Village Journals
Resonate your identity with Naseeb journals. Express your opinions, share your thoughts, post your writings and connect with like minded people through the power of expression.
Resonate your identity with Naseeb journals. Express your opinions, share your thoughts, post your writings and connect with like minded people through the power of expression.
Happiness
As we get richer we seem to be getting more depressed
If you consider yourself an optimist then well done, because according to US research you've just added another 7.5 years onto your life expectancy. Yet happiness for many of us remains an elusive quality. It is something we strive both to acquire and maintain but it remains as slippery as a wet bar of soap. Despite the common assumption that wealth brings happiness this simple association has not stood up to scrutiny. According to the research the more comfortable life becomes the more dissatisfied and disgruntled we are with it.
Over the past few decades Western society has become richer. Our overall individual wealth has increased to a level never previously seen. Technology has helped to advance medical care, we live longer, disposable income is up fourfold since the 1950s, car ownership and the number of foreign holidays continue to increase, and yet our levels of satisfaction with life are unchanged or are decreasing. Why?
Put into perspective around 30 percent of the population surveyed regard themselves as very satisfied, whilst the majority view themselves as fairly satisfied. Tall men and physically attractive women tend to be happier and wealthier people are, not surprisingly, more satisfied than poor people. The evidence however shows that a 25 year old is four times more likely to to be depressed than in the 1950s. Professional men and women are amongst the most unhappy people around.
As incomes have grown so have aspirations. This can lead to a hedonistic treadmill in which the acquisition of a new car, or home, or fashion accessory only retains its novelty value for a brief period of time and the chase is then on to acquire more, or bigger, or better. This puts professional people under huge pressures as their work time increases in order to achieve high rewards. Put another way, have we become preoccupied with the things worth having, rather than the things worth being?
In November 2002 a group of academics and political officials got together in the UK to discuss how to measure happiness. It was reasoned that the more you could measure happiness the easier it would be to tailor policies. It was noted that a small increase in wealth has a far more positive impression on the poor than it does on the better off. This cumulated in the publication of a report on the state of the national happiness quotient and how policy makers might like to take such pearls of insight into account.
Where to find happiness? Well, you could try Denmark where a remarkable 65 per cent say they are "very satisfied" with their lot. Where not to find happiness? Maybe you should steer clear of France and Germany as research suggests these are the least happy in Europe.
source: aloo patty
If you consider yourself an optimist then well done, because according to US research you've just added another 7.5 years onto your life expectancy. Yet happiness for many of us remains an elusive quality. It is something we strive both to acquire and maintain but it remains as slippery as a wet bar of soap. Despite the common assumption that wealth brings happiness this simple association has not stood up to scrutiny. According to the research the more comfortable life becomes the more dissatisfied and disgruntled we are with it.
Over the past few decades Western society has become richer. Our overall individual wealth has increased to a level never previously seen. Technology has helped to advance medical care, we live longer, disposable income is up fourfold since the 1950s, car ownership and the number of foreign holidays continue to increase, and yet our levels of satisfaction with life are unchanged or are decreasing. Why?
Put into perspective around 30 percent of the population surveyed regard themselves as very satisfied, whilst the majority view themselves as fairly satisfied. Tall men and physically attractive women tend to be happier and wealthier people are, not surprisingly, more satisfied than poor people. The evidence however shows that a 25 year old is four times more likely to to be depressed than in the 1950s. Professional men and women are amongst the most unhappy people around.
As incomes have grown so have aspirations. This can lead to a hedonistic treadmill in which the acquisition of a new car, or home, or fashion accessory only retains its novelty value for a brief period of time and the chase is then on to acquire more, or bigger, or better. This puts professional people under huge pressures as their work time increases in order to achieve high rewards. Put another way, have we become preoccupied with the things worth having, rather than the things worth being?
In November 2002 a group of academics and political officials got together in the UK to discuss how to measure happiness. It was reasoned that the more you could measure happiness the easier it would be to tailor policies. It was noted that a small increase in wealth has a far more positive impression on the poor than it does on the better off. This cumulated in the publication of a report on the state of the national happiness quotient and how policy makers might like to take such pearls of insight into account.
Where to find happiness? Well, you could try Denmark where a remarkable 65 per cent say they are "very satisfied" with their lot. Where not to find happiness? Maybe you should steer clear of France and Germany as research suggests these are the least happy in Europe.
source: aloo patty
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