Recently, I was having dinner with a group of friends who also work in mental health when the conversation turned to happiness. What stood out wasn’t that everyone wanted to be happier, but how differently we defined happiness. Despite the range of perspectives, one shared assumption kept resurfacing: Happiness is something we reach after checking off the right boxes.

My clinical experience and a growing body of research suggest that this way of thinking often works against us. Not because happiness is unattainable, but because it doesn’t function like an achievement to reach. Happiness is something built gradually through how we think, act, and connect rather than something we earn at the finish line.

With that in mind, it’s worth taking a closer look at what psychological and neuroscience research actually tells us: what happiness is (and just as importantly, what it isn’t), why we so often misunderstand it, and which everyday habits reliably support well-being.

One of the most important, and commonly misunderstood, points about happiness is that it is not simply the absence of depression. Decades of mental health research show that psychological distress and well-being are related, but they are not opposite ends of a single continuum.

This distinction is central to the dual-continua model of mental health, which proposes that reducing symptoms and building well-being involve overlapping yet separate processes (Keyes, 2014). Someone can experience fewer depressive symptoms without feeling satisfied, connected, or fulfilled. At the same time, it is possible to experience meaning, purpose, or moments of joy while still managing ongoing mental health challenges.

So, one pathway is focused on reducing pain,

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