Science Says Pressure to Be Happy Actually Leaves People Feeling Worse

Science Says Pressure to Be Happy Actually Leaves People Feeling Worse

Many factors are frequently talked about when considering happiness.

Factors like goal achievement, wellbeing, optimism, hope, gratitude and positive relationships.

And these are all extremely relevant and important.

But one factor that doesn’t quite receive the same amount of attention is … expectation.

In very simple terms, if your expectations are unrealistic you’re destined for failure and unhappiness. On the other hand, if your expectations are realistic and specific, among other things, you’re far more likely to enjoy not just happiness, but satisfaction and contentment and a range of other positive emotions.

For more on this, check out this article by Bill Murphy from Inc.com …

I have some good news and some bad news. But then, some more good news.

It’s about a scientific study on happiness — and the surprising thing that actually seems to make it harder for people to achieve true, holistic well-being and happiness.

It comes to us from a huge team of researchers around the globe, who studied 7,443 people in 40 countries to determine whether social pressure might actually achieve the counterproductive result of making individual people less likely to be happy.

For example, let’s take Denmark, a country that consistently ranks as among the happiest on the planet. That distinction sparked a worldwide trend a few years ago, as people in other countries tried to figure out how to embrace the Danish concept of hygge, which has to do with “coziness,” or “comfortable conviviality.” 

“If only we could add more coziness to our lives, perhaps we would be as happy as the Danish,” wrote study author Brock Bastian, a professor at the University of Melbourne in Australia. “But is living in one of the world’s happiest nations all it’s cracked up to be? What happens if you struggle to find or maintain happiness in a sea of (supposedly) happy people?”

Sure enough, Bastian and his colleagues found in their study, which was published in the journal, Scientific Reports, the more pressure there is for people to be happy, the less likely it will be that individual people will say that they actually are happy…

… keep reading the full & original article HERE