You might be inclined to think that attractive people are just naturally happy people, but a new study has shown that despite their long legs and beautiful locks of hair, straight teeth and symmetrical faces, even the world’s most beautiful runway models suffer from low self-esteem.
Here are some of the main takeaways that the study found relating to the happiness of beautiful people. Some of these might surprise you.
1) Happiness is Relative
One of the biggest takeaways from the study of beautiful people’s happiness levels was that happiness was relative amongst participants.
What makes one person happy, does not necessarily make another person happy. So while many beautiful people are perfectly happy, many more are not. The study revealed that being beautiful was not enough to sustain happiness overall.
2) Comparing Happiness Levels Makes You Unhappy
When beautiful people look at their lives and think they should be happy, it can actually make them even more unhappy.
Comparing the way you look or live to the way another person looks or lives can really bring you down. If you constantly tell yourself that you could be doing better, you’ll only depress yourself more.
3) Confidence Comes From Within
People who generated their confidence levels from something other than their appearance tended to be happier with life overall, than those who relied on their looks to get them through life.
This makes sense because we all change over time, and our good looks can fade as we age. If you put all of your worth in your pretty face, what will you have when you are 90 years old?
4) Look for What You Like, Not What You Don’t
One aspect of the study suggested that focusing on the negative things about yourself induced a feeling of unhappiness while focusing on the things you do like about yourself increase self-esteem levels and made people feel better about life in general.
5) Beauty and Success
While many people say that beautiful people find more success in life, people who are considered “average” do alright too.
The problem with this comparison is that the beautiful people tend to be out front in a “hey, look at me” kind of way, while the rest of us are just plugging away at our work trying to get the job done.
We are happy in our own ways, and maybe even more so because we find satisfaction in our work beyond what our physical appearance can provide for us.
6) Beauty is Relative
People who are physically attractive to one person might not be physically attractive to everyone. That’s a fact of science. So why do we put so much stock in our beauty? As if we can be considered beautiful by everyone. We can’t.
Not everyone is going to like the way our face looks. With that in mind, and the age-old truth of beauty is relative and only skin deep, remember that your beauty doesn’t make you a nice person.
It can’t keep you warm at night. It won’t do the dishes for you. It’s just a part of you. Some people might think you are attractive, and some people might not. You shouldn’t let that control or even impact your level of happiness.
7) Beauty Grows on Us
While physical beauty might not be in the cards for you, there are other ways to be beautiful. Personality goes a long way to creating beauty in your life. Some people find a sense of humor to be very attractive. And some people find intelligence to be very attractive.
Have you ever met someone and hated them immediately, but then over time became attracted to them? There are things about us that make us attractive beyond our looks, which means there are things about us that make us happy beyond our looks.
You might be inclined to think that if the runway models of the world are unhappy, there is no hope for the rest of us. But it’s simply not true. We make our own happiness, and it doesn’t have to have anything to do with what we see in the mirror each morning.