THE UNENDING PURSUIT:

The well-being industry is worth trillions of dollars, and perhaps its growth is driven by people's sense of dissatisfaction. Of course it is important to take care of ourselves, but in striving to feel good we usually find that when we want something, the wanting leads us to want more. Consequently, our quest for greater well-being seems to be endless, leaving us feeling disappointed and incomplete. To better understand this, we can explore the psychology of happiness.

The search for happiness underpins much of what we do. We assume that if we "get what we want," then we'll be happy, but we often end up feeling as if something is missing. Maybe we don't really know what we want. We might get what we think we want, only to then find ourselves wanting something else, and so we start chasing again. Perhaps the problem lies in that constant search for happiness--the searching becomes a habit, leading to more searching. We are always looking for the next thing, and so nothing is ever good enough for us.

We usually assume that happiness comes to us from the world around us, but through such thinking we lose our power. Happiness is a state of mind. If we can transform our thoughts, we might discover that happiness was already there within us. Happiness comes when we stop searching for it. 

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