![]() ![]() This one is: What if we’re so fixated on happiness that we’ve failed to question whether happiness is what we should be pursuing? What if, after two millenniums of debating the relative benefits of varying types of happiness, we could focus on another, more enduring, more impactful emotional state that will bring us both happiness and more significant benefits? Simply put, it feels like we are on a racetrack, chasing the wrong rabbit. How do we achieve happiness? As captivating as it is, that question isn’t the right one. ![]() Here’s how we do itīetween self-help gurus, philosophers and marketers all telling us how to be happy, it’s easy to get confounded. Opinion: Finland’s the world’s happiest country. (Photo by Jussi Nukari / Lehtikuva / AFP) / Finland OUT (Photo by JUSSI NUKARI/Lehtikuva/AFP via Getty Images) Jussi Nukari/Lehtikuva/AFP/Getty Images In addition, food and beverage service businesses must continue to provide their customers with instructions on how to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus. All customers are still required to have their own seats. The restrictions concerning the opening hours, licensing hours and numbers of customers of food and beverage service businesses were lifted completely from 13 July 2020. People enjoy meals and drinks on a large open-air food court in the centrally-located Senate Square in Helsinki, Finland, late on July 17, 2020, the first Friday after lifting the COVID-related restrictions. How often have we felt a certain kind of deflation after that big purchase or much-anticipated night out when it didn’t live up to our expectations? This phenomenon of misjudging what will make us happy is called affective forecasting, and as humans, we “miswant” a lot of things that we have been conditioned to believe will make us happier than they actually do. It’s a further tragic irony that we are so bad at knowing what will make us happy. There are 280 million people with depression globally, according to the World Health Organization, and in the United States alone, 40 million people are suffering from anxiety, according to the Anxiety & Depression Association of America. It’s an unfortunate irony then that in a world fixated on happiness, people are so chronically unhappy. And now, the positive thinking movement, abundance theory and any other number of self-help genres see some form of happiness as the primary objective and something we can achieve if we just try hard enough. (The English word “happiness” comes from the Icelandic root happ or “luck,” so at least etymologically, luck seems to have always played some role in our happiness.) It was the great iconoclast Socrates who became the first to suggest that happiness was a cognitive and meaning-making pursuit, something in a person’s control, rather than simply a gift bestowed by the gods. Throughout modern history, and with little contesting, happiness has been seen as the end goal and just reward for a life of laudable toil.īefore the ancient Greek philosophers, happiness, like most things in life, was seen as a benefaction granted by the gods. And let’s not forget Madison Avenue marketers - brands, and anyone associated with selling those brands - want to be involved with happiness, too. ![]() Between chief happiness officers, the Happy Planet Index, Gross National Happiness, and the World Happiness Report ( Finland scored the highest again this year), it seems as though happiness has some good PR. ![]()
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