Maybe You’re Unhappy Because You’re Trying to Be Happy
Stop chasing this fleeting emotional state
If I spend a day with this person I love, I’ll feel happy. If I write something I’m truly proud of, I’ll feel happy. If I come up with a useful idea at work, if I finish a hard workout, if I watch my all-time favorite TV show, I’ll feel happy.
Look, feeling happy is a great thing. But it’s also a fleeting emotional state, and actively chasing it can be both a trap and a dangerous game.
There’s plenty of research suggesting that the more aggressively people pursue happiness, the unhappier they end up. In a 2013 paper titled “The Paradoxical Effects of Pursuing Positive Emotion,” psychologists Brett Q. Ford and Iris B. Mauss highlighted several of those studies; in one of them, for example, the authors told some participants to make themselves feel as happy as possible while listening to a certain song, and other simply to listen to the music. At the end of the experiment, those who were given a happiness goal reported worsened moods.
The problem with pursuing happiness is that we’re constantly moving the goalposts for how we expect to feel. As Ford and Mauss write: “Those pursuing happiness may set high standards for their levels of happiness. When their happiness falls short of their standards — which is…
