Women and Happiness

Over the past month, you've probably come across quite the conversation about happiness studies. And three weeks ago, I set out to discover whatever I could about this subject, as it applies to our youth.

I've found that buying into individual tales of difficulty and challenges only serves to add to the burden of overcoming life's obstacles and improving one's experience of well being.

In the course of our research for Find Your Strongest Life, we interviewed many women who had created a fulfilling, satisfying life. Here are four of the most distinctive pieces of advice that were shared.

So women are not as happy as they used to be. That's what Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers claim in their much-touted book, The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness.

Something positive is happening among American women, and it's largely happening online in "micro communities," and then in large gatherings. Micro communities of powerful women are working together.

The world's fully of beautiful, talented, and creative beings. We can't always be the best at everything we do, but we can be ourselves. This we have control over. This is more reasonable.

My experience in working with thousands of individuals over the past 30 years leads me to believe there is very little correlation between material world success and happiness or fulfillment.

We interviewed women who had bucked the "happiness decline" and who were living lives in which they looked forward to the day ahead, they frequently got so caught up in what they were doing that they lost track of time.

Is it possible for women today to be independent, ambitious, successful career women and at the same time still be taken care of and "protected" by a partner?

To those of you reading this and thinking "I can be happier. I want to be happier in my life," here's the prescription.

In 2007, I traveled around the country with Marcus Buckingham. After reading many of the comments from unhappy women, I can't help but wonder if they would be happier had they attended a girls' school.

If you find it hard to relate to the gradual decline in women's happiness, if you always feel focused and successful, well done to you. Just know that, in aggregate, the next generation of women doesn't feel as you do.

Having a child is the worst economic decision a woman can make, in part, because workplace discrimination against mothers is the strongest and most open form of gender discrimination.

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Over the last 40 years or so, life is not trending toward more fulfillment for women; life is, in most ways we can measure, becoming more draining instead.