A Different Way of Pursuing Happiness

The world seems unhappy. Certainly, when we look at the results from a global wellbeing survey conducted by Gallup across 142 countries in 2023, it seems that our levels of unhappiness represented by stress, worries and negative emotions has been steadily increasing over the last two decades. On the same note, we are also on a relentless pursuit of happiness as evident by the ginormous valuation of the global self-improvement market of approximately USD 50 billion in 2024. Even though self-improvement comes in many forms such as life improvement, career development, and health improvement, the bottom line is that we are seeking to be happier.

What happiness is

Happiness is a state of being where we feel joy, positive emotions and contentment. There are two categories of happiness, one is hedonic which is joy that is felt in the moment and it can be a fleeting experience. The other is eudaimonic which is having the sense that your life has meaning and purpose and sense of contentment of your life in general.

In today’s instant gratification culture, there has been an emphasis on creating hedonistic happiness through focussing on external satisfaction such as buying more things and having more experiences such as travelling. In a sense, you could see it as a McHappiness as the focus is acquiring happiness quickly and easily akin to how fast food is designed to be.

That said, eudaimonic happiness has its fair share of followers who are seeking a deeper meaning and purpose in their lives. The pursuit of eudaimonic happiness often requires longer periods of time and more soul searching as compared to hedonistic happiness. In a way, we could compare it to Italy’s slow food movement such that in contrast to fast food, slow food are often traditional in origins and most importantly, cooked with good produce, love and time. The idea is that this experience brings a sense of meaning and purpose to the people who create it and the people who consume it.

Regardless of how one experiences happiness however, there are benefits to both types of happiness. For example, research suggests that hedonic activities may help us to feel more positive and more satisfied with life. Eudaimonic activities on the other hand can help us to feel like we are in flow, have a sense of meaning in our lives which leads to higher life satisfaction.

The dark side of happiness

At this point you might think that since happiness is beneficial to our wellbeing then shouldn’t we aim to be happy all the time? Like most things in life however, too much of a good thing reduces the benefits we experience and here are two negative effects of a hyperfocus on happiness.

1. Too much happiness reduces your ability to handle challenges

You’ve heard of the term, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger? When we experience only positive emotions all the time and little negative emotions, we can become emotionally inflexible. This means that we find it difficult to adapt to life’s challenges. However, research suggests that if we experience some negative emotions along the way, we build up small amounts of resistance like a vaccine. As a result, we become more emotionally resilient and able to handle life and emotional challenges.

2. Happiness often evades the pursuer

Naturally, happiness doesn’t appear from thin air and for us to experience some sense of happiness takes effort on our behalf. However, when all we focus on is happiness, we can feel quite miserable indeed. For example, research by Zerwas and colleagues found that valuing happiness in itself does not reduce our wellbeing but when individuals start judging themselves on whether they are happy or what can they do to be happier, they experience a dip in their wellbeing and they feel less happy. This means that whilst it is beneficial for us to value happiness, it is less beneficial for us to judge ourselves on our levels of happiness.

Now that we have seen that there are benefits and negatives to pursuing happiness, what can we do about it?

How to change your perspective about happiness

A key factor to managing our perspective on happiness is recognising that happiness is a fleeting experience and not a permanent state. Furthermore, we also need to accept that the impermanence of happiness is not a bad thing nor is it abnormal. In East Asian cultures such as China, Japan and Korea, emotions do not exist in one extreme end or the other. Instead, it exists in a spectrum and thus negative as well as positive emotions are accepted as the norm and part of everyday life.

We also need to learn to adapt and be flexible with our emotions and the challenges we may face. For example, most of us will go through life with some successes and some disappointments. However, overcoming challenges are the ways in which we grow stronger, which is how hero stories are created. Similarly, our emotions need to be challenged for us to grow. After all, the good and the bad are all interconnected, if we do not know what the bad feels like, how can we appreciate the good?

In terms of flexibility, we also need to acknowledge that there are other positive emotions other than happiness such as pride in our achievements (in healthy doses) and gratitude. Research suggests that experiencing a range of positive emotions is beneficial for our physical health as people who report a wide range of positive emotions also enjoy less inflammation in their bodies. This means that we do not need to focus only on happiness to feel good.

Finally, the way of seeking happiness in the modern world is largely focused on the self, or individual happiness such as personal achievements. However, this individualism can lead to feelings of isolation, and instead of feeling happy about oneself, there is a sense of comparison with others who seem to be achieving more. Therefore, the more we achieve which should bring us happiness, the more we feel we need to achieve even more and thus we feel less happy. On the other hand, if we only feel happy by caring for others and not ourself, there is a risk of caregiver’s burnout or compassion fatigue which lowers our wellbeing.

A way that we can balance this out is by doing something nice for others and for ourselves. For example, research by Waytz and Hoffmann showed that when participants are asked to do either good deeds for others, think moral thoughts such as wishing other people success or treat themselves to perhaps a nice massage, all three activities created a positive effect on the participants such as greater happiness and life satisfaction. Crucially, all three activities contributed to happiness in different ways. The self-care treatment such as a massage provided hedonic happiness whilst doing good deeds and thinking moral thoughts contribute to eudaimonic happiness such as feeling more purposeful.  This means that happiness comes from different sources and so we do not need to just rely on isolated sources to be happy.

In conclusion

Happiness is not a single-faceted thing to conquer and acquire. We certainly cannot acquire happiness by just owning more stuff nor achieving more. There are both benefits and negatives to chasing happiness but there are ways to mitigate this by changing our perspective on happiness. As Bruce Lee said, “Be water, my friend”. We need to go with our flow of emotions and not get stuck on being happy all the time. We need to adapt to situations in life and grow with the challenges and increase our emotional resilience. Lastly, we can increase both our hedonic happiness and eudaimonic happiness by caring for ourselves and doing kind deeds and thinking good thoughts about others. Happiness may be elusive but by changing how we think about what it means to be happy, it may be a possible attainment after all.