RELATIVE ECONOMICS AND BALANCED LIFE

“If you want to be successful, have faith in your capabilities. Concentrate on it. Experience the
feeling of oneness with your Guru or ideal. Concentrate on the Centre of Bliss (near the heart). Just
perceive and experience. Do not think about the favourable and the unfavourable. You will experience
the awakenings of a new energy.”
- H H Shri Acharya Mahapragya Ji
The conceptualization of pleasure is a difficult effort. Recently, a large number of experimental
studies provide a base for the analysis of subjective well-being via questionnaires. Beside these positive
studies focusing on self-reported happiness, however, there are also normative studies
as to what one should expect to make people really happy. The question on the
determinants of happiness is probably one of the oldest questions of mankind, as
can be seen from the answers that are provided e.g. by religion and philosophy.
Now-a-days, there are also answers from psychology, namely positive psychology.
In this subject, formalization and quantification is a good attempted using basic
relative economic analysis. The objective of this procedure is to clarify the
implications of the concept by taking into account that people face constraints
when trying to make their lives more comfortable. The most fundamental
constraint is the time that is available. Therefore, we introduce a time constraint for
people pursuing their different goals in his life.