05 Jul What does it really mean to be happy? 13 surprising truths!
via Inc.com by Laura Garnett
Loving your life and your work. Now that’s the ultimate dream. And, according to your Instagram feed, many people have already achieved it. But social media isn’t telling the whole story.
We’ve been conditioned by society to believe that the secret to happiness is that, well, it just happens to us. We’ve also been taught that happiness means having lots of friends, traveling to beautiful destinations, and having pockets (and pockets) full of money. But this is wrong. Dead wrong.
Despite all of those photos we see of people who are just bursting at the seams with joy, the truth is that Americans’ happiness levels have been on the decline.
According to data from The General Social Survey, one of the longest-running and most highly regarded public opinion research projects in the nation, life in America just keeps getting more miserable.
On a scale of 1 to 3, with 1 representing “not too happy” and 3 indicating “very happy,” Americans average out at a 2.18–just a hair above “pretty happy.” That might seem great at first. But it’s actually a significant decline from the nation’s peak happiness, as measured by the survey in the early 1990s.
This change in average happiness is driven by the number of people who say they’re not too happy: 13% in 2018 compared with 8% in 1990. That’s more than 50% increase in unhappy people. (Are you happy? Truly happy? Find out here.)
Other recent research confirms this trend. The World Happiness Report 2019found that a separate measure of overall life satisfaction fell by 6% in the United States between 2007 and 2018.
While this is due to all kinds of factors, it’s probably a safe bet that one of the reasons our happiness levels are decreasing is because we’re basing them on the wrong things (read: material items, money, and more). So, what does being happy really mean? Here are 13 surprising truths that you can use as your happiness bible. And from this point forward, you can start ignoring the erroneous messages about happiness that you see everywhere.
Happiness is…
…keep reading the full & original article HERE