Finding happiness has become one of the biggest goals of modern society. There are books everywhere on the topic, along with courses, gurus, inspirational quotes and the like.
Many of the ideas focus on trying, on finding just the right technique or angle and sticking with it. You don’t just arrive at a state of happiness and stay there either. Instead, happiness is something that you need to work on continually – or it will slip out of your grasp.
Does that idea sound draining to anyone else?
Researchers are beginning to question the idea. They suggest that, for many people, the active pursuit of happiness has the opposite effect. It can make people feel stressed, sad and like a failure.
In a sense, this isn’t too surprising.
If you’re constantly focusing on a goal and never seeming to get there – feeling bad about yourself seems like a common outcome.
There can also be a frustrating sense that you’re running out of time.
Focusing on your happiness is also likely to make you more aware of when you are happy and when you’re not. It’s easy to get frustrated at the times where you are not, which isn’t helpful in the slightest.
The Inward Nature of Seeking
The pursuit of happiness is a very inward goal. People often spend considerable time examining their emotions, paying attention to how they feel in given situations.
While there is nothing wrong with the idea per se, it doesn’t produce good outcomes.
When you’re focused on your own happiness and emotions, it’s more difficult to fully engage in the events around you. The same happens with other people. You may find that you connect with them less when you interact, as part of your attention remains on your emotions.
This can lead to a sense of loneliness and isolation. You may also be faster to disengage with people because you are hyper-aware of the short-term impacts that they have on your emotions.
The pattern doesn’t help your happiness much either. After all, social connection is important an important aspect of happiness, mental health, and even physical health.
Are We Being Realistic?
One of the biggest challenges with happiness may be our expectations. Discussions on happiness are often unrealistic. People end up expecting to feel happy most or all of the time. Alternatively, they may expect to often feel extremely happy.
When real life doesn’t match up to those goals, the natural response is disappointment.
In fact, any difference between how you think you should be feeling and how you are feeling can have negative effects on your emotional state.
Social media can make this problem worse. It’s easy to look at the images that other people post and think that they are doing so much better than we are.
Yet, social media places a filter over people’s lives. You never get a true picture of how they are doing. The comparison between your life and the experiences of others isn’t very useful anyway.
Focusing on the Now
Another issue is the elusive nature of happiness. If you’re seeking happiness as a goal, then there is no arrival point. Instead, there is often a sense that you should be happier than you are or that you should be happy more often.
For example, when people think about the things that they could do to be happy, they often end up stressed that there isn’t enough time to do those things.
Meeting the goals doesn’t help either. As many people can attest, things rarely bring the happiness that you expect them to. You might even end up less happy, as you’re disappointed by the gap between what you expected to feel and reality.
What’s more, when you are happy, there can be a focus on prolonging that happiness.
In contrast, letting go of the struggle to be happy can make people more content and happier on average. It becomes easier to enjoy the natural good moments when they arise and not to stress about the bad ones.
The Transient Nature of Emotions
An important part of this topic is that emotions ebb and flow over time. They don’t tend to remain consistent and they often respond to things that we’re not consciously aware of.
While happiness is a nice emotion, it’s also not something that you should be feeling all of the time. Other emotions are important too, including the so-called negative emotions.
People who take a less judgmental approach to emotions tend to find that they are more satisfied overall. The practice makes it easier to accept the ups and downs that come with life.
Judging ‘negative’ emotions less can also mean that they pass more quickly.
This links into the practice of self-compassion, which involves an aspect of acknowledging and being kind to yourself about what you are feeling.
A Personal Aside
This topic rings true for me personally, due to a similar experience.
I’ve never really been a seeker of happiness in the way that some others are. More than anything, my focus has been on avoiding the worst parts of depression.
One of the key shifts came from not focusing on my mood every day. It took a while, but I stopped evaluating whether I was up or down, whether I was doing okay or not. I started trying to live and move within moments instead.
If I tune back in on how I’m doing, then I do notice that the emotions and sensations of depression are often still very present. But, when I shift away from paying attention, it’s like they fade into the background.
By not examining my emotions all the time, it seems easier to let the bad ones simply pass by.
Looking to the Future
The idea of dropping the pursuit of happiness doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t take steps to improve your life. Far from it. Making long-term decisions to improve happiness is still very important. Likewise, happiness is an important consideration in many significant decisions.
It’s just that, on a day-to-day level, focusing on happiness as the most important goal tends to cause more harm than benefit.
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