the pursuit of happiness?

When I ask most clients what they want in their life, the answer is unanimous – ‘to be happy’.

I too used to say the same thing when asked this question, but now I don’t believe this is a good enough measure. It’s the first worlds dream isn’t it – ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’. But is our relentless pursuit of pleasure causing us to be miserable?

Happiness can be bought with a bottle of wine and has become ambiguous through overuse. – Timothy Ferriss

As a coach I am all for increasing levels of well being, and I think it’s a good sign that people are looking to make positive change in their life. What concerns me is the industry itself, and the giant blinkers it’s wearing. The industry promotes that one of our emotions (happiness) is sovereign, and that should be our default position. We should maximise our levels of happiness by attending more seminars, reading more books, listening to motivational speakers – and yes, reading blogs. We do this all in the hope of finding happiness. It’s all very self-centred, and some may say, even dangerous.

The ‘Happiness Industry’ is the fastest growing business in the western world. It makes billions of dollars annually, yet why then are many people still unhappy?  Could it be that doing all this stuff isn’t actually what we need to make us happy?

Ordinary happiness is like the dew on the tip of a blade of grass, disappearing very quickly. That it vanishes reveals that it is impermanent and under the control of other focus, causes, and conditions. – Dalai Lama

I worry that this pursuit might never arrive at the said ‘happiness’. That it just adds onto an already full to-do list, creating more pressure and anxiety for us to live a euphoric existence. Ultimately I think it sets us up for failure. Trying to be 100% happy, all the time. It’s just not achievable, realistic, nor is it healthy.

Happiness is an emotion, a by-product of something else. Therefore happiness in iteself is fleeting and unstable, it’s dependant on other factors. It is ONE emotion in a full spectrum of many emotions. To deny ourselves of the other’s is denying ourselves the full variety of life, the human experience. Author Hugh Mackay talks about this in his book ‘The Good Life‘. On the outside it may look like another mass produced churn out from the happiness industry, but upon reading, it proves far from it.

Happiness as a by-product of living your life is a great thing. But happiness as a goal is a recipe for disaster. – Hugh Mackay

It is dangerous to pursue happiness as a goal in itself. Mackay proposes an alternative goal, not happiness, but wholeness. Instead of viewing happiness as an entitlement, he maintains that a sense of wholeness and meaning is what brings us satisfaction.

If we focus only on happiness we’re neglecting the richness of the full emotional spectrum and we’re overlooking the fact that you couldn’t make sense of happiness if you didn’t know sadness. . . The emotional spectrum is broad, and that to miss any of it – yes, even the disappointments, the failures, the tedium – would be to diminish the spectacular experience of wholeness . . We need to experience all the emotions available to us if we are to be ‘whole’ human beings. – Hugh Mackay

He talks about the current Western neurosis, the utopia complex – “The idea not that life can be wonderful, it’s that life should be wonderful – and it’s up to you.” He disagrees, saying that it’s not entirely up to us – “What is up to us is to be equipped ourselves to deal with the whole thing, and not to feel that your default position is happiness, so if you’re not feeling happy, then quick can I have some pharmaceutical assistance. Give me a drug to replace my authentic emotion (a bit blue), with an inauthentic emotion (euphoria).”

Indeed, the cluster of emotions we sometimes think of as dark, demanding or tough should not be considered negative at all. The difficult emotions are actually our greatest teachers. That’s why our folklore insists that we grow through pain and learn more from failure than success.” – Hugh Mackay

According to Mackay he is “just repeating what centuries, ions, of philosophical tradition have taught us. I’m speaking up now because I think we’ve lost it. We’re in a very affluent, contemporary, western society where we’ve been encouraged to focus inward, to maximise our pleasure, our happiness, our possessions, wealth etc. It’s very easy to lose sight of the philosophical tradition that should animate us.”

Russ Harris, author of “The Happiness Trap” agrees – “So many people now think, ‘If I’m not happy, there’s something wrong with me.’ We seem to have forgotten that feelings are like the weather – changing all the time; it’s as normal to feel unhappy as it is to have rainy days”.

It’s not wrong to want to improve yourself, to work on personal development. These are noble things, and I think important to live a life you truly love. Happiness may very well be an outcome of this – but it shouldn’t be your end goal.

If happiness is still a goal of yours, then try focusing on the things that bring about happiness and set your goal from this place. If your happiness is the output, what are the things you need to input? Take a few moments to think back over the past week – when were you the happiest? What where you doing? Who were you with? Dig a little deeper to investigate what prompted your happiness.

“When you’re Happy for No Reason, you bring happiness to your outer experiences rather than trying to extract happiness from them. You don’t need to manipulate the world around you to try to make yourself happy. You live from happiness, rather than for happiness.” – Marci Shimoff

There are 2 routes to happiness that I have found full proof:

• Be grateful for what you have.  Truly grateful.  Think about the wonderful things in your life – and there are many – and be thankful for them.  Experience gratitude in your heart.

• Be of service to others. Especially those less well-off than you. Seek to improve others’ lives in any way you can.  Selflessly. Be kind.

The true path to happiness doesn’t involve YOU, so much as it involves ‘its not about me’.

I encourage you to embrace all your emotions, because without them we wouldn’t be human.