Oliver Burkeman's Happiness Is A Glass Half Empty

“It’s fine to celebrate success but it’s more important to heed the lessons of failure.” This quote by Bill Gates, possibly the most successful business man in the entire world, shows us just how valuable failure is in our lives. This article shows that happiness is often perceived in the wrong way by people, and therefore many people are unhappy, although they do not realize what they are doing which is causing them to not be content. Throughout Happiness is a Glass Half Empty there are examples of the writer, Oliver Burkeman, using different forms of emotion, moral values, and logic to define what happiness is and how to better focus on achieving true happiness. Emotion is a valuable tool that can be used to move the readers to invest more into the article. Burkeman shows just how much emotions can affect our life, and uses specific examples of …show more content…
The article shows that the reasoning element of all humanity has created false happiness in many people. While most people avoid failure at all costs because they are scared to fail, this article displays the example of weight lifters, who push themselves to the breaking point, then fail, all as a way to improve. The author compares this to everyday life and states that people shouldn’t be afraid to fail in their everyday life, because if they do fail there is always another chance to improve. In fact, studies show that those who fail are actually happier in the end. He uses relation between something that many people relate to and compares it to happiness and how to achieve it. Although common reasoning may point to being a perfectionist and being successful in all areas of your life, the author counters this view by showing that this is not necessarily the truth. He uses examples and stories that the entire audience can understand and relate to in order to get his point across successfully (Burkeman,