Why We Need a New Definition for Well-Being in 2025

The Happiness Illusion

The Story We Were Sold About Happiness

In 1938, Harvard researchers began tracking the lives of 724 men, following them for over eight decades in what became the world’s longest study on happiness. What they discovered defied conventional wisdom: happiness had little to do with wealth, status, or achievement — the very things most people spend their lives chasing. Instead, the most consistent predictor of well-being was the quality of one’s relationships.

Yet here we are in 2025, more connected than ever — and lonelier than ever.

A growing mental health crisis, skyrocketing rates of loneliness, and an entire generation raised on gamified validation (likes, retweets, views) suggest that something about our pursuit of happiness is broken. We are measuring happiness with outdated metrics — productivity, financial success, external approval — while the world around us is shifting beneath our feet.

Perhaps happiness was never meant to be a destination. Perhaps, like adaptability, it is a state of being that requires constant redefinition.

A Tale of Two Cultures: The Difference Between Aiming at well-being and Experiencing It

After 33 years in the US, I moved back to Madrid last August. What struck me most wasn’t just the difference in pace, but the difference in how well-being is approached.

In the US, well-being is an individual pursuit. You optimize, strategize, and work toward it. You schedule time to slow down. You plan family visits and social interactions. Being well is something to achieve.

In Madrid, well-being is embedded into the rhythm of daily life. It’s social first, individual second. You’re surrounded by family, not visiting them on occasion. Meals stretch for hours, not because anyone is forcing mindfulness, but because that’s just how it is. You don’t have to go somewhere to slow down — life itself is designed to move slower.

Happiness isn’t a project. It’s a practice. It happens in real-time.

Happiness as an Adaptation, Not a Goal

For centuries, Western culture has told a simple story about happiness: achieve X, and you’ll be happy. This is the arrival fallacy, a term coined by psychologist Tal Ben-Shahar, which describes our tendency to believe that happiness is something we reach — only to feel unfulfilled when we get there.

As Paul Millerd argues in The Pathless Path, the problem isn’t just the pursuit of happiness — it’s that we are chasing a version of success that was designed for an industrial-era society, not for human fulfillment.

The truth? Happiness is an ongoing process of adaptation.

• The people who find lasting well-being are not the ones who avoid difficulty.
• They are the ones who can rewrite their story when life inevitably changes.
• Happiness is not about reaching a point of ease, but about developing the ability to recalibrate, redefine, and reimagine what well-being means at every stage of life.

I think about my five kids. I wonder what happiness means to them. Will it be success? Freedom? Deep friendships? I watch them at concerts, laughing with their friends, making fun of the way I struggle with Snapchat, and I realize — they already know something many of us forget.

Happiness isn’t a far-off goal. It’s right there, in the joke they share, in the music they love, in the moment they are fully present.

Through the years, I’ve come to see happiness not as a journey, not as a goal — but as a state of being. Every day counts in defining who we are and what we make of the time we are given. It’s not about avoiding pain or chasing pleasure — it’s about finding meaning in both.

The Neuroscience of Happiness: Why Storytelling Matters

Our brains are wired for narrative. We don’t just experience reality — we interpret it, frame it, and assign meaning to it through story.

Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett explains that emotions are not fixed states, but predictions made by the brain. When we experience joy, sadness, or stress, it’s not just because of external events — it’s because of the way our brain interprets those events based on our past stories.

• If we tell ourselves that happiness means stability, then change will always feel like failure.
• If we tell ourselves that happiness is found in the pursuit, then growth becomes part of well-being itself.
• If we frame hardship as proof that we are failing, we will suffer. If we frame hardship as part of the human condition, we develop resilience.

Marcus Aurelius understood this over 2,000 years ago. He didn’t believe happiness was the highest goal — he believed in virtue. To him, the purpose of life was not to avoid suffering, but to develop the character to meet life’s challenges with wisdom, courage, and justice.

The Loneliness Epidemic & the AI Paradox

The irony of 2025 is that we have never had more ways to connect, yet we have never felt more alone.

• Social media allows us to curate our identities, but it often leaves us feeling hollow.
• AI assistants like ChatGPT and digital companions are getting better at mimicking human conversation — but will they replace real human connection?
• The movie Her, once a dystopian fantasy, is creeping into reality. What happens when technology becomes our primary emotional outlet?

In The Good Life, Harvard researchers found that the deepest source of happiness isn’t self-optimization — it’s relationships. Yet, in a world where AI can offer instant companionship, will future generations even prioritize real human connection? Will they mistake convenience for fulfillment?

We must ask ourselves: Are we designing a world that optimizes for ease, or one that fosters true well-being?

The Happiness Rebellion

If you feel like happiness is elusive, it’s not because you’re failing — it’s because the rules you were given are broken.

We’ve been sold a narrow, fragile version of happiness — one that crumbles when faced with uncertainty, loss, or change. It’s time to reclaim it.

Maybe happiness, as we understand it, is a modern invention — a product of a world where most of our survival needs are already met. Maybe we’re asking the wrong question altogether. Instead of asking how to be happy, we should ask how to live well.

Virtue is tangible. Wisdom, kindness, courage — these are things I can practice every day.

Happiness in 2025 will not belong to those who chase it, but to those who embrace the dynamic nature of life itself. It will belong to those who rewrite their stories, build deeper connections, and find meaning in the transitions.

Or, as Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us:

“There is no way to happiness — happiness is the way.”

The Wellness Paradox: When Happiness Becomes Another Productivity Metric

As I settled back into life in Madrid, one of the biggest shifts I noticed wasn’t just the pace of life — it was the absence of the constant pressure to optimize it.

In the US, even rest feels like something to track, measure, and improve.

• Your sleep score determines how well-rested you are.
• Your mindfulness app tells you whether you meditated “correctly.”
• Your fitness tracker nudges you to take more steps, even on the days your body is asking for stillness.

Well-being has become another productivity metric — another thing to optimize, another goal to chase.

But what if happiness isn’t something to achieve — but something to inhabit?

In Madrid, no one is biohacking their way to relaxation. No one needs an app to remind them to take their time at dinner and enjoy the company of friends well past the closing time at the restaurant. Here, you don’t go on a retreat to slow down — you live slow by default.

The contrast made me wonder:
👉 Have we over-engineered well-being to the point where it’s making us miserable?
👉 If happiness is an algorithm to optimize, does it ever actually feel like happiness?

In the next post, we’ll explore how the culture of self-improvement has turned well-being into a competitive sport — and why the pursuit of “becoming our best selves” is leaving so many people exhausted.

I’ve spent years exploring the concept of happiness — not just as an abstract idea, but as a lived experience. From The Good Life and Harvard’s research on well-being to The Pathless Path and the rejection of conventional success, from Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet to Plays Well with Others, each book has shaped my understanding of what truly matters. The more I read, the more I realized that happiness isn’t a reward at the end of a journey; it’s something we construct moment by moment. It’s not about avoiding struggle but about finding meaning in it.

Writing this isn’t about giving answers — it’s about sharing the questions that have shaped my own search for what it means to live well. If there’s one thing these books have taught me, it’s that happiness isn’t something you find. It’s something you practice.