Ricky TomlinsonAn English actor best known for his roles in Brookside and The Royle Family. was singing in the bath. "Happiness, happiness, the greatest thing that I possess," he warbled. "I thank the Lord that I possess more than my share of happiness!" It was April 2020 and the world was reeling from the new pandemic, but some people were determined to accentuate the positiveEmphasise the good side of a situation rather than the bad side. and thank the NHSThe National Health Service, the publicly funded healthcare system in the UK. The NHS was founded in 1948.. Making a video of a classic song was their answer.

At the same time, The Atlantic¹ asked a professor from Harvard Business School to become its happiness correspondent. Arthur Brooks has since written 100 columns on the subject. Now he has boiled them down to produce three maxims Short statements of general truths..

The first is: "Mother Nature does not care if you are happy." It is a big mistake, Brooks argues, to think we can find happiness by pursuing things we are instinctively attracted to - money, pleasure, power and admiration. Thomas AquinasOne of the most important medieval thinkers. The Italian priest called Aristotle "the Philosopher" and worked to unite pagan Greek philosophy with Christian principles. called them "substitutes for God".

Instead, we should focus on things that really matter: family relationships, friendship, meaningful work and religious faith or a philosophy of life.

Secondly, "lasting happiness comes from habits, not hacks." Modern culture emphasises taking shortcuts to achieve the things we want. But real happiness is a combination of enjoyment, satisfaction and purpose. To achieve it requires effort: "daily practices to strengthen your relationships, deepen your wisdom, and uncover meaning in your life."  

The third maxim is "happiness is love". The most important thing in life is to build stable, enduring, loving relationships. Brooks quotes Thomas Aquinas again, saying that to love is "to will the good of the other". That means caring not just for friends and family but for the people you meet and work with.

To put it another way: "Happy people love people and use things; unhappy people use people and love things."

Brooks admits that sticking to these maxims is not easy. The best way, he says, is to share them with others - which creates more happiness.

But another journalist, Lowri Dowthwaite, is not convinced that there are rules about happiness that apply to everyone. Writing in The Conversation², she argues that many of the routes we are offered to it today do not work - and that striving for happiness often makes people unhappy.

Dowthwaite agrees with Brooks that "happiness is not simply about a hedonisticHedonism was pioneered by Democritus (c 460 BC - 37BC), who argued that "joy and sorrow are the distinguishing marks of things that are beneficial and things that are harmful". pursuit of pleasure, but a meaningful engagement with life". But she believes that people are happy in different ways. Those with outgoing personalities are more likely to find happiness through a hedonistic approach; for those who are introverted, having a meaningful purpose is more important.

She also believes that our approach to happiness changes as we grow older. It depends less on what other people think of us, and more on worthwhile activities that we choose for ourselves.

The key to happiness, she suggests, "is truly getting to know yourself and having the guts to do what makes your life worth living at a certain point - regardless of what others say".

Yes: We all know from experience that some things make us happy, while others make us unhappy. We recognise that some of them only bring us short-term pleasure, not lasting happiness.    

No: Happiness depends above all on your personality, and all of us are different. A cheerful person will make the best of difficult circumstances, while a gloomy one will never be satisfied.

Or... We cannot be sure of achieving happiness, but we know how to go about creating it - by showing love to other people. The more we do that, the more likely we are to receive it in return.