Happiness in Islam is based on patience (Sabr) and gratitude (Shukr)
Alhamdulillah,I started this project with a vague intention of understanding the psychological source if happiness from an Islamic perspective. Having understood the non-Islamic perspective and the Islamic perspective, I have reached a point where for me, the source of happiness is obvious. What is important is that we can learn to become happy and we can learn to become unhappy. Insha Allah, our efforts with the Productive Teens project will see whether we can go from a theoretical discussion to a successful action research. In the meantime, everything that I have been working for over the last three years is summarized in this hadith
Current status
Literature review is on-going. I am now immersing myself is social psychology. I have about 200 students ++ working on making videos for the Productive Teens project.Is Happiness Dispositional or Situational?
I did it again. Not for the first time, I thought that I understood something and then I read a book that forces me to re-think my assumptions about what I thought I knew was true. In this case, I read Philip Zimbardo's The Lucifer Effect. Zimbardo says that many disciplines take a dispositional view For example, a dispostional view of happiness is that happiness is "inside" an individual). It "belongs" to the individual. However, social psychologists tend to take a situational view oft hings. Yes, individuals are important but how they feel and behave depend on the group dynamics and other environmental factors. If that is the case, happiness would be an attribute "shared" by all group members when the social dynamics are just right. I will probably need a few months to do some more reading and think about it before I can formulate my opinion on this question.
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