Happiness Is Overrated

32 people had breakthroughs this week. Will the next one be you?

Two things for you to think about

Happiness is like being cool: the harder you try the less it’s going to happen.

So stop trying. Start living.

“No man chooses evil because it is evil; he mistakes it for happiness.” – Mary Shelley

Two things for you to ask yourself

What have you given up in your life to chase happiness? Was it worth it?

One thing for you to try this week

This week, stop chasing happiness in one area of your life. Then let me know how it goes.

New Podcast Episode: Happiness, Solved

Everyone’s obsessed with being happy—but what if that obsession is the very thing making us miserable? In the latest episode of Solved, Drew and I explore what actually makes us feel good—and why most of us are chasing it in all the wrong ways.

We unpack what philosophers like Aristotle and the Buddha got right thousands of years ago—and how modern science is just now catching up. We talk about hedonic vs. eudaimonic happiness, why more money and status don’t necessarily move the needle, and why most self-help advice completely misses the point. Happiness isn’t something you get. It’s a side effect of doing the right things for the right reasons.

So, if you’re tired of chasing “more” and ready to actually feel a little less miserable, this one’s for you.

Listen to Solved: How to Finally Let Yourself Be Happy

New Course: Happiness, Solved… in 25 days

The truth about happiness? It’s not a feeling you chase—it’s a habit you build. That’s what we dive into this month on the Solved podcast, and what you’ll practice daily inside my premium membership Momentum.

In Momentum, we break the Solved podcast down into bite-sized pieces with daily action prompts, challenges, and tasks so you’re not just gaining knowledge, you’re making progress.

Think of it like happiness strength training. 10–15 minutes a day of reps in the form of small wins, reflections, and experiments. We’ll even throw in some “Happiness Side Quests” to find out what actually lifts your mood, not just what sounds good in theory.

By the end of the month, you’ll have adjusted your expectations, attitudes, and habits around happiness—and developed a personal happiness plan you can take with you for life.

And don’t worry. This is no toxic positivity parade. We’re getting honest and real about what normal happiness looks and feels like. So you can build a life where it shows up the way it’s meant to—as a natural side effect of all your other choices.

It’s only $24.99 per month to join, and annual members do get a sweet discount. After all, you won’t overhaul your life in a single month. But sticking with the daily action steps and community inside Momentum for a year or two—that’s where real, lasting change happens.

Jump into Happiness, Solved inside Momentum today…

…And soon you’ll know what our member Sarah meant when she said: “It’s the first personal development tool that’s actually helped me build momentum, instead of making me feel like I have to overhaul my entire life before lunch.”

Last week’s breakthroughs

In last week’s newsletter, I asked you to let go of an imagined problem in your life.

Emi let go of a self-imposed deadline:

I recently turned 27, and I’ve been struggling since with the feeling that I’m running out of time—like death is now breathing down my neck as I’m getting closer to my 30s. Like I urgently need to hurry up to fulfill all my goals and dreams before it’s ‘too late.’ I think that if, for some reason, I don’t accomplish these personal goals while still in my 20s, then that means I failed. It’s funny because no one is putting this expectation on me but me, and I easily forget that.

It feels good to have a sense of urgency, to not feel super relaxed, naively thinking ‘I have all the time in the world,’ but I’m making it so much harder on myself by imagining a time bomb always a few feet away, reminding me that the clock is ticking.

This imagined problem has not only given me unnecessary stress, but I feel less present in my everyday life—with my family, friends, and in my relationship.

This newsletter gave me the pause I needed to reflect on how it’s just me creating a scenario of a doomed future by adding all this pressure on an age. I was reminded to be grateful for what I have, to be happy for the progress I am making, to enjoy the moments I get to live right now.

Our next reader is letting go of old fears:

Since moving to California and accepting a new job as a one-on-one para in an SDC classroom, I’ve had this creeping fear that I made a mistake, that I won’t be able to handle the emotional weight of the job, that I’ll get depressed again like I did when I was teaching in Texas, that I’ll feel stuck.

But when I take a step back, I can see that some of those worries might be imagined, or at least magnified by fear. I haven’t even started yet. I’m already bracing for impact, assuming the worst, projecting old pain onto something new. And while it’s true that I’ve struggled before, it’s also true that I’ve grown since then. I’ve made this move for a reason: to start fresh. To build a life that feels more aligned with who I am.

So maybe the real imagined problem is the story I’m telling myself. That I’m destined to burn out again, that I can’t handle hard things, that I’m alone in it. In reality, I have gained more awareness, better boundaries, and greater clarity about what I need. I’m not the same person I was before, even if those fears still try to convince me otherwise. And maybe this job isn’t a mistake. Maybe it’s a chance to learn, to connect, to help, and to grow without losing myself in the process.

Finally, Melanie is refusing to get caught up in terror:

This one hits close to home. My son was in a serious accident in which he almost died. Obviously the terror and shock I felt when I got to the scene are normal and understandable. As I teetered on the edge of insanity, I acknowledged that he could be dead, might die, or might never be the same. That acceptance jolted me back to reality and I took action to help my son until the ambulance arrived.

This story is still unfolding (my son is doing great and his recovery is ongoing ten months later). The ‘suffering from imagined troubles’ bit resonates because, after the initial horror of the accident and the hospital transfer and getting settled into PICU, my son started improving rather linearly, which brought so much hope and stomped out a lot of the darkness. I was present and had surrendered to everything while advocating for my son.

As time passed, I started experiencing delayed processing; my nervous system became prickly. I became afraid of everything. I am lucky to have the mental positioning to talk myself down countless times per day. But there’s a way in which I’ve become hypersensitive to every way in which a person can be injured or killed, and yet, I have to allow my kids and my husband to live.

This is all imagination of course—my family is safe and fine. I realize that with ‘real’ trauma there are many layers, and this is a bit different from fixating on a jerk at work or some other enhanced drama. My point in sharing all of this though is that the principles you’ve shared apply even to truly serious problems.

My nervous system has good reason to be leery. I can’t fully control it or prevent the fear of everything, and yet it’s still within my power to disarm the terror as it creeps in, over and over, and prevent it from ruling my decisions. And though the frequency hasn’t diminished much, the intensity of these feelings has.

As always, send your breakthroughs by simply replying to this email. Let me know if you’d prefer to remain anonymous.

Until next week,

Mark Manson

#1 New York Times Bestselling Author
My Website – My Books – My YouTube Channel – My Podcast