How We’re Learning to Be Happy With Less – Yahoo! News

More good news today…

It would be a major achievement for people in the U.S. to start appreciating what they have and not lust for more “stuff”.

The economy is still in rehab, but it doesn’t bother us all that much any more. In fact, we seem to be feeling nearly as good as we did before that awful recession messed everything up.

That’s what Americans have been telling the Gallup polling organization–and the nation’s mood suggests that the recession may have made us a wee bit heartier. We seem to be happier with less, for one thing, and we may even be getting more satisfaction out of the “little things” that took a back seat for a while to fancy cars, splashy homes, and tell-everybody vacations.

Gallup’s “well-being index” shows that Americans felt more happiness and less stress in 2010 than they did in 2009, which isn’t surprising, since 2009 was the year the economy hit bottom, unemployment surged, and the stock market hit a 13-year low. What is surprising is that the latest well-being numbers are comparable to those of February 2008–which was a high point before the nation’s mood began to sour and then turn downright grim as the financial panic hit in the fall of that year.

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So why are we feeling just as content today as we did during better economic times? Maybe because we’ve changed our expectations and placed less importance on economic gain. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not suggesting that utopianism trumps consumerism. But Americans do seem to be saying they can be just as satisfied in an austere economic environment as they once were in an indulgent one. In addition to economic factors, Gallup’s well-being index also measures things such as the way people evaluate their own physical and emotional health, and whether people feel like they’re struggling or thriving. And those metrics suggest that more people have learned to be happy under tougher economic conditions. The percentage of Americans who feel they’re thriving, for example, is 54 percent in the latest survey. And the percentage who say they’re struggling is 43 percent. Both of those levels are better than they were at the beginning of 2008, when Gallup began doing its well-being surveys.

More:   How We’re Learning to Be Happy With Less – Yahoo! News.