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Happiness is quiet difficult to define.   Happiness at its basic is an emotional or psychological state that greatly varies depending on the context, or situation, the meaning is subjective and very broad.   Happiness is something that everyone strives to attain (Baumgardner and Crothers, 2009).   The term well-being is perhaps the closest that researchers have come to justify the rush of positive emotions whenever something good happens.   According to Ed Diener, the term “subjective well-being” is having less negative and more positive emotions.   Subjective well-being is all about a person’s momentary or long-term evaluation of his life and the feelings of joy, satisfaction and fulfillment that result from this evaluation (Baumgardner and Crothers, 2009).   Like income, happiness is unequally distributed within and among nations.   Within this paper, the focus will be on the Bhutanese views of happiness and compare them to the views within the American culture.
The Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan is the only nation that puts happiness at the core of public policy.   This belief is so strong that it measures its nation's cultural and political security with a "gross national happiness"(GNH) index.   Bhutan's fourth king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, coined the phrase GNH in 1972 on the value that people's happiness did not depend on the nation's economic wealth (Robertson, 2013).   GNH has indictors as opposed to more traditional measures like a nation's gross domestic product based on economic activity.   GNH recognizes nine components of happiness: psychological well-being, ecology, health, education, culture, living standards, time use, community vitality and good governance (Robertson, 2013).
Within the American Culture, there is too much emphasis put into the things we own.   This is a negative way to think and it can cause unnecessary stress and unhappiness when we cannot afford those things.   In Bhutan, they only let globalization affect them over the last ten years but...