I Want To Be Happy In My Way

We all want to feel good, this is hardly a debatable principle. If you ask others what they want to achieve in their lives, they are unlikely to respond that they want to be unlucky, sad, or feel like failures. People want to feel what it’s like to be happy and struggle to find a way to do that.

However, despite everyone wanting to be content and satisfied with their lives, many do not know how to achieve this goal. Defining happiness these days is a tricky thing; we live with the paradox that any object can bring you closer to it, but at the same time nothing seems to be enough to reach it.

More than a subjective state of happiness, we run after a concept that we turn into an ideal. Today, happiness has become a myth printed on objects that enrich a few at the expense of others’ dissatisfaction.

The endless quest to “be happy”

A simple Internet search is enough to illustrate the current obsession to find happiness. Millions of articles talk about what to do or not to do to be happy, about what scientists say about happiness, the steps you need to take to reach it, or the exact steps you need to climb to achieve it .

Not only are we obsessed with achieving it, we also want to achieve it in every area of ​​our lives : at work, alone, in love, in the family, every day. We look in every possible corner for the little keys that will help us feel luckier.

This search is an endless task since, as it is presented, it has turned into an empty ideal impossible to reach. The current definition of happiness is closer to the romantic love of movies or the epic quest for the holy grail than to its true meaning.

the happiness business

Businesses and the advertising world have never been oblivious to the needs of their current and potential customers. Both look for unsatisfied needs and, if they don’t exist, they are responsible for creating them or looking for new ones to introduce a product or service that satisfies them.

Happiness captivates, sells, and everyone wants to be happy. Companies know this and seek, through planned strategies, customer loyalty and satisfaction. They play with emotions to achieve happiness through consumption.

It is no coincidence that the economic crisis has coincided with the fervent sale of happiness. In times of crisis, happiness is money.

the dictatorship of happiness

Not only has happiness become an object of consumption, it is also imposed on us as an obligatory norm. We went from wanting to I HAVE TO be happy, and along the way we accept messages like: “wanting is power”.

This type of statement is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, positivism and the motivation of “there is nothing impossible” or “I’ll smile more and complain less” emanates , while on the other hand there is the thought of “I should be happy” or “I wanted to but I couldn’t, so I must have done something wrong.”

In the context of a society in crisis, where the commercialization of happiness is a sales strategy for many companies, it is always a good idea to remember that sometimes, as much as we want to, we cannot always, without forgetting the responsibility of not achieving our own goals is not always ours.

happiness doesn’t live alone

Happiness is a subjective feeling like many others, one more in a crowd. The inner life of everyone is made up of emotions and feelings ranging from joy and happiness to sadness or frustration.

Each emotion has its uses, and each and every one of them is necessary and fulfills a function. Emotions help us to give meaning to our experiences, so it is necessary to live them.

And you, what do you need to be happy?

Happiness does not have pre-established models nor does it understand generic products with magic formulas. Each person has their own peculiarities, tastes and preferences. What can make one person happy, perhaps the other makes unhappiness.

Happiness is not about buying the T-shirt with the most positive message, following someone else’s plans, or faking a smile to look good in a photo. It’s much simpler than all of this, it involves  asking the right questions and looking for answers away from standard texts or empty products.