Member-only story

The Law Of Happiness: The Painful Reason You Never Stay Happy

Prakhar Verma
6 min readApr 7, 2020

--

You’re doing your best. You read articles on “how to be happy”. You try to balance your life. You try to achieve your goals. You try to stay positive. You do all those things, and yet you’re not happy.

You read the news and see all the tragic events happening around the world. You watch romantic comedies and set #relationshipgoals. You follow the rich and famous celebrities on social media. You do all those things, and you’re still unhappy.

Why is it so? Because statistically, you should be happy.

In their book, Age of Discovery, Ian Goldin and Chris Kutarn argue that we are experiencing the best time in human history. Childhood mortality has fallen dramatically. Life expectancy has risen more in the past 50 years than in the previous 1000 years. We face fewer diseases, and when we do get ill, we recover much faster. Global poverty has decreased while our individual lifestyle is much better on average. Technology has made our lives easier, we’re far safer, and we are overly well-fed.

Now you’re wondering… if today is the best time to be alive, why am I not happy?

Enter the G.I. Joe Fallacy. The old G.I. Joe cartoon’s tagline was “Knowing is half the battle”. But the professors at Yale University, Laurie Santos and Tamar Gendler claim that…

--

--

Prakhar Verma
Prakhar Verma

Written by Prakhar Verma

Actualize your potential. Remember who you are. Be the best version of yourself: https://bio.link/prakhar236

No responses yet