Are You Stressed or Sad? Gallup’s Research Reveals how people are feeling globally?
We have all felt the effects of stress or sadness at one time or another, but new research is showing that the experience of stress and sadness is now more prevalent than you think. Are you surprised?
According to the results of a recent Gallup research study, many people across the globe are stressed and sad. The results of this study tracked stress and sadness in 195 countries. Consequently, there’s a lot of room for improving how happy people are daily.
So what’s going on here? Why are we so unhappy despite living in modern times? Are there any patterns in this data at all?
The Numbers Don’t Lie
The world is suffering from war, inflation, and a once‐in‐a‐lifetime pandemic. Any of those factors would impact one’s well-being, but reports suggest the global rise of unhappiness started long before any of those issues made headlines (Gallup 2022). More specifically, unhappiness has been rising for a decade.
From a global lens, five significant contributors to the rise of global unhappiness: poverty, unsatisfactory communities, hunger, loneliness, and the scarcity of good work (Gallup 2022).
Let’s look at the numbers:
Two billion people live on insufficient incomes and another 2 billion are unhappy with where they live (Gallup 2022).
In 2014, 22% of people globally were moderately or extremely food insecure; now, that figure is 30% (Gallup 2022).
Gallup finds that 330 million adults go at least two weeks without talking to a single friend or family member.
One‐fifth of all adults do not have a single person they can count on for help.
People who are miserable at work are statistically more likely to experience negative emotions than someone who has no work at all.
Four in 10 adults said they experienced a lot of worries (42%) or stress (41%).
More than one in four experienced sadness (28%) and slightly fewer experienced anger (23%).
41% of adults worldwide say they experienced a lot of stress the previous
day.
There’s Hope
Whew, that was a lot of data! I think we can all agree that this data clearly suggests that we must act with great urgency to combat the rising levels of people reporting negative experiences daily.
Personally, I believe there’s hope through wellness, respectively, holistic wellness, with a focus on the whole person—mind, body, and spirit. Through this lens, I think we can better understand the value of wellness, restoring the well-being of the whole person and collective well-being.
It all begins with a solid wellness foundation. I didn’t always have a solid wellness foundation. Quite honestly, I didn’t even know or understand what wellness was. Along my journey of falling, being knocked down, making mistakes, and self-reflection, I began understanding the components of who I am and adding layers to my foundation.
So what exactly is a wellness foundation? A wellness foundation incorporates all the components of the whole person, which all influence each other. Beginning with the spirit reminds us of our divine nature, and allows us to explore our values, walk in faith, be flexible in change, seek connection, and have compassion for others. The spirit influences the mind, which includes our beliefs, thoughts, and actions. Finally, the spirit and mind influence how the body functions and communicates in the physical world. To maintain our foundation, we must get to know ourselves, continuously commit to giving attention to each dimension, and be open to all that is.
Of course, a wellness foundation is might not be the only answer to alleviating hunger. But imagine the impact we could make if we collectively adopted a “we” versus “I” perspective, helped our neighbors more often, we are able to walk more fully in our purpose, or even recognized and believe how divine we are.
Looking Forward
As we look forward, many opportunities lie ahead to create a brighter outcome. To achieve this, we must commit to improving the well-being of all people. I believe this innovative investment begins with: (1) examining the root cause of the problem, then (2) understanding how the problem affects the whole person, diverse groups of people, and the collective, and (3) implementing outside of the box approach that value accessibility, equity, inclusion and provide people the knowledge, tools, and resources to develop a solid wellness foundation that best meets their unique needs. Although this won’t be an easy task, we are all advocates, whether it’s at the individual, community, or system levels.
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