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Monday, October 22, 2007

What is happiness? u find and i am also find.......pls read and tell me.....

Happiness means different things to different people but for me, happiness is a term that covers a range of positive emotions. As humans, we experience a wide array of moods and feelings including “negative” ones (such as depression, frustration, anxiety etcetera) and “positive” ones (such as satisfaction, joy and happiness).

I think of happiness as something that encompasses all of the positive emotions from what I call the “low arousal” ones, such as contentment, calm and satisfaction through to the “high arousal” ones such as joy and excitement.

It’s important to note, that none of these emotions are necessarily better or worse than any others but that some people will definitely tend more towards some than others. Although not exclusively, “extroverts” tend to seek out and experience more of the high arousal positive emotions while “introverts” tend to seek out and experience more of the lower arousal positive emotions.

Happiness, then, is a positive state of wellbeing characterised by these positive emotions and happiness comes from practising a few simple disciplines on a daily basis

Should happiness come naturally?

The simple answer to this question is yes, if you’re lucky but no, if you’re like most people.

That is, for some people happiness does come naturally and easily in the same way that for some people, other skills or abilities (such as athletics and sports, problem solving, and even interpersonal relationships) come easily. For many people, however, whether it comes naturally or not is irrelevant. If you want to achieve greater happiness then you can – if you find out what to do and do it (and then practice it until you master it).

Consider the following example: how many of you were born able to drive a car? I bet the answer is “none of you”.

Despite this, because it’s something that can make our lives easier to manage, most of us put in the effort to learn how to drive and then we practice until we’re good enough to do it easily.

Happiness can be viewed in much the same way. If achieving happiness is important to you then whether it comes naturally or easily or not, need not stop you from (1) finding out what to do and then (2) practicing it until you’re really good at it.

Gross National Happiness why u not count plese count and tell me......

Happiness and well-being are complicated. Researchers cite many factors, like education, nutrition, freedom from fear and violence, gender equality, and perhaps most important, having choices, write Authur Max and Toby Sterling.

The tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan long ago dispensed with the notion of Gross National Product as a gauge of well-being. The king decreed that his people would aspire to Gross National Happiness instead.

That kernel of Buddhist wisdom is increasingly finding an echo in international development models, which seek to establish scientific methods for finding out what makes us happy and why.

New research institutes are being created at venerable universities like Oxford and Cambridge to establish methods of judging individual and national well-being. Governments are putting ever greater emphasis on promoting mental well-being - not just treating mental illness.

“In much the same way that research of consumer unions helps you to make the best buy, happiness research can help you make the best choices,” said Ruut Veenhoven, who created the World Database of Happiness in 1999.

When he started studying happiness in the 1960s, Veenhoven used data from social researchers who simply asked people how satisfied they were with their lives, on a scale of zero to 10. But as the discipline has matured and gained popularity in the past decade, self-reporting has been found lacking.

By their own estimate, “drug addicts would measure happy all the time,” said Sabina Alkire, of the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Institute.

New studies add more objective questions into a mix of feel-good factors: “ability to be an agent, to act on behalf of what matters to them, is fundamental,” said Alkire.

But if people say money can’t buy happiness, they’re only partially right.

Veenhoven’s database, which lists 95 countries and regions, is headed by Denmark with a rating of 8.2, followed by Switzerland, Austria, Iceland and Finland, all countries with high per capita income. At the other end of the scale are much poorer countries: Tanzania rated 3.2, behind Zimbabwe, Moldova, Ukraine and Armenia.

The United States just makes it into the top 15 with a 7.4 index rating. While choice is abundant in America, nutrition and violence issues helped drag its rating down.

Wealth counts, but most studies of individuals show income disparities count more. Surprisingly, however, citizens are no happier in welfare states, which strive to mitigate the distortions of capitalism than in purer free-market economies.

“In the beginning, I didn’t believe my eyes,” said Veenhoven of his data. “Icelanders are just as happy as Swedes, yet their country spends half what Sweden does (per capita) on social welfare,” he said.

In emphasizing personal freedom as a root of happiness, Alkire cited her study of women in the southern Indian state of Kerala, which showed that poor women who make their own choices score highly, compared with women with strict fathers or husbands.

Adrian G. White, of the University of Leicester, included twice as many countries as Veenhoven in his Global Projection of Subjective Well-being, which also measures the correlation of happiness and wealth. He, too, led his list with Denmark, Switzerland and Austria.

Bhutan, where less than half the people can read or write and 90 percent are farmers, ranks No. 8 in his list of happy nations. Its notion of GNH is based on equitable development, environmental conservation, cultural heritage and good governance.

US researchers have found other underlying factors: married people are more content than singles, but having children does not raise happiness levels; education and IQ seem to have little impact; attractive people are only slightly happier than the unattractive; the elderly - over 65 - are more satisfied with their lives than the young; friendships are crucial.

But the research also shows that many people are simply disposed to being either happy or disgruntled, and as much as 50 percent of the happiness factor is genetic. Like body weight, moods can swing only so much from their natural “set point.”

So can you do anything about it? Some educators say you can.

People “can be taught emotional resilience, self-control, the habits of optimism, handling negative thoughts and much else,” Anthony Seldon, ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s biographer and the headmaster of Wellington College in Britain, wrote recently in the Financial Times.

Seldon is developing happiness courses, working with the Institute of Well-being at Cambridge which was founded last November.

One recent book seeking to cash in on the well-being craze bears the English title “Dutch Women Don’t Get Depressed,” though it’s written in Dutch. Veenhoven says the title is off base: statistically, women get depressed more often than men, and Dutch women aren’t happier than others in the wealthy West.

Veenhoven says that with the right combination of individual choices and government policy, nations can raise their happiness quotient by as much as five percent.

In an influential 2004 academic paper, Martin Seligman, the University of Pennsylvania psychologist, credited with launching the positive psychology movement in 1998, and Ed Diener of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign encouraged policymakers to consider more than economic development in their planning.

“Although economic output has risen steeply over the past decades, there has been no rise in life satisfaction during this period, and there has been a substantial increase in depression and distrust,” they wrote.

British opposition leader David Cameron recently established a Quality of Life Policy Group to examine ways governments can legislate to boost national contentment levels.

“It’s time we admitted that there’s more to life than money, and it’s time we focused not just on GDP, but on GWB - general well-being,” he said in a speech last year.

Even experts acknowledge the difficulty of assigning numerical scales to feelings, and they are still grappling with how best to refine definitions.

At Cambridge’s Institute of Well-being, another group has expanded the standard happiness questionnaire to 50 items, and is incorporating it into a European Social Survey of 50,000 people.

It aims to weigh not only personal feelings (”I’m always optimistic about my future”), but how people function (”I feel I am free to decide for myself how to live my life”) and their relationships with others (”To what extent do you feel that people in your local area help one another?”).

“Happiness is more complicated than we originally thought..............say somebody

Gulab Jamun recipes

Gulab Jamun

Ingredients :

Milk - 3/4litre

Refined flour - 1cup heaped

Sugar - 1tbs

Soda powder - 2 pinch

Ghee - 100gm

Sugar - 3cups

Water - 3cups

Crushed cardamom - 6nos

Saffron - 2pinch

Rose essence - 1tsp

Method :

Boil the milk till its quantity reduces to 1/2cup and remove from fire. When it cools, add 1tbs sugar and soda powder. Mix well with a spoon and make it smooth. Add flour slowly and make a fine dough. Keep it for an hour.

Apply some ghee on the hands and make small balls with the prepared mixture. We can make about 40 jamuns with the mixture. Heat ghee in a pan. Fry the jamuns in ghee on a low flame.

Boil 3 cups of water with 3 cups sugar, cardamom and saffron. Filter it and add rose essence in it. Put the jamuns in this solution. It can be used after 3-4 hours.

Diamond Biscuit recipes

Diamond Biscuit

Ingredients :

Dalda - 1cup

Sugar - 3/4cup

Milk - 3/4cup

Refined flour - 11/2cup

Method :

Mix dalda, sugar and milk in a vessel. Add the flour intermittently and knead into a hard dough. Roll the dough into 1/4" thickness and cut several diamond shapes from it. Place them over a paper for 5 to 10 minutes. Heat oil in a pan and deep fry the biscuits.

Badam Pista( indian badam pista sweet dishes) how to make


Ingredients :

Refined flour - 250gm

Sugar - 3tbs

Ghee or oil - 1cup

Powdered cardamom - 3nos

Sliced almond (badam) seeds - 10gm

Pistachios (Pista) - 10gm

Water - a small glass

Method :

Boil water with the sugar. Stir continuously until the solution thickens. Remove from fire and keep aside.

Sieve the flour. Mix cardamom powder in the flour and knead with warm water to make a fine dough. Make small balls and flatten it into rounds, squares or triangular shapes.

Heat ghee or oil in a pan and deep fry the prepared rounds till it puffs out. Allow oil to drain. Keep this in the sugar solution for some time. Decorate with almonds and pistachios.

Indian Cookery( style of recipes)

Indian cuisine is popular all over the world for its variety, mouthwatering tastes and aroma. It is as diverse as the country itself with its numerous styles of cuisine and its typical regional variations.

In almost every country in the world you can find Indian restaurants and hotels representing every kind of Indian cuisine. Some of the most famous among them are the Mughalai, Chettinadu, Hyderabadi Cuisine etc.

Indian Cooking is known for its use of spices, herbs and flavorings. The common ingredients in Indian Cuisine are rice or bread (rotis), a variety of dals (lentils), regional vegetables, pickles, ghee, chutneys, a meat or fish dish. Spices are an essential element to Indian cuisine. The cooking medium is generally oil. The type of oil used differs in different regions. Sweets are usually milk based. Many popular sweets such as Gulab jamun, Ladoo are common throughout India, while many others like Rasbari, peda, burfi, halwa, Malpuwa, Rasgula etc are local favorites. Food is often eaten with fingers, rice or breads are accompanied by vegetables and curries.

The tastes and variety of the multiple cuisines from Kashmir in the north to Kanya Kumari in the south, is absolutely mind blowing. Indian cuisine can be divided into two, Northern and Southern Indian cuisine



South Indian Cuisine



Mostly vegetarian, Rice is the basis of every meal in a South Indian Cuisine and the cooking medium could be either gingelly, coconut or sunflower oil. Coconut is one of the main ingredient in all South Indian food and spices are abundant in south Indian cooking. Spices commonly used are mustard, Asafetida, pepper, curry leaves, peppercorns etc. Other fragrant spices added are cardamom, clove, cinnamon and star aniseed. Areas with access to waterways rely more heavily on seafood. Saturated with ghee, rice is served with Sambhar, Rasam, lentils, vegetables etc. South Indians are great lovers of filter coffee especially the Madras coffee is popular in South Indian restaurants throughout the world. Made of fermented rice and dal batter, the dosa, vada and the idli as well as puttu made of rice flour are inexpensive south Indian snacks which are popular all over the country. The popular south Indian dishes are Appam and Stews, sea food dishes (Kerala), Mysore Pak, basundhi, jangiri, the semolina-based upma, Milk or wheat based Payasams/ kheers, Hyderbadi Biryani and the Goan vindaloo curry etc.



North Indian Cuisine


North Indian Cooking is often called Mughal Style Cooking which is similar to the food of the Middle East and Central Asia. With its rich uses of sauces, butter-based curries, dried fruits and nuts, ginger-flavoured roast meats and mind-blowing sweets, it is one of the world’s popular cuisines. A typical North Indian meal consist of chappatis, roti, parantha, pooris and tandoori baked breads like nan etc. made of wheat. Rice is also popular and is made into biryanis and pulaos. Kashmiri pulao is one of the famous north Indian food. The cooking medium is generally oil, cream, butter or ghee. Sunflower and canola are mostly used vegetable oils used in north Indian cooking. Garam masala is a spice mixture used mainly in northern Indian cuisine.

Mutter Paneer (a curry made with cottage cheese and peas), Bengal's Rasagulla, sandesh, Rasamalai, gulab jamuns, Biryani, Pulaos, Daal Makhani, Dahi Gosht, Butter Chicken, Kheer, Chicken Tikka, Kebabs, Fish Amritsari, Samosas (snack with a pastry case with different kinds of fillings), Chaat (hot-sweet-sour snack made with potato, chick peas and tangy chutneys), 'makki ki roti' and 'sarson ka sag', Motichoor laddoo are some of the delicious north Indian foods.