Welcome to the Daily Article Podcast for Tuesday, June 29, 2022.

I'm Chris Elkins with the Denison Forum, narrating today's article written by Dr. Jim Denison.

Gallup has published its Negative Experience Index for 2021 with the headline,

World Unhappier, more stressed out than ever.

The report is illustrated with a photo of a woman sitting with her elbows on her knees,

hands holding her hair, and eyes clenched in sadness and discouragement.

The headline is appropriate in that the negative experience index is higher than at any time since Gallup began doing this

research in 2006 and 50% higher than in 2007. Gallup's positive experience index also decreased for

the first time since 2017. These facts led me to expect the actual numbers to be as dire as

the photo accompanying the article. But the contrary is actually the case. The negative experience

index stands at 33, which means 67% of respondents are not negative about their lives. In fact, while the positive experience

index fell, it still stands at 69%. In 2021, 42% of adults worldwide said they experienced a lot of worry,

which means 58% did not. 28% experienced sadness, which means 72% did not.

And the Gallup survey average scores from 122 countries and areas, including Afghanistan,

where their positive experience index, understandably, stands at 32%, for example.

British scholar John Lubbock noted, what we see depends mainly on what we look for.

Some years ago, Janet and I led a study tour to Greece and Turkey.

Outside the ancient city of Ephesus, we visited a Turkish factory where we bought a decorative rug that hangs on the wall of my home study to this day.

During our visit, our group watched some of the weavers at work.

Their fingers moved so quickly that it was hard to follow their motions.

We were told that they could work for years on a single tapestry.

However, as I watched one of them work, I was singularly unimpressed with what she was making.

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