In our last 8 episodes, we have been talking about positive emotions and how to feel more positive. But what happens when we try too hard to be happy? Do you ever think a lot about how you can find happiness? Do you think you have an obsession with happiness? Or, do you feel happiness is out of reach?
Pressuring ourselves to be happy can actually backfire and make us feel worse! Constantly thinking about how life will be when we are happy can also lead us to expect too much from ourselves.
Researchers have referred to this constant pressure and thinking about happiness as “obsession with happiness” or “the happiness paradox”. They have found that trying too hard to be happy does not work to make us feel happy. In fact, trying too hard to be happy can actually make us get discouraged, increase rumination and negative emotions, and even put us at risk for depression!
So how do you not obsess about happiness? There are a few ways to not obsess about being happy. There are also a few ways to feel content in life! Here’s some info on how to feel more content.
I can’t wait to be happy someday. Someday soon. Why can’t I just be happy? I just need to make myself happier. I just need to do it. Life’s really not going to be any good until I feel happier. Remember that one time I was really happy? I just got to get back to that.
Maybe I shouldn’t be thinking about these things right now??
Desperate to be Happy
I’m Dr. Matt B, and these are your Emotional Minutes. Welcome back! We just did a whole series on positive emotions, and I think it is fair to say most people want to experience them more. However, some people constantly think about feeling positive or feeling happy. They think a lot about what will make them happy or try to think of several things that would make them happy or even try to will themselves to feel happy. Thoughts like “I gotta feel happy,” “oh, if I just felt happy,” or placing happiness as this grand thing that, once they attain, then their life will be much better.
This is understandable because we, as humans, pretty much all want to be happier. Most of us want to be happy most of the time, but constantly thinking about happiness or the next step to attain happiness or forcing yourself to feel happy can be counterproductive. The reason for that is focusing on happiness and what it will be like creates expectations of happiness that are high or put conditions of feelings that need to be felt to be happy. Often, those expectations are unrealistic, so they end up becoming something that the person can never meet. This can become pretty discouraging. Thoughts like “I’m never going to feel happy” or “how am I going to feel happy” might arise. This can lead to heavy discouragement or even feelings or symptoms of depression.
Obsession with Happiness
Researchers call this phenomenon obsession with happiness, and they’ve found that it’s counterproductive. Constantly thinking or obsessing about feeling happy or what step of your life needs to be taken to become happy, or the types of things that will someday be so grand when you do feel happier, is coined obsession with happiness.
Researchers have found that this sort of experience or feeling of happiness or joy can be pretty fleeting, meaning that you might have these great moments where you feel really happy, and that’s a great and enjoyable experience. Still, the joy comes and goes, or you might feel happy for a couple of minutes to a couple of hours. Happiness isn’t something that just sticks around and is constant. In our series on positive emotions, we talked about how we, as humans, can’t will or make ourselves feel happy.
When we think about this, we don’t think about feeling happy or having the emotion of happiness constantly. What the science of emotion thinks about is what we call that more lasting or sustained feeling of “contentment”. Contentment is a baseline level of feeling pretty good about your life. It is not constant happiness but feeling good and almost calmly confident about the things that you have in life and about yourself and your well-being.
Attaining Contentment
So how do I attain contentment, or how do we attain contentment? Contentment isn’t something you can just sit and think, “hey, let me feel content” or “let me feel better about life.” It’s also not something to think of in the future, such as “once I feel better about things,” “once I feel content with my life,” or “the world will be great when…”.
With contentment, it’s more about is a lot of what we discussed in those positive emotion episodes. It’s about doing things that might be enjoyable, meaningful, or give you a good or positive feeling in your life—doing those things for their own sake. Contentment is almost the byproduct or the bonus of those activities. It’s doing and enjoying those activities or intentional behaviors you might engage in for their own sake.
Activities to Become Content
Contentment comes from things that might be enjoyable, meaningful, or engaging for you and then feeling content as a product or a result of those behaviors. It comes naturally on its own after you’re constantly intentionally doing things you enjoy or love. This is similar to the strategy of behavioral activation that we have covered.
For some of those things, you can include other people, and bonding can also occur, so you get social support out of the experience. You don’t necessarily have to include other people if you don’t want to or don’t have others to include. Feelings of contentment can come either way.
Summarizing Obsession with Happiness
Hopefully, this was helpful in talking about obsession with happiness and how obsessing with how it might feel to be happy can be counterproductive. It can also lead to lower well-being and even symptoms of depression. But engaging in enjoyable, meaningful, engaging activities for their own sake can bring contentment as a byproduct.
I’m Dr. Matt B., and these are your Emotional Minutes. I’m going to get back on the bike and head home. Thanks for reading and watching. We’ll see you next time!
