Stop Chasing Happiness 

Take a moment and ponder this question: How important is happiness to you? Would you say you value happiness above all else? If not, what is more important than being happy? 

If you are like the majority of people, the possibility of happiness likely influences most aspects of your life: your professional interests, the people you hang out with, the ways you spend your downtime, what you spend your money on, etc. 

And it’s not just you. Happiness is highly valued by our society as a whole. A survey of Americans found that 81% would rather be happy than achieve great things in their life (Moore, 2016). Think about that: happiness is so important in our society that it can rank over achievement. If you skim through advertisements, it won’t take long for you to see that many companies cater to this emphasis on happiness. They present their product as a means to an end in making you happy. The idea of chasing happiness is so prevalent that you can even find it in historical legal documents (such as “the pursuit of happiness” found in the United States Declaration of Independence).

And it makes sense, right? Being happy feels really good, so of course you place a high value on feeling that way. Happiness has been shown to be good for your health. It makes you feel less stressed and it can boost your immune system. It even helps us with our decision making and creativity. There are so many benefits to happiness!

So, shouldn’t placing a high value on happiness make people happier? 

Actually, the answer to that question is a paradoxical “No”. Research shows that people who focus too much on happiness feel less satisfied with their lives (Mauss et al., 2011), feel more depressed (Ford et al., 2014) and overall feel less happy (Humphrey et al., 2021). In an unexpected turn of events, those who try to chase happiness end up further from it.

Why Doesn’t Chasing Happiness Work?

What’s the problem with chasing happiness? Let’s consider the research.  

One challenge is that we usually overestimate the happiness we think we’ll experience through an event or getting what we want. In one study, half of the participants were primed to overvalue happiness by reading a fake article that falsely embellished the benefits of happiness, while the other half of participants did not read this fake article. Participants were then asked to watch a happy film clip. Interestingly enough, after watching the clip, participants who had been primed with the fake happy article reported less happiness and more disappointment than participants who did not read the fake article (Mauss et al., 2011). It appeared that when the happy moment came, those who were overly focused on happiness had created unrealistic expectations. We can be so focused on being happy that when the moment comes, it feels underwhelming (see our post on hedonic adaptation[link] to learn more).

The way we value happiness can also be counterproductive. As it turns out, research suggests that there are two parts of valuing happiness. One aspect is seeking to avoid pain and unhappiness, and this aspect is the one that predicts decreased well-being (Dejonckheere et al., 2017, p. 4; Humphrey et al., 2021; Luhmann et al., 2016). In one study those who felt more social pressure to not feel negative emotions had higher depressive symptoms (Dejonckheere et al., 2017). When we are hyper-focused on happiness because we feel pressure – from ourselves or others – to  avoid negative feelings, happiness becomes more fleeting. In fact, another study found that those who had a focus on valuing happiness perceived happiness as a more fleeting emotion (Joshanloo, 2018), which in turn led to worse feelings of well-being. When we begin to confuse happiness as the absence of unpleasant emotions, we lose sight of what happiness really is. 

We can think of it in this way. Say you are shooting a basketball with a friend. As you are playing, you notice you miss a few shots. Once you notice this, you start telling yourself “don’t miss, don’t miss.” However, as you do this, you begin to miss more and more shots. So, it can be with happiness. As we go about our lives we have moments of pain, sadness, anger, or any other natural difficult emotion. Then, to counteract this, we may begin to think “just be happy, just be happy,” which in turn leaves us feeling less happy. It’s as if we begin to “white-knuckle” our way through happiness. We anxiously depend on it to mask up the bad. Psychologist Steven Hayes explains:

“There is a tremendous irony in happiness. It comes from a root word meaning ‘by chance’ or ‘an occurrence’, which in a positive sense connotes a sense of newness, wonder, and appreciation of chance occurrences. The irony is that people not only seek it, they try to hold on to it—especially to avoid any sense of ‘unhappiness’. Unfortunately, these very controlled efforts can become heavy, planned, closed, rigid and fixed.”

What Does Lead to Happiness?

So, if targeting happiness is counterproductive, how do we even get there? By changing our aim. 

Remember before when we told you that valuing happiness has two parts? Part of valuing happiness is avoiding negative emotions; however, another part of valuing happiness is the idea that we pattern our life in ways to create opportunities and habits that lead to positive emotions (Catalino Et al., 2014). In other words, instead of living a life solely focused on happiness, we live a life focused on meaning which then allows happiness the room it needs to grow. Rather than trying to avoid negative emotions - which are an inevitable and necessary part of life - we switch our focus to activities and patterns of life that allow happiness to emerge as a natural consequence of living that way. 

Does this actually work? Research seems to suggest so. Researchers have found that those who focused on living meaningfully have increased life satisfaction (Catalino et al., 2014), experience more positive emotions (Datu & King, 2016), and decreased depressive symptoms (Humphrey et al., 2021). In another interesting study, researchers found that those who viewed happiness in terms of being socially engaged with others had higher well-being than those who only saw happiness as an individual pursuit (Ford et al., 2015). 

So what does this mean? We need to switch our mode of thinking. Instead of finding meaning by searching for happiness, we need to switch to finding happiness by searching for meaning.

How Do I Focus on Meaning?

Journalist and Psychologist Emily Esfahani Smith believes that there are four pillars of living a meaningful life (Smith, 2017): Belonging, Purpose, Transcendence, and Storytelling. Belonging involves having meaningful relationships in your life where you value others and are valued for who you are. In this type of relationship we choose to love others. Purpose involves using your unique skills and strengths to serve others. Instead of focusing on what you want, you learn to focus on what you can give. When we engage in transcendence, we engage in activities that lift above the daily monotony of life and help us feel connected to a higher reality. Last, but not least, storytelling is the story you tell yourself about yourself. It is a way of thoughtfully thinking of your life by editing, interpreting, and retelling your story to describe growth, redemption, and love. These four pillars provide us a way to seek meaning in our lives and this can be achieved through a variety of practices. 

Essentially, each of the topics explored on this website can contribute to a life of meaning. So, where should you start? The Strategy Selection Tool is an 85-item assessment that helps you identify the topics that are likely to make the biggest difference for you personally. The personalized feedback you receive from this assessment will help you determine the best foundations for your life of meaning. 

In conclusion, it may be discouraging to learn that pursuing happiness can be counterproductive. Remember that it doesn’t have to be that way. We can still give our negative emotions the space they need while creating a rich, vibrant, meaningful life, with happiness ensuing as a natural byproduct of our efforts. What would it be like to drop the “happiness at all costs” mentality and instead focus on what you can do to create meaning in your life? Paradoxically, in letting go of the pursuit of happiness, you’re likely to find it in greater abundance! 

Contributors: Conner Deichman & Jared Warren

References

Catalino, L. I., Algoe, S. B., & Fredrickson, B. L. (2014). Prioritizing positivity: An effective approach to pursuing happiness? Emotion, 14(6), 1155–1161. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0038029

Datu, J. A. D., & King, R. B. (2016). Prioritizing positivity optimizes positive emotions and life satisfaction: A three-wave longitudinal study. Personality and Individual Differences, 96, 111–114. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2016.02.069

Dejonckheere, E., Bastian, B., Fried, E. I., Murphy, S. C., & Kuppens, P. (2017). Perceiving social pressure not to feel negative predicts depressive symptoms in daily life. Depression and Anxiety, 34(9), 836–844. https://doi.org/10.1002/da.22653

Ford, B. Q., Dmitrieva, J. O., Heller, D., Chentsova-Dutton, Y., Grossmann, I., Tamir, M., Uchida, Y., Koopmann-Holm, B., Floerke, V. A., Uhrig, M., Bokhan, T., & Mauss, I. B. (2015). Culture shapes whether the pursuit of happiness predicts higher or lower well-being. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 144(6), 1053–1062. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000108

Ford, B. Q., Shallcross, A. J., Mauss, I. B., Floerke, V. A., & Gruber, J. (2014). Desperately Seeking Happiness: Valuing Happiness is Associated With Symptoms and Diagnosis of Depression. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 33(10), 890–905. https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.2014.33.10.890

Humphrey, A., Szoka, R., & Bastian, B. (2021). When the pursuit of happiness backfires: The role of negative emotion valuation. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2021.1897869