One of the strongest pieces of evidence about the immense value of personal relationships is provided by the Harvard Study of Adult Development, вЂњpossibly the longest study of adult life ever doneвЂќ led by Robert Waldinger, a Harvard psychiatrist, and Zen priest. Those relationships are not necessarily perfect but help individuals to be better persons, reach success or be happy. Д¬iting Martin Seligman, Tal Ben-Shahar explains that what differentiates happy people is their solid, intimate relationships, be they romantic, family or friend oriented. And they also reveal how interpersonal relationships play a major role in attaining wellbeing. Both are at the heart of the concept of tribe, the ancestral environment where men and women evolved and developed. In the multi-nation study Yamamoto contributed to, he found that, despite the wide difference in culture, context, and geographical locations of the many communities researched, the satisfaction of two single distinct needs predicted the highest levels of happiness in all of them: to form a family and to live in a nice place. Moreover, Yamamoto explains that our brains are wired to reach out to others, a trait that dates back to ancient times when men and women lived in tribes or communities to survive, and that is part of human nature. What sets them apart is the great importance that relationships with family members and friends are placed in daily life throughout the lifetime in Latin American culture, unlike the first worldвЂ™s culture steered by the ideal of an individualistic life by which an individual is expected to solve their problems and live autonomously. Jorge Yamamoto found that many communities in Latin America were significantly happier than the rest of the world. So, what brings happiness? The single most overwhelming and clearest finding in studies of happiness is that personal relationships are very important in the lives of happy people. While they may reach significant milestones and success, or earn more money, they will experience temporary increases in their wellbeing, but those increases in happiness are not permanent. Many successful, wealthy, and highly accomplished individuals are not happy. Tal Ben-Shahar, a renowned psychologist who teaches happiness at Harvard University and holds the record of the course with the largest number of enrolled students in history (1400 in a semester), also argues that success, wealth, or fame do not bring happiness. And the great scam is to make believe that the supreme goal of life and society is the pursuit of happiness. The scam argues Yamamoto, is to make believe that material possessions and social status bring happiness. However, evidence showed that many people and societies that dedicated their lives or generations to pursue that dream ended up in unhappiness. It is instead a cultural movement that started in the United States with the idea of the great American dream and has been widely amplified by the huge marketing apparatus and communications media. However, for Yamamoto, happiness as the supreme goal of life is quite a recent idea in history and is not found in all cultures.

Happiness experts state that the pursuit of happiness is an old one and dates back to ancient times. The research he was involved in, that covered diverse countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas, found out that happiness was present in communities in poor countries whose contexts were quite different from the widely spread individualism that characterized rich countries.

Although it would be sensible to think that people in rich countries are the happiest, what is it, questions Jorge, that those nations have higher rates of suicide, anxiety, and depression than those of middle-income countries. In his book вЂњLa Gran Estafa de la FelicidadвЂќ вЂ“ вЂњThe Happiness Great ScamвЂќ, Jorge Yamamoto includes the findings of the research and studies he has undertaken over more than a decade.

In Pursuit of Happiness: What We Commonly Seek Does Not Bring Happiness This paper aims to discuss some insights that experts have found in their studies and research on happiness which might be useful to coaches in helping their clients address situations of unhappiness, disillusionment, or the like. It is then I started to feel curious and intrigued about what were the sources of happiness. They were analyzing what made people happy in different countries. A Research Paper By Luis Chang, Executive Coach, UNITED STATESДЄlmost a couple of decades ago, in a brief encounter with my friend Jorge Yamamoto, a distinguished social psychologist from the Catholic University of Peru in Lima, he related to me he was immersed in international research on happiness involving his university in association with an English university.

What is the pursuit of happiness