When it comes to happiness, there is no one size fits all. This is because happiness comes in many different forms and means many different things to many different types of people. For a star athlete, happiness is winning and for a mother happiness is seeing that her children do well and receive all the love they deserve. Before you can be happy in your life, you must ask yourself what happiness means to you.
This is what we call the evaluation phase of a solid strategy for achieving happiness. First, you must list all the things that make you happy or at least those things that you think make you happy. Sometimes the things we think make us happy aren’t the things that make us happy at all. This is because we are bombarded with TV commercials and curated ads, where marketers tell us what makes us happy and show us happiness if we buy their product.
Psychological researchers spend a lot of money in time and studies to figure out how to manipulate our emotions, record our minds, and make us believe that a certain brand will bring us happiness. Due to the hoaxes and deceptive marketing strategies they use, people often associate happiness with things; material happiness if you will. “If I buy this, I’ll be happy.”
Although most people realize deep down that happiness is more about how you feel than what you have, hardly anyone will deny that they are often tempted by these advertising methods. And judging from a snapshot of our society, well, it’s pretty obvious, people actually think they’ll be happier wearing a pair of Nikes, driving a BMW, wearing a Rolex, and having a big smile, thanks to Crest Toothpaste. Think about this.