6,000 people that the main basis of happiness is more based on 16 keys to happiness. The survey was conducted by him and his graduate students.
The main difference the survey revealed is that pleasure-based happiness is very short-lived. Instead he determined that long-lasting happiness is based on what gives our lives meaning and helps our lives have a greater meaning.
He created 16 basic desires that he called “value-based” give us happiness. He also realized that the more value-based desire that we satisfy, the more value-based happiness we experience. The fulfilling of these desires is what gives our lives direction and purpose.
Abraham Maslow in his Hierarchy of Needs proposed in 1943 that as we progressively satisfy our basic needs, we will progress to “higher” needs. Wikipedia lists Maslow’s needs as deficiency needs (physiological, safety, love/belonging, and status (esteem) and being needs (self-actualization and self-transcendence).
When I started my main blog (kathyberman.com), I felt driven to write 10-12 hours a day for most of time. I clearly recognized that I was satisfying the need I had to share all I had learned in this 30-year spiritual journey called recovery. The good feelings I get from the writing are a byproduct of my releasing all I know so that I can acquire new knowledge.
The 16 keys to happiness in Dr. Reiss’s book, Who Am I: The 16 Basic Desires That Motivate Our Happiness and Define Our Personalities are: curiosity, acceptance, order, physical activity, honor, power, independence, social contact, family, status, idealism, vengeance, romance, eating, saving, tranquility, and illustrations.
