Hard things are good, but don’t necessarily make you happy.
Therefore happiness can not be the goal, if you strive to live a worthwhile life.
In fact, Shigehiro Oishi from the University of Virginia found that meaning is superior to happiness in predicting survival rates in a population.
Stop striving for happiness, instead strive for meaning.
“Those only are happy, who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on improving mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else they find happiness by the way.”
– John Stuart Mill
Photo by Jesse Hammer on Unsplash.