Carl Jung's five factors of happiness
A quick disclaimer: Carl Jung has become popular with some right-wing commentators. Please don't take this blog post as evidence that I have any affinity whatsoever for those commentators. It's sad that so much has become political these days, but I don't believe in guilt by association, and long before anyone had heard of Jordan Peterson, my dad, a psychologist, was telling me about Jung.
With that out of the way, I recently stumbled across Jung's five factors of happiness, and I find it to be very interesting. This isn't the first set of guidelines I've come across in my life, the first list of ten rules or eight practices one should follow to find fulfillment, but I find it to be a bit more modern and understandable than some of those.
His five factors of happiness are:
- Good physical and mental health
- Good personal and intimate relationships, such as those of marriage, the family, and friendships
- The faculty for perceiving beauty in art and nature
- Reasonable standards of living and satisfactory work
- A philosophic or religious point of view capable of coping successfully with the vicissitudes of life
I would point out that this list may not be complete. A murderer or spoiled child might check all of these boxes, but would they be happy? I don't think so. Perhaps that's why we need multiple perspectives, after all.