The 5 Kinds of Happiness You May be Overlooking
How understanding your own sources of wellbeing helps you choose activities that truly make you happy
We’ve all heard that introverts tend to be less happy than extroverts. But that conclusion holds only if you define happiness in a very narrow way — the loud, exuberant kind of joy that lights up brain scans and personality surveys. As a person with a quiet and “highly sensitive” temperament — and a pretty high baseline level of contentment — I always scratch my head about these findings.
And when you look more closely, a different picture emerges: there are quieter, deeper forms of happiness that many of us (especially introverts) know intimately, and that rarely get counted.
I want to share these with you, because they may change how you understand your own wellbeing — and help you choose the activities that truly make you happiest.
Here are five alternative sources of happiness, around which to possibly orient your life: