Why Chasing Happiness Is Not a Good Idea

Happiness is a construct that people try to attain, sometimes even spending the rest of their lives pursuing it.

Many would say that you can not buy happiness, but people are being sold happiness every day. No matter what form it may be, like a new gadget, a book, or a holiday trip, the point is that people do things that they think could make them happy.

However, happiness is hard to define by only using tangible things. In fact, happiness is an intangible, mysterious, construct. Chasing true happiness is like trying to get to sleep because it becomes less likely possible the harder you try.

Counterintuitive

A study by Iris Mauss at the University of California, Berkeley, asked the participants to rate how much they agreed with a series of statements regarding happiness. Mauss said that the people who scored high on happiness have been seeing each day for its last drop of joy but tends to be less satisfied with their everyday lives. They are also more prone to depression even on less stressful days.

In another experiment, Mauss had half the participants to read about the benefits of feeling good and have them watch a feel-good film about a professional figure skater. This group's focus on their own happiness had muted their joy compared to the second group who were asked to read a dry article about the importance of rational judgment, The Guardian reported.

The bottom line of these experiments is that the constant desire to feel happier could make a person more lonely. The pursuit of happiness can have strange effects on one's perceptions of time as the "fear of missing out" reminds people how short life is and how much time they spend on less thrilling activities.

A 2018 research from the University of Toronto showed that encouraging people to feel happier while watching a boring movie makes them more think about how time is slipping away from their hands.

The constant attention to one's mood stops them from enjoying the pleasures of everyday life. Dr. Bahram Mahmoodi Kahriz and Dr. Julia Vogt at the University of Reading, suggest that those who scored high in Mauss' questionnaire have a very high standard of happiness that they no longer appreciate the small and simple things that bring meaning to their life, which results in feeling unhappy.

ALSO READ: Defining Happiness in Positive Psychology

Strategies to Bring Contentment Could Backfire

Specific strategies to bring contentment could backfire, like visualizing your success. According to a study, this is counterproductive because positive fantasies most likely result in positive moods that lead to a sense of complacency.

For example, a study tracking the progress of students over the course of two months found that those who reported fantasizing about their success were less likely spend time to study, presumably because, at an unconscious level, they believe that they are on their way to success. However, they end up failing or perform worse overall.

Following the results of Mauss' study, people who engage in this type of thinking and behavior tend to experience symptoms of depression for months after failing.

Moreover, fewer and more realistic goals would help in achieve the success that leads to happiness. Resetting your expectations would help things in perspective by accepting those feelings of frustration and unhappiness because it is an inevitable part of life that helps a person cope better than constantly making them disappear.