The secret to happiness lies in what we share, not what we buy.

Prioritize doing activities you enjoy in person with people you care about rather than buying objects.

Spend time with the people you love, or could love if you were to get to know them better.

With unyielding inflation, economic uncertainty, and geopolitical friction sending collective anxiety levels higher and higher, many of us now consider genuine contentment an unaffordable luxury. Yet many decades of history serve as reminders that even amidst tremendous upheaval, human joy has never depended on what you can buy or external calm.

In this challenging environment, most of us want what we’ve always wanted: to be genuinely happy. Yet we are not willing to do what it takes to become happy.

The Miner’s Secret: How a 1938 Coal Worker Found Contentment in a World on Fire

A study from almost a century ago of the residents of the Northern English town of Bolton shows us the severe effects of not carving out time for our loved ones, a decision that most of us make every day. In the year my father was born, just over 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) to the east in Hungary, 1938—and then again in 2014—the residents of Bolton were asked what made them happy.

The most common ingredients of happiness among responses spanning 78 years were economic security and personal relationships, which were often tied together. Little mention was made of external events.

Joseph Roberts, a miner, despite answering the survey in 1938 when the threat of Hitler loomed large—the Nazi leader had already occupied Austria and parts of what was then Czechoslovakia—shared that what made him happy was returning from a day of hard work and spending time with his family.

“I see my kiddies and wife I am........

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