A recent study shows that people are generally most happy before a vacation. This is probably due to their anticipation of the break.  Coming back from vacation returned happiness levels back to normal.

I believe there is a lot of merit in this finding. I’ve noticed that I always need something to look forward to in order to be happy. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be a long vacation. It could be a birthday party, a weekend trip with some friends, or even just planning some time with a significant other. Looking back, the times when I was unhappiest was when my life was stagnant, and I didn’t seem to be making progress toward anything.

Now I am going to go one even one step further and say that perhaps for some people, happiness is a function of the change in quality of life. (For all you math people: the derivative of the “Quality of life” function) So what I mean by this is that…people with many problems in their life but see their situation improving rapidly are more happy than people with -not so many- problems but experience little to no improvement in their life. This would explain why multi-millionaires and rock stars are some of the most depressed people in the world. Since they have already reached the “top”, their quality of life has nowhere to go except downward. Now this theory alone doesn’t explain why simple people with simple lifestyles seem to be the happiest, but I would imagine that they view the passage of time as an increase in their quality of life. Especially if they have children that they can raise and at some point can have families of their own.

So the next time that you’re feeling depressed or unhappy, ask yourself the question: “What do I have to look forward to?”