Happiness, Pleasure and Enjoyment

When we talk about happiness, we all want to be happy, we aspire to achieve happiness as a state of mind, or the ability to feel good, or having pleasure, or enjoying things. But why is it so hard to achieve happiness? The problem is that we spend time having lots of pleasurable moments but not happiness in itself. There are many things that can give us pleasure, but one of the can make us happy.

Pleasure is essentially a feeling of contentment that one achieves whenever information in
consciousness says that expectations set by biological programs or by social conditioning have
been met. It improves the quality of life by helping to maintain order but it cannot create new order
in consciousness. Pleasure does not produce psychological growth.

Enjoyment results when a person has not only met some prior expectation but also gone beyond
what he or she has been programmed to do and achieved something unexpected. It is characterized by a sense of novelty or accomplishment:

1. Tasks with a reasonable chance of completion
2. Clear goals
3. Immediate feedback
4. Deep but effortless involvement that removes from awareness the frustrations and
   worries of everyday life.
5. Sense of control over our actions
6. No concern for the self
7. Alteration of the concept of time, hours can pass in minutes and minutes can look like
   hours.

If happiness is something we need to do, not a state of mind, nor something we have pleasure but what we make the most of it by enjoying the little things we have in life, and active attitude. Enjoyments is closer to happiness because we need to have the right mindset to allow us to be happy, to chase our end: being perfect by doing good, through good actions called virtues.