The Happiest People in America

Pollsters for the annual Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index interviewed 176,000 people in every state of America. They wanted to find which state had the happiest people.

Best results ever.

They asked questions related to five areas: 1) purpose and sense of happiness in what you do, 2) healthy, supportive social networks, 3) financial security and freedom from stress, 4) community safety and liking where you live, 5) having health and energy.

If we think the way the media and advertisers would have us think, the top states would be places like Hawaii and California, or maybe Florida. No way.

If we wake up and think the way (if I may say) God—and honest common sense—has perennially been telling and showing us how to live, we’ll understand why the results are thus.

North Dakota is the happiest place in America. Lest one think that’s a fluke, look at rest of the top five:  South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Montana. Not one of these places has the glamor of what media loudmouths would have us believe. And in the top ten, Hawaii is the only “paradise” state that made it–at number 8.

Happiness has far less to do with where you live than it does with what you do and whom you’re with.

Happiness is about good family and relationships, strong spiritual and social values, living with disciplined healthy habits in what we believe, think and do, and in how we spend money, eat, and relate to family and community. NOT sitting under palm trees. I live in Southern California and can attest to this.

The reasons behind these happy people seem straight from the Book of Proverbs. And from the common sense that God gave us.

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Photo credit:  ABC News, Gallup