Optimal Being

There are two types of happiness, hedonic and eudaimonic.  While both support life satisfaction, research shows they serve unique purposes and are expressed in different brain regions.  Eudaimonic happiness also appears to be more sustainable and seems to cultivate certain health benefits. T here’s a common perception that entrepreneurs and small business owners are overworked and stressed out. Both of those things can be true on occasion. At the same time, 94% of small business owners  say they are happy with their lives , and 81% attribute this happiness to their entrepreneurship. The former value easily tops employees’ self-reported happiness. In a  2012 survey of 11,000 graduates of the Wharton MBA  program, respondents running their own businesses ranked themselves the most content. “Entrepreneurship” even dominated “income” as a predictor of happiness. The reason for this may be that entrepreneurship stokes a type of happiness called “eudaimonic happiness....

We each have the same 24 hours in the day. How will you spend yours? We each have the same 24 hours available to us. What we do with those hours varies by culture and gender, but we each have at least a few hours to spend in leisure.  The 5-hour rule asks us to devote at least one hour a day to learning, experimenting, and reflecting. It's a trick used by the richest and most successful people in the world.   Here are three easy steps to start your own 5-hour rule. The anatomy of a day There are 24 hours in a day (or 1,440 minutes, if you really like to count your life away). The average person sleeps around eight hours (with  the Dutch  sleeping the most and the Singaporeans the least). That leaves 16 waking hours left to spend (I’m afraid those “learn while you’re sleeping” tapes  aren’t likely to work ). We need to subtract the seven to eight hours a day during which most people work, though those sleepy  Dutch work a bit less . So, we’re down to nine re...