I’ve noticed that one reason many of us find it difficult to feel happy is that our threshold for happiness keeps getting higher.

For our parents, or even our grandparents, having enough food and being able to live safely could already make them feel happy. But the situation is different now. Society has become more materially abundant. Most of us no longer need to worry about not having enough food or convenient transportation.

As a result, we start to feel that everything should serve us and make our lives easier. But somehow, we are still not satisfied.

Society often tells us that we will be happy as long as we achieve material success. We should buy a bigger house, get a decent job, earn more money, and have a better lifestyle. Slowly, we become more demanding, almost like greedy monsters. Our standards for happiness keep rising.

We also become less tolerant when something goes wrong in our daily lives.

For example, your boss scolds you because you made a mistake at work, and you keep thinking about it for the rest of the day. You are late for school because of the bad weather. You spill coffee on your clothes, and suddenly you feel angry and believe that the whole day has been ruined.

Our brains often focus too much on the bad things that happen. It is as if we are always carrying a magnifying glass, making every negative experience look bigger while ignoring the good moments in our lives.

But have you ever sat down and thought about this?

Are there really no good things happening in your life?

Maybe you finally taste a dish you haven’t eaten for a long time, and it tastes exactly the way you remember.

Maybe you come across a beautiful sunset and some lovely clouds during a walk, so you take a quick photo to remember the moment.

Maybe a gentle and cool evening breeze blows across your face as you walk along the road.

Maybe a stranger greets you with a sincere smile, and for a moment, you can feel the kindness between two people.

Or maybe your headphones randomly play an old song that you haven’t heard for years but still love deeply.

These moments may seem ordinary. We may even think they are things we naturally deserve, so we often fail to notice them.

The reason we find it difficult to feel happy is not that happiness is too difficult to achieve. The important point is that there is no single standard for happiness. You have your own standard, and I have mine.

So why do we always treat society’s standards as our own?

When you change your mindset, the world may start to look different. You may begin to notice and cherish more of the small moments in your life.

In the end, perhaps we should stop chasing the difficult standards of happiness created by the outside world. Instead, we can turn our attention inward, remove the things we do not really need, and ask ourselves:

“Is this something I truly want?”

“Or is it simply a rule or standard that society has placed on me, making me believe it is a task I must complete?”

When you realise that bad things happening to you is a normal part of life, you may feel more at peace. Life is not perfect, and we need to learn to accept that.

Happiness can be easier to find than we think. It is all around us, as long as we are willing to slow down and notice it.

Those small, joyful moments are exactly what make you feel alive. Together, they shape what you feel, how you experience life, and who you are.