Think about what would make you happy right now. Most of us would say something that relates to money or something luxurious we see on TV shows. Maybe a new car would make you happy or the house of your dreams. We all have analogous goals and aspirations. From a young age, we are programmed to want certain things. We see images in movies or in TV shows that are appealing. We think that with money, all of our tribulations will wash away. That’s why people go to work or buy lottery tickets or even gamble. We want what society has told us we want our whole lives and we are not fully satisfied with life until we obtain these goals. Society builds this perfect image in our heads of what happiness is supposed to look like and today’s modern technologies and our upbringings are significantly influenced by it.
People concentrate on where they stand compared to other people to determine their happiness. What they do not realize is that they are seeing other people’s highlight moments but they don't see the struggle they went through. People who are successful and happy didn't just wake up one day and achieve their goals. For example, someone who has an expensive sports car went through a great deal of hard work to acquire that car. They overcame a protracted and tedious journey to be where they are. Yet, people are still unhappy with the way their lives are. They do not realize that the work you put into the whole process is what makes you appreciate your goal when you achieve it. These comparisons blind us to the actual process of reaching our goals.
Social media has become a large part of today’s modern society and it plays a large part in the comparisons we make. Social media can get out of hand at times and cause detachment, loneline...
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Works Cited
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Everyone wants to be “happy.” Everyone endeavors to fulfill their desires for their own pleasure. What makes this ironic is, the fact that most don‘t know what the actual definition of happiness is. “In Pursuit of Unhappiness” presents an argument, which states that not everyone will be happy. Darrin McMahon, the article’s author, explores the ways our “relentless pursuit of personal pleasure”(McMahon P.11;S.3) can lead to empty aspirations and impractical expectations, making us sad, and not happy. Rather than working to find the happiness of others, we should all focus on finding what makes ourselves happy. It is easier to find happiness in the little things
The root reason why people are not happy is that they confuse between happiness and the measures to gain it. Namely, many people mistake measure to be happy for the happiness and pursue the former. The reason is, while the real happiness is invisible, people can see the measures to achieve it. The mistake makes people unable to gain happiness, since they head toward the measure for gaining it, not the happiness itself. They can never reach it when the delusion has mocked them.
The pursuit of happiness ultimately leads to disappointment and a lack of satisfaction because people’s cravings can never be entirely fulfilled. Dalai Lama once said “When you are discontent, you always want more, more, more. Your desire can never be satisfied. But when you practice contentment, you can say to yourself, ‘Oh yes – I already have everything that I really need.’” This quote shows that having high expectations of anything leads to disappointment when the expectation is not met. Also, having anticipations for what happiness is makes attained happiness irrelevant and inadequate relative to what one wanted to get
In Michael R. Hagerty’s and Ruut Veenhoven’s article “Wealth and Happiness Revisited – Growing National Income Does Go with Greater Happiness” they talk about the effect wealth has on your emotions...
People feel they are on top of the world due to the numerous friends that they have on their Facebook page. Having Facebook friends provides them with a sense of acceptance they had never experienced. These experiences are a gateway to a stream of emotions that has the potential to harm as well as to help. Social media has helped to emotionally feel connected and is an easy and efficient way to stay in contact with family and friends; however, it is harmful when it is the culprit for facilitating and fueling arguments and unhealthy relationships. “As the Danish academic Anders Colding-Jorgensen argues: ‘We should no longer see the internet as a post office where information is sent back and forth, but rather as an openarena for our identity and self-pro...
He further shows us that the people of today are richer than their grandparents but are not happier in their lives (from National Statistics of social pathology). Even with these facts, people in the United States still believe if they had more money all of their problems would be solved, but once they reach that next income bracket they are not satisfied and try to reach the next one. Myers et al tells us, "even if being rich and famous is rewarding, no one ever claimed material success alone makes us happy. Other conditions like - family- friends- free time - have been shown to increase happiness" (Csikszentmihaly 145). therefore we must find balance in our own lives, and not just focus on making money. Instead we need friends, family and even free time, as aforementioned doing an activity you enjoy such as listening to music or
Happiness can be easily defined as the state of well-being and contentment gained by personal life experiences through either direct or indirect connections with the world around us. The people we meet and the trails we go through in life add together to create a hopefully happy life. To be happy in life is indeed the only way to enjoy it. Therefore it’s no wonder that we all strive to achieve this idea of happiness. This interest in the search for true happiness has become a major factor in our modern age. Looking back at our history, the moods of many Americans have seemed to become stagnate even when we experience a rise in salaries and overall life expectance. This begs the question as to what then
Happiness is something most humans value above everything else. The various things in life that make us happy, such as family, friends, and cool cars, to name a few, are the very things we hold dearest to us and place the most value on. People fill their lives with things that please them to ease the gloom that comes as a result of the seemingly never-ending trials and tribulations of life. We gladly accept any amount of pleasure we can extract from the monotony of our daily lives, and we will do almost anything to achieve happiness.
Selfie-Loathing: Here’s Why Instagram Is Even More Depressing than Facebook. Slate Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/07/instagram_and_self_esteem_why_the_photo_sharing_network_is_even_more_depressing.html
Social media is so popular that according to a recent article published by forbes.com, “72% of American adults are currently using social media sites; that figure has gone up 800% in just 8 years”(Olenski). Social networking was originally created to simply reconnect people with old high school pals, but in recent years it has evolved into a completely different operation. When social media first originated it was also intended for adult usage, which has in recent years expanded into the usage of all ages. Social media can create a negative affect on lives because it has been proven to be a dangerous addiction, for it takes away interpersonal relationships that are essential in life, and it has been proven to prevent people from being productive in life.
Imagine, someone losing a close love one; they are already grieving but also their love one had a large amount of debt and lived an unhappy life with no exposure to new experiences. Happiness is the state of being joyful; it’s the feeling that comes when one knows life is good. However, the question is can money really buy happiness? According to Gretchen Rubin, “No money cannot buy happiness, but money can buy a lot of things that will contribute mightily to happiness.” Money can buy happiness when one wisely uses it for experience’s, helping others, and investing in life.
..., a person who earns $25,000 is happier than a person who makes $125,000 and an employee who makes $500,000 is only slightly happier than someone who makes $55,000. Lastly, there are more important things in life that and make you happy, for example, friends. They don’t come with a price tag, and if they do, you definitely need new friends. Money won’t make you happy since good times can’t be bought. You don’t need a fancy vacation to have a good time; it’s just a matter of who you spend it with. Over the years, humans have blown the value of money way out of proportion. People make it seem like if you’re not filthy rich, then you won’t live a good life but it’s not true. You can lack money and yet still live a perfect, happy life.
When we are young children, we are introduced to the concept of "living happily ever after". This is a fairy-tale emotional state of absolute happiness, where nothing really happens, and nothing even seems to matter. It is a state of feeling good all the time. In fairy tales, this feeling is usually found in fulfilling marriages, royal castles, singing birds and laughing children. In real life, an even-keeled mood is more psychologically healthy than a mood in which you frequently achieve great heights of happiness. Furthermore, when you ask people what makes their lives worth living, they rarely mention their mood. They are more likely to talk about what they find meaningful, such as their work or relationships. Research suggests that if you focus too much on trying to feel good all the time, you’ll actually undermine your ability to ever feel good because no amount of feeling good will be satisfying to you. If feeling good all the time were the only requirement for happiness, then a person who uses cocaine every day would be extremely happy. In our endless struggle for more money, more love and more security, we have forgotten the most fundamental fact: happiness is not caused by possessions or social positions, and can in fact be experienced in any daily activity. We have made happiness a utopia: expensive, complicated, and unreachable.
Furthermore, browsing sites such as Facebook may lead to low morale, as people begin to measure their self-worth with the amount of “likes” they receive. Ironically, although social media sites boast their ability to connect people, they mainly separate society even more as people become isolated behind their screens. Social media is damaging to a person’s life because it can lower self-esteem, isolate people from real relationships, and cause privacy concerns as marketers, employers, and school officials can view information posted online.
Acquiring things like houses and cars only has a transient effect on happiness. People’s desires for material possessions crank up at the same, or greater rate, than their salaries. Again, this means that despite considerably more luxurious possessions, people end up no happier. There’s even evidence that materialism makes us less happy. People don’t shift to enjoyable activities when they are rich.... ...