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A community of people who are curious to find out what others have already figured out // Curious is a new personal growth publication by The Startup (https://medium.com/swlh).

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If Your Only Goal Is to Be Happy, You’re Decreasing the Value of Your Life

4 min readFeb 17, 2023

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Photo by Elise Wilcox on Unsplash

I can hardly imagine a person who would answer the question: Do you want to be happy? With No, not at all.

The importance of happiness was known to humans for long centuries, and Aristotle proclaimed already 2400 years ago,

“Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”

Feeling ecstatic and full of energy isn’t the only great thing about happiness, though.

It also helps us improve productivity, strengthen the immune system, decrease the risk of cardiovascular diseases, and speed up recovery time.

In addition, setting happiness as your life purpose makes you think of yourself as someone with the proper values — you don’t chase superficial things like money, a good career, or success.

All these points sound great — until you realize that happiness comes with many flaws.

The problem with happiness

According to scientists, there are three main keys to happiness:

  1. Purpose — doing things that matter
  2. Pleasure — having the ability to do what you love to do

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A community of people who are curious to find out what others have already figured out // Curious is a new personal growth publication by The Startup (https://medium.com/swlh).

Simona Hostakova
Simona Hostakova

Written by Simona Hostakova

I share my best insights on marketing, writing, freelancing & personal growth | simonahostakova.com | Looking for writing jobs? https://bit.ly/3sx3X3J

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