What is happiness and can we pursue it?

Are you happy? What a silly, unusual question. But are you, why not, and should you even be? It may seem natural to presume that the pursuit of happiness is something that has been at the center of what it means to be human and to fulfill your life purpose. But it hasn’t. Happiness and the effort to bottle it up and sell it to the highest bidder is a relatively new journey.

For most of human history, most of our species were just trying to survive. Food, shelter, safety, and reproduction heavily outweighed such a presumptuous notion as personal happiness. Being a happy person started climbing the list only after all the basic needs had been met (for the majority of the population), and Mr. Maslow would agree.

A caveman was just trying to survive as humans have been doing since they got down from the trees. He wanted to get something to eat that day and succeed in not becoming food for some bloody-toothed beast. Even in the centuries closer to our timeline, happiness was still a prerogative allowed only to a handful of noblemen and women. At the same time, entire rural populations were still focused on making it through the winter, with cattle and family members all accounted for as the first flower budded.

Happiness definition and meaning

But since the question of happiness entered our sphere of interest, we've hit it hard, from all sides, trying to understand and perhaps manufacture happiness. It's been more than 80 years since the beginning of the multigenerational Harvard Study of Adult Development that started exploring what makes people happy and if the subjective feeling of happiness affects our everyday life, health, general well-being, and resilience. The answer is yes.

The current lead researcher of the study, Robert Waldinger, and his colleague, Schultz, in the book "The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness" (Waldinger & Schulz, 2023), explore happiness as a phenomenon concerning long-term and short-term feelings, as hedonic happiness and eudaimonic happiness:
 

• Hedonic happiness is the gratification in the now, the present moment. It is a very transient and impermanent feeling of joy related to getting something or having a good time.
   
• Eudaimonic happiness has roots in a deeper feeling of well-being, put into context by the giants of life satisfaction - meaning and purpose - and has more long-term connotations.

Will getting what we want make us happy?

So, where does the moral imperative to be happy always come from? Sit through a few commercials, open a magazine, or turn on the radio. We have been convinced happiness comes with a new pair of shoes, the perfect car, and just the right kind of tampons so you can skip joyfully through the daffodil fields.

The modern mainstream promise is - the more we have the happier we will be. But, the moment we get everything we want, we just move the bar and want more. A blissful state of “having it all” dangling just within reach, but we are not quite there, not yet. It's interesting how getting what we want never actually makes us happy, at least not for nearly as long as we’ve thought it would.

The material gain, possessions, money, and success we value so highly are quite inaccurate predictors of happiness, accounting for only 10%. This means that if you were to guess how happy someone is based on how good his or her life looks on paper and what they’ve got squirreled away in the bank, you would be wrong 9 out of 10 times, which is shameful even as a guesstimate.

So what is necessary to get happy or happier? Nothing. You have it hard wired in you but we forget to play this wire, strumming only the sad, melancholic minor tones out of habit. There is an explanation why this is the case. Our brain learns much faster from bad experiences than from good ones. It was a necessary evolutionary trait we had to develop to remember what, where, and who is dangerous - to stay alive. But although we don’t need this inside pessimist so much in modern society to file danger in an endless cabinet, it is still a hard habit to shake.

Faulty happiness simulator

Humans have evolved to reap the benefits of a large and developed brain with extra room for a frontal lobe. This brain region makes us the odd man out amidst all other species, with the ability to act as a simulator and imagine experiences before they happen. Basically, we’ve been blessed by the ability to remember the past, imagine the future, and be equally stressed about these as if they were happening now. These capabilities allow us to plan, arrange our day, and transfer our ideas into reality in a material sphere. But it also comes with a glitch; there is a catch. Our simulators are fundamentally flawed, and they tend to over-calculate how happy something will make us. It’s called the impact bias, and it is wrong in most cases.

If you were to ask a person what the best and worst thing could happen to them, what would be the most common answer? For most people, the answer would be somewhere along the lines of winning the lottery and having a terrible accident. However, studies encompassing just those two opposite poles have shown that they make no difference at all. Trauma that happened over three months ago and was processed and healed does not affect our general happiness. Similarly, lottery winners were less happy six months after winning the jackpot than the day before they bought the ticket. How is it even possible that a paraplegic and a lottery winner could experience the same degree of happiness?

Synthesizing happiness

What is happiness? It is not like a lost key or a wallet, not something to be found! We synthesize it! So this is the thing no one is telling you because the economy as we know it would collapse if you knew that not getting what you want could make you just as happy or happier as getting it. We learn to live with the things we’ve got andto be happy with them.

There was an interesting experiment where people were asked to rank Monet reproductions from those they liked the most to those they liked the least and, in the end, were given one reproduction as a gift but were told that they could only get their third or fourth choice. After being asked to rank them again after some time, all participants ranked the one they got higher than the previous time.

Similarly, we think that having a choice will make us happy.  Not really. The more choices you have, the more miserable you’ll be. No matter what you choose, you’ll always dwell on the fact that the options you didn’t could have been better, like the opportunity to choose between 40 different coffees in a coffee shop. No matter which one you choose, it will not make you happy. But when you only have one option, it will make you happy even if it is not your heart’s fondest desire.

Society doesn’t need you to be happy

Fred Luskin from the University of Stanford shared his thoughts about the achievement-dominated culture and the strange notion we all have in common - that big life events will bring us happiness. We believe we will be happy if we finish college, get a well-paid job, buy a big home, and get a Ph.D. or some other biggie. But the truth is - these will give only a temporary high that wares off quickly because there is more happiness to be found in seeing ourselves advancing towards a goal than actually achieving it. Also, if joy and happiness are simply on the other side of success, they are ultimately out of reach because the line by which we measure success slides further and further away the more successful we get.

Every billboard and ad screams at you that you must be happy and can be happy if you consume, and we suppose you can, superficial, short-lived hedonic happiness is still sort of happy. But if you are not happy consuming society’s products, there must be something seriously wrong with you, right? You are not doing all you can or buying all you should.

The goods presented to you as necessities are not necessary at all, and society doesn’t need you to be happy. This goal is pretty much only important to you and a few that love you. Society would rather you just blend in and obediently follow the rules because genuinely happy people tend to think for themselves, free from the blind zombie-like pursuit of smoke and mirrors that the grinning model is offering you. Being unhappy with the status Q is a social liability.

What makes people happy?

What makes me happy, what makes you happy, your friend or grandma, it may differ, but Dr. Luskin is convinced that an answer to how to feel happy has a general rule is: to focus on other people, meaning and purpose, being positive, and appreciating little things.

People matter. Too often, we let them slip away and let the bonds get broken because we were busy chasing a six-pack or a higher work position. We should try to be the best we can, but take some time out of the day to remember what and who is important to you (and maybe tell them). We also tend to dwell on the negative, but the next time something beautiful happens, Dr. Rick Hanson says to let it sink in, cherish it, ground yourself in the good, and make a habit out of doing so. In this way, you will change your current mood and rewire your whole brain with time.

Ignore the lemons life throws at you or squeeze the bastards by viewing the adversity as a challenge. By the way, there was no such thing as lemons; we created them ourselves. The original lemon was a hybrid between a male citron and a female sour orange (which itself is a mix of pomelo and pure mandarin). So, see, lemons are not “given” by life; they are created, just as most problems are.

Stress from all the life lemons flying around is not a bad thing in itself, as we have been taught. Moderate stress or short-term intense stress makes us perform better. it makes us alert and ready to cope with the situation, raises the heartbeat, and improves focus; it helps us grow and reach our goals, but only if we learn how to insert relaxation periods in between. Chronic stress is the problem. It never stops sending the signal to release cortisol, which plunges the amygdala into overdrive, starting to kill the hippocampal cells responsible for soothing the stress response Therefore, all work and no play makes Jack a nervous wreck. Relax.

But with practice and paying attention to how we feel, it is possible to come to the point where events or situations that would stress us before now don’t touch the inner core. Contrary to what your grandma’s doctor was taught, the brain is not static, it is plastic and can change and adapt. We can rewire our brains. We spend huge amounts of time taking care of our possessions and our bodies but neglect the most critical piece of the puzzle. Happiness can’t be bought. It has to be trained.

How to feel happy instantly? Matt Killingsworth from Harvard showed that we are unhappier when our mind wanders, even if you are missing the moment of something completely mundane you are doing now. If you want a simple tip on how to be happier in your daily life, it seems that the wisdom from old traditions was right - Stay in the Moment.

Happiness makes you more successful

Not the other way around. But what if you are a brooding kind of person by nature, and you like your cloudy disposition? That’s all right. About half of our personality is determined by genes, so we might have kind of gotten the shorter stick when sticks were dispensed. After all, melancholia worked for some great men, and we all love a good tortured anti-hero, but unless you sign your name Edgar Allan Poe, you might consider the benefits of turning that frown upside down.
 

Our brain actually performs better when we are happy. When we feel good productivity jumps up by a third, the bad doesn’t seem to affect us that much, even the activities or situations we would usually frown upon become easy and manageable. Dopamine is not just a feel-good chemical, but it is also the best activator of learning centers in the brain, as Shaw Achor says.

4 rules from positive psychology

If there is anything you take away from this tiny effort to make your life a little bit better may that be the next couple paragraphs, inspired by the happiness psychologist, Tal Ben-Shahar. He boiled down all the research on happiness to a few meaningful scientifically proven facts that might help you enjoy your life to the fullest.

1.      Let yourself be human

When we were children, we allowed ourselves to cry, laugh, have tantrums, or be silly. But as we grow up, the social conditioning kicks in, and we start to hide our true emotions. We smile when we are sad, and we don’t cry if we need to because we are too busy. We ignore the beautiful little fragments of the day. If you suppress the negative, it never goes away; it just grows until you can’t take any more.
 

No one ever said that you should be ecstatic around the clock. Give yourself the permission to feel the full range of human emotion. Journal if it helps. When we allow ourselves to feel it the bad starts to lose its power over us. Feeling it all does not mean you are unstable or weak it just means you are human. It is a strange kind of paradox. If you never get low, you will never experience the.

2.      Take a break

Stress will make you tougher, more resilient, and more susceptible to the joy after completing a task. Stop the insane multitasking and running around trying to get it all done. All of these tasks will still be here tomorrow when you are well-rested and ready to face them. Escape the burnout and give yourself a break.

Did you know that just leaving your email on and glancing at it every once in a while while performing some other task will make you lose 10 IQ points, the same as not sleeping for 36 hours? People from all walks of life have described the purest moments of joy. They call it the flow. These are the moments when you are completely focused, completely immersed in what you are doing, pure, unspoiled moments of living and experiencing fully. Get yourself more of those.

3.      Move your body

Move. The human body was not made to sit unless briefly resting, which was mostly done in an active squat position. We were made for walking, for running, and for constantly changing positions. A moderate amount of exercise a few times a week will echo through all aspects of your life. It is not just a means to reimagine your body shape. It helps you form more connections in the brain, reduces stress, battles depression, and floods your brain with feel-good chemicals. The psychiatrists say it is like taking a bit o of Prozac and a bit of Ritalin. It’s Mother Nature’s own medicine cabinet we’re trying to emulate with pharmaceuticals.

4.      Focus on the positive

And the final rule is. There may be a lot of things going under the surface, but you can choose the focus. The basement might be packed, and you can’t carry it all out right now, but you can choose what to shine a flashlight on. Focus on the positive. It is so easy to forget this little simple piece of advice while the phones are ringing, the laundry is waiting, the dog is barking, and your day is not nearly over. But just stop for a moment and allow yourself to feel gratitude and appreciate the fact that people want to call you, that there is someone to do laundry for, and that you are the whole world for your dog. It’s all how you look at it. The reality is neutral, neither good nor bad in itself, but it is always distorted by the lens through which you view it.

Conclusion

Happiness is not waiting somewhere on the shelf, squished between the zeroes on your paycheck slip, or reliant on how high that quarter bounces off your backside. It is a conscious choice to not take things for granted, savor all you have, and show kindness and compassion to those around you (who deserve it… we may be happy, but we’re not naïve). Then, we won’t have to be one of the people clutching a list of regrets when our number is up. Choose how you want to experience and live your days. No one can do this for you but you. Stay curious, stay beautiful, be happy, and enjoy living in your skin, dear friends.