The Endless Search for Happiness

Okay, I give up. You hear all the time about the need to find inner contentment, rather than seeking happiness through acquiring things and other external factors. Now this guy comes along and turns everything on its head.

According to this LA Times op-ed, “The self-help industry has it wrong. Social scientists studying happiness (or subjective well-being, to use the academic term) have found that external factors — quality of government, social interactions and, to an extent, money — determine our happiness more than anything else. In other words, happiness does not reside inside of you. Happiness is out there.”

Is it really? Or are we being fed yet another line about what can make us happy?

Perhaps the one thing that will make us truly happy is to quit obsessing over what will make us happy.