Britons are staying happy by divorcing themselves from the fortunes of the wider world, according to research for the Guardian that shows people are increasingly “taking responsibility for our own happiness and finding joy in small, everyday moments”.
After several years of exhaustion, hypervigilance and anxiety caused by global events, 70% of people polled said they felt like “we’ve lived through a collective trauma”. But when asked to rate their happiness, the majority said they were doing all right: 91% felt “happy or OK”.
“We are a nation of self-improvers; after a long period of instability and insecurity, we’re taking responsibility for our own happiness and finding joy in small, everyday moments,” said Imogen Fox, the chief advertising officer at the Guardian, which commissioned the research.
When respondents were asked about the outside world, there was “a sense that we’ve lost stability; that the future will no longer be better than the past”, the researchers found.
One respondent from Birmingham, Jack, said: “It’s like the world happened all at once. We had Brexit, then the pandemic, then proper Brexit when we actually left, then vaccines, then Partygate, then Ukraine, then the cost of living.”
But nearly three times as many respondents rated their personal life as “good” compared with the “world out there”.
And although eight out of 10 think their personal life will stay the same or improve, the same number think the “world out there” will stay the same or get worse. This showed a nation that was “personally optimistic, nationally pessimistic”.
Seventy per cent are just getting on with life and worrying less about what they cannot control, the research found. Half of people said they were getting outdoors more over the last two to three years, and the same proportion said living well meant focusing on mental health and self-care.
The research was based on a representative survey of 2,600 UK adults aged 18 to 65 as well as diaries and interviews with a smaller group. It is published on Wednesday in a report titled Shift Happens.
