Essay On The Pursuit Of Happiness

On a daily basis, humans are faced with the questions: “What makes a person happy? How does a person achieve happiness? What is the pursuit of happiness?” The pursuit of happiness has become an ever growing industry through things like “ways to happiness” books and life coaches according to Richard Schoch, the factors to achieve happiness are valued at around $18 billion dollars. This amount of money being spent on happiness is a right of people in America; it is the right of Americans to have a pursuit to their happiness as stated in the Declaration of Independence. But how does a person get to that point of happiness. What factors lead to happiness? Researchers have conducted numerous studies to find what factors inhibit how a person pursues

An old saying is that, “Money cannot buy you happiness,” but platforms like social media have led people to believe money is a positive inhibitor towards happiness. Happiness, in fact, does not equate to wealth and researcher, Claudia Wallis, has used many experiments to prove this in her paper “The New Science of Happiness.” Wallis’ polls show that the US is at an average of seventy­eight percent with being happy most or all of the time and 80% of being happy most or all of the time for pay grades ranging from $35,000 to over $100,000 a year. This poll pushed her to conclude that, “Americans are overwhelmingly happy and optimistic people, regardless of income” (Wallis). Although money is good in numerous of ways like stability, it still will never equal to happiness. Research conducted by Psychologist, Edward Diener, has proved that, “once your basic needs are met, extra money does little to increase happiness” (Wallis). Yes, with wealth you can live lavishly and buy luxurious vacations, but what do that will not make you happy unless you have people you care about to share that moment