Culture

5 Reasons Why Americans Are Miserable

How did we get here?

Photo by Francisco Gonzalez on Unsplash

We Americans are a strange breed. Granted, there are many benefits of living here. I can’t think of a better place to get rich, after all, we live in a place that protects and allows the wealthy to thrive at the expense of our overall health.

But that's the problem. Everyone is trying to get to the place where the system works for them but is frustrated with how to get there. Traveling the world, I would Americans are undoubtedly the most stressed out and miserable people by far.

Here is a list of the top 5 reasons why:

Compare and Despair

We all know the old story of “keeping up with the Joneses”, that relentless quest to keep our standard of living equal to or above who we see as our peers. The problem is, at the larger scale, a lot of this activity has become quite passe and people scoff, thinking and saying, “I don't care what car or house my neighbor has, I’m not in that game.”

You are though. The only difference is that these comparisons have gone more underground into smaller comparisons. Because of social media, it’s no longer keeping up with your neighbors, it's competing with everybody in the world, but with more micro-comparisons. Now it’s an issue of what…