What is Happiness and Belonging?

Happiness, belonging, and making contributions defined by two very different sources.

I've recently come across two fairly straightforward definitions of (and therefore how to achieve) happiness and belonging. Sharing them here, without comment, because, well, don't we all want to know?

From The Courage to Be Disliked: The Japanese Phenomenon That Shows You How to Change Your Life and Achieve Real Happiness by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga

All of us are searching for the sense of belonging, that "it's okay to be here" In Adlerian psychology, however, a sense of belonging is something that one can attain only by making an active commitment to the community of ones own accord, and not simply by being here.

p. 170 of The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga

and

It's quite simple. It is when one is able to feel "I am beneficial to the community" that one can have a true sense of one's worth. This is the answer that would be offered in Adlerian psychology […] That one can act on the community, that is to say, on other people, and that one can feel "I am of use to someone." Instead of feeling judged by another person as "good," being able to feel, by way of one's own subjective viewpoint, that "I can make contributions to other people." It is at that point that, at last, we can have a true sense of our own worth. Everything we have been discussing about community feeling and encouragement connects here.

p. 187 The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga

and

PHILOSOPHER: You are not the one who decides if your contributions are of use. That is the task of other people, and is not an issue in which you can intervene. In principle, there is not even any way you can know whether you have really made a contribution. That is to say, when we are engaging in this contribution to others, the contribution does not have to be a visible one—all we need is the subjective sense that "I am of use to someone," or in other words, a feeling of contribution.

YOUTH: Wait a minute! If that's the case, then what you are calling happiness is . ..

PHILOSOPHER: Do you see it now? In a word, happiness is the feeling of contribution. That is the definition of happiness.

p. 234 The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga

And now from Secrets of a Hutterite Kitchen: Unveiling the Rituals, Traditions, and Food of the Hutterite Culture By Mary-Ann Kirby 

"You've got to have work for your young people" Billy Vetter insists, reprising his role as colony foreman. "If you don't have meaningful work for them, they are far more likely to go astray. You have to make them feel needed. Keeping young people busy gives them schooling and builds self-esteem. It's just like a horse.You can't break in a horse if you've got no work for him, and you can't build a man if you don't have work for him either. You can't raise people and not have work for them. You've just got to have something meaningful for them to do."

p. 75 of Secrets of a Hutterite Kitchen

and from Kirby's conversation with Goliath Vetter:

"You can't just talk to young people. You've got to keep them busy because it keeps them out of trouble. You can't control young minds because they have their own ideas, but if you teach them that they have value and that you need them, it helps them through those uncertain years."

p. 175 of Secrets of a Hutterite Kitchen