It can be quite annoying being constantly told by so-called experts or scientists that we are too fat, don't exercise enough, need to let our feelings out more bla, bla, bla. Now we hear that being happy all the time is not always a good thing as too much happiness can lead to an early death, a study found.
The study found that children rated as "highly cheerful" by teachers died younger than their less cheerful classmates. People who are extremely happy tend to indulge in more risky behaviour such as taking drugs, drinking too much, driving too fast or even using up their life savings without thinking through the consequences of their actions.
And that's not the only downside to being overly joyous. Writing in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science, a team of psychologists say that people who are relentless in the pursuit of happiness can end up being worse off than when they started.
And people who read magazine articles with tips on how to be happy felt worse after watching a happy film, compared with those who were not given any mood boosting advice. This was probably because they had higher expectations of being happy, and when this did not happen, they felt cheated and disappointed, the researchers explained.
I wonder if I should mention this to my wife? Er...um...perhaps not. I don't want my life to become a misery!
