Chasing Happiness Might Be Making You Unhappy

In America most people are chasing happiness in getting a better job, living in a better place, and purchasing stuff to make them happy.  Studies show that this type of searching may be leading to unhappiness.  If you are buying books that are supposed to help you find happiness you may not find it there.  Americans are spending around $9 billion annually on these self-help books and other products and end up not finding the happiness that they were in search of.

While in Japan, chasing happiness is found in caring for friends and family and not trying to get ahead in the world.

Here is a list of some ways to find happiness:

• Schedule Activities – like gardening or spending time with friends. These activities seem to make people have happy feelings and less time to be depressed.
• Change Your Perspective – like value the calm of your life and look for relaxing activities.
• Be in the Present – listen to music that you like and don’t try to make yourself feel happy, just listen and be in with the music.
• Lower Your Expectations – sometimes when you expect to have a lot of fun at something and it turns out to not meet your expectations you may be disappointed, but if you go in with much lower expectations you may find that you will be a lot happier.
• Enjoy Your Moments – when you savor your moments and relive them in your mind over and over you may experience higher levels of happiness.