Having low expectations makes you happier

A short article in the New York Times reports that people in Denmark are happier than any other Western country. The reason? They don't expect good things to happen to them as much as people in other countries do, and when something good does happen, they're thrilled.

“It’s a David and Goliath thing,” said the lead author, Kaare Christensen, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense. “If you’re a big guy, you expect to be on the top all the time and you’re disappointed when things don’t go well. But when you’re down at the bottom like us, you hang on, you don’t expect much, and once in a while you win, and it’s that much better.”

Link

[#1 posted by lula_x , November 26, 2007 9:17 PM]

For anyone remotely interested in lowering your self expectations, I suggest checking out a great little book called "The Underachiever's Manifesto--The Guide to Accomplishing Little and Feeling Great", published by Chronicle Books. Lowering the bar made things seem so much more blissful....

http://www.chroniclebooks.com/site/catalog/index.php?main_page=pubs_product_book_info&products_id=5522&store=books