Happiness

[QUOTE=ExplodingSun56;5811207]Isn't this just nature vs nature? I want to say both. My psychology teacher back when I went school says it's both and people have been debating this for a long time. But it's both. Your brain can't even perceive anything without your senses and your senses sense things from your environment. So if you want people to understand love and sympathy or anything else then you have to teach them that. You have to teach people how to be social with other people. If you want people to work together they have to be understanding towards each other and they have to learn to compromise. To learn to compromise with other people it's good to think that happiness comes from outside not just inside because my hapiness comes from your hapiness. When your happy I'm happy and when I'm happy your happy. But all I hear these days is that it's all about within. I don't know I just always believed people should care about other people and I think they should. I should be allowed to tell some one to stop doing something if it's making me angry or sad or if it's causing me anxiety cause if I don't then people will just start complaining that your not standing up for yourself to other people. But then when you do stand up to people then they just say oh quit blaming other people for how you feel. No one should have to be blamed for everything. Relationships should be 50/50 or at least close to it. So happiness coming from within vs outside should be 50/50.

I answered the question

I think it's partially both. I believe there was a study about life satisfaction years ago that showed that after your basic needs are met, there is a law of diminishing returns that kicks in at a certain level. Like your first Porsche might thrill you and make you happy and the tenth might not be quite as thrilling. It doesn't solely depend on the outside or there wouldn't be such miserable rich folks. True, you could say they are miserable in better surroundings but I don't think that was the question.

Nelson Mandela and Viktor Frankl are two great men who made it through ******* circumstances with positive attitudes under deplorable conditions. Their strength, resilience and happiness and peace came from within.