Everyone deserves to be happy. But the fact is that we’re living in a society where depression and anxiety are on the rise, especially among those in their 20s.
And it doesn’t need to be that way.
We live in a society of changing times – what we learn from school and parents doesn’t always prepare us for the real world, and how to build a life to be happy. We simply aren’t taught a lot of the fundamental skills we need for happiness.
The media could do better. And that’s where happymess magazine comes in.
While it’s still an area of new scientific research, there are a lot of indicators saying that happiness comes from us living a life that is true to our values, having a feeling of control in our lives, having confidence in ourselves and being part of a community.
But the things is, in our culture, we’re not taught how to do this. We’re taught to buy things to make us happy, rather than join a community or to learn hobbies to inspire and empower us. We buy things we don’t need for short-term happiness, which puts us in a hamster wheel of short term leaps of happiness, which puts us in debt which leads to stress. We aren’t taught how to reflect on our passions, goals and dreams and turn them in to realities.
On top of this, It’s really hard to feel in control of our lives if we’re living paycheck to paycheck because we’ve never learned financial literacy. It’s hard to feel confident if we’re only listening to voices that tell us that we’re not enough because we’re comparing ourselves to each other’s polished instagram feed.
Happymess is a magazine for young Aussies that intends to help break apart these barriers.
We talk about small ways to live help live our life by our values, we explain money and budgeting, talk about mental health and physical health, and how to work on conquering the voice in our head that holds us back from doing the things we want.
We know that not everyone enters the world on an equal playing field and not everyone learns these things in school, or from their parents. But the game isn’t over. There are more places to learn some of the fundamental skills you need to build happiness. We hope to be one of those places.
Happymess is centred around three key ideas: health and happiness, learning about money, and living life to reduce our harmful impact on the planet.
We believe that work on our happiness we need to learn:
- how to look after our mental health and have a healthy self-esteem
- a growth mindset: that we’re not stuck with the skills we’re born with, but we can learn
- how to eat properly to fuel our body and mind, and how exercise fuels our brain
- about how to set goals and dreams, and break them into small achievable targets
- how to learn new skills, to build up self-confidence based on experience
- how to manage money, to have a safety net and reduce one of life’s major stressors
- how turn our values, like being environmentally-conscious, into daily habits.
And that’s what we want to share in happymess magazine.
In short, a few of the steps you have take to lead a happy, messy life.
