The Pursuit of Happiness

The dictionary definition of happiness is “a sense of well-being, joy or contentment.” Happiness is a concept that has a completely different meaning to every person that you meet. In the age of social media, we are constantly fed other people’s ideas of happiness and often feel compelled to compete with them.

Other people’s illusions of happiness are difficult to avoid every time you unlock your phone and it is easy to become discontent about your own life when you are bombarded with beach selfies and brand-new cars while you are eating your lunch from a Tupperware at your desk.

One of the biggest problems faced in a social media-oriented world is that we measure our own happiness in an unhealthy way. Social media gives us a glimpse in to other people’s lives, but it does not give the complete story. It so easy to see a snippet of someone’s day through a smiling selfie and think that they are on top of the world, but this is quite often not the case.

Comparing yourself to others on social media by stalking selfies which have been filtered and retouched or staying up to date with social events via Facebook can do little to help your self-esteem. It can also lead to you critically comparing your life with other people’s and using others’ posts as measures for success and failure.

To conclude, be yourself, everyone else is taken* try to worry less about what other people are up to and do not define success to the amount of likes you got on  your most recent Insta post.

Happy Monday everyone!

*Ironically this would make a great Instagram caption, thanks Oscar Wilde.