Why Is Being Happy So Hard?
In a world that constantly bombards us with notions of joy, success, fulfilment and God awful terms like “good vibes only” or “you just need to hustle harder” it’s not hard to see why to some the pursuit of happiness can become as elusive as hunting big foot or the loch ness monster, and leaves many asking the question “why is being happy so hard?”
As someone who finds myself asking this question rather frequently I decided it only fitting to dedicate this post to exploring the complexities of human emotion, societal expectations, and personal struggles that can stand in the way of our often-challenging quest for happiness.
The Nature Of Happiness
Before we get stuck in, let’s lay out a few facts about happiness its nature. First it’s important to understand is not a one-size-fits-all emotion. Happiness can be a fleeting, fluctuating, situational and subjective emotion influenced by various factors.
This level of variability can make it very near impossible to pinpoint what true happiness is to each individual. There is a phenomenon called “negativity bias” which essentially means as humans our brains are naturally wired to respond to negative experiences far more intensely than to positive ones and in turn causes us to focus more on the bad thoughts in our head and dwell on all the reasons why we are not happy rather than celebrate our successes.
The sad part of this train of thought means that the pursuit of happiness pushes us further into depression and anxiety because the pursuit becomes the be-all and end all so we constantly seek out ways to be happy instead of letting it happen naturally.
For me, this really hits home as I am trying to do anything and everything to help me get out of my head but the more I do that the worse I feel because it triggers a freeze response in me and causes me to do anything I can to distract myself from the fact I am not doing the things I want and need to do, (like working on this website that has been a “work in progress” for months) and not doing the things I am supposed to be doing makes me feel awful that I didn’t and puts me back in my head and thus the cycle continues. Whereas if I thought positively and focused myself like today I would have a full article written or at least started by now and could celebrate that.
Societal Expectations
In a world that media have always driven and now in this digital age, social media plays a significant part in shaping our ideas and perceptions of happiness, how we eat, dress, work, think and even sleep.
From a young age, we are conditioned to chase milestones in our development, education, career, relationship, home and everything else society deems “essential for fulfilment” The pressure of this can lead to a sense of inadequacy if we feel we don’t measure up to the standards set.
We compare our lives to highlight reels of poses and smiles, photoshop and air miles. We spend hours and hours scrolling through photos or videos mindlessly saying “If I were like them I could…” but what happened to the days when you went to your friend’s house, they pulled out a photo album of such and such a place in such and such a year, people rolled their eyes by photo number 4 of ” this is us by the beach” “this is the place where we sat on the beach” “this is us leaving the beach because it was too hot” Now its became like sport the world has become obsessed.
We seem to forget, people are only showing us snippets of lives.
In fact, it’s the internet half of it probably isn’t their life, but even if it is, we don’t see them every day, we don’t know how hard that job took its toll on that person for eleven months of the year to get that two week holiday in Spain, or the hurt and pain they go through daily that they hide really well.
Don’t compare yourself to others, you don’t actually know anyone, we only ever know what we see and are told from and about others, but that’s their choices, not their heart and soul, and people’s choices half of the time are based on someone else’s opinions or values in some shape or form so that’s not even them either.
So the only one you actually know is you, so as Jordan Peterson says “Don’t compare yourself to who someone else is today, compare yourself to who you were yesterday, and focus on being just that little bit better every day”
Mental Health Challenges
Mental health challenges can very heavily distort our ability to find happiness, if you’re here you know that. From a wholly personal perspective let me tell you how mine affect me and you can see if you connect with it.
I like everyone have a past, things I would take back in a heartbeat, things I couldn’t imagine myself existing if I changed and would 110% keep and things I wouldn’t mind changing or saving but regardless of the thing they have made me… well me.
Honestly, though, it was the bad that showed me I wanted to be better. It took someone to shatter my boundaries and standards, which showed me I didn’t really have any that I felt worthy of sticking by. In the dark, I found light, and in a place where evil goes, I found the purest of good, and in that good, God. So, therefore, if I changed a single thing about my past, my future wouldn’t be possible. My road led me here.
I was restored through Jesus and came out with a new passion, do nothing but what’s good and right, be the man I was meant to be; be there for my family, get my life together, and do anything I can to make the world even just a little bit better for every single person I can. So I did, in less than a year I got my own flat and furnished it, got a new car, started my road to building this website, and became financially stable (on paper, my awful budgeting decisions mean that I make all purchases on payday and live skint the rest of the time, one day I will learn to change that… but today is not that day) and have been doing my best to help others along the way.
So I am happy? Well… No, content? Nope, not even.
I feel empty most of the time, like no connection no emotion no warm and fuzzies for doing the thing, and lots of bad thoughts when I don’t do the thing. I need to work on finding my own reason and being and not always needing others’ validation, and I do, truthfully the phrase I’ve coined recently is “a love-sick puppy needing head pats”
I know its a heavy co-dependency if I don’t have someone to share it with it feels like nothing matters, and my self-awareness believe it or not kicks my ass more times than it helps me at this present moment, because I always want to be better, always want to do the thing, always want to be the rescuer, the saviour, the achiever.
I’ve done a lot of bad in my life but I always wanted to help the world, I just want to show people that there can be some good in these crazy messed up times, in a severely screwed up world, but for the change to happen we have to be the changes we want to see.
Then I get overwhelmed and shut down and shut off, and then I just freeze, I do nothing. At this point generally, the harsh reality sets in of “I can’t fix the world, if I can’t fix me” then I dwell on this and freeze more and thus the cycle continues.
“Mind over matter” can play a huge role in combating this or at least it has for me, more specifically questioning the thoughts, and it’s as simple as it sounds.
Why do I think or feel that? And then we use the ammunition of what we know and logical thinking to tackle the situation.
For example; If the thought is “I failed” the first question is what did I fail at? and you break that down, “Did I fail?” “Is there no other way I can achieve this?” and so on and so fourth.
Once you get to the end of that you will have a logical response, and if you did fail that’s ok, the next question is, what can I do to not fail next time, or improve the situation and you go and do that instead?
The Hedonic Treadmill
Psychologists also refer to another phenomenon known as “The Hedonic Treadmill” which is the process that returns us to a baseline state of happiness despite major positive and negative events or life changes, this is due to the fact we adapt to the changes and new circumstances so we then chase the next thing, so it’s essentially like a person on a treadmill always moving forward but never getting anywhere.
Fortunately, there are ways to combat this two of which are Mindfulness and Gratitude, spoiler alert we will discuss them later on in this post, so here are two other ways for now;
- Try New Things: If you feel like your life is mundane and struggle with boredom, then trying new experiences, challenges or even taking up a new hobby gives you something to focus on. So instead of scrolling mindlessly through Facebook learn the guitar or violin or knitting or bird watch or just something you find exciting to you.
- Set Realistic Expectations: try to manage your expectations lets face it buying that super expensive car, house or boat probably isn’t the only thing that’s going to make you happy. Perhaps going for a drive in the morning and just watching the sunrise might bring you peace and happiness in that moment for free. So learn to find happiness in each moment.
The Importance Of Authenticity
An important factor to note before taking on the pursuit of “true happiness” is it stems from being true to oneself. As stated earlier we are heavily influenced by people, media, advertisers and a series of other factors and these influence our wants and needs.
When we think of what we dream about and the things that will bring us happiness it’s easy to confuse our dreams with the dreams of others.
Look at it this way, before the Ferrari was invented no one wanted one, until a person dreamt of it and made it, now everyone says it’s their “dream car” but a car is a car providing it runs the way it should so it’s the places you go in it or it’s a vanity symbol.
So think about what you Love, and it’s essential not to take anyone else’s judgement, let people help you achieve it and take productive criticism but don’t let anyone or anything make you quit!
Mindfulness And Gratitude
Practising gratitude and mindfulness techniques, told you we would discuss them later, can significantly increase our overall happiness and our ability to be happy.
These are a fantastic way to to show us how to appreciate what we have and realise we may need less than we think. If you always look at what you don’t have you’ll never have enough but look at what you do have and be grateful for it and then everything extra you get is a blessing.
A way of doing this is a gratitude mantra or journal starting with writing or saying around 5 things “I am grateful for” and it’s important you say or write that out each time because it can help solidify the feeling, what you are grateful for, and a reason. Here’s a genuine example from my mantra;
- I am grateful for every person who has come into my life because each one has been an experience and good or bad each one taught me something and helped shape me into the man I am today and has made my journey possible.
- I am grateful for the incredible people and you know who you are, who have been my rock, my shelter, my strength and faith, who have believed in me from day one with absolutely no reason to, and still do, and word will never express how grateful I am to them who without them I physically wouldn’t be here. Thank you
- I am grateful to every person who reads this article and I hope you get some value from it or can pass it on to someone who can, but aside from that I am grateful that you are physically alive to read it and that’s how I want you to stay even if you don’t read another one, always remember you matter.
- I am grateful for my material possessions like my house, car, computer and wealth, which enable me to build this site, travel easier which helps my pain and enables me to have freedom, live comfortably and have all the things I need and some of the things I want and who could want more than that.
- I am grateful for music, which helps me to zone into moments and zone out in others, it gives me the focus to be able to just chill, vibe and write. Now that’s the secret right there “doing what you love and calling it work” Bonus points if you can guess the song from that one line in the comments.
Mindfulness Techniques are also pretty straightforward and teach us to live in the moment and we talked about that earlier but it can be also a matter of changing your thoughts by deciding you are going to be happy no matter what, like “I am” mantras “My name is (insert name here) I am successful, I am abundant, I am happy, today is my day” these can be used alongside meditations and visualisation of your goal and living that life.
Positive thought is recommended by most if not all which I completely agree with and endorse as part of my daily battle which is just changing how you think about each situation, the best way I have heard this explained was through a story about a monk.
A monk is in a temple looking for somewhere to meditate, there’s a festival on so there are lots of tourists visiting the temple and village, he ventures out, finds a boat, and rows into the middle of the sea to meditate. After a while of meditating out of nowhere something knocks into his boat and breaks his concentration He keeps his eyes closed but is fairly annoyed and thinks “What kind of an idiot crashes into a boat in the middle of the sea, I just want peace to mediate” he recentres himself and continues to mediate. His boat gets struck a second time by as the first he is angrier but keeps his closed and starts again.
His boat is struck a third time and with this he can’t contain himself any longer as he stands up and yells “why must you ruin my mediation, how can you not see me sitting here and go round me, but instead crash into me three times”
But then he stops and realises what had crashed into him, an empty rowing boat who’s rope had become detached and it drifted out. The monk couldn’t believe it, started laughing uncontrollably and said ” i got so angry at absolutely nothing and no one other than a random circumstance, my anger is in me not anything else”
When returning home he was met by some tourists who were mocking him and laughing, he felt the anger and urge to say somethng build up in him but caught himself and thought “my anger is just an empty boat” smiled and continued walking.
This story shows us that we choose how we feel about certain things, if you are driving and you burst a tyre, you can get out of the car and yell at the tyre but that doesn’t fix it, so you get out and say well that’s unfortunate and change to and continue your day.
Essentially Don’t be angry at circumstances, circumstances don’t care because circumstances are not people.
Conclusion
The journey to happiness is often fraught with obstacles and dangers constantly threatening your mental stability and strength, but these principles can stand as a sword and shield in forthcoming battles and be the armour to keep you safe from the unseen.
By acknowledging our emotions, challenging societal expectations and embracing authenticity we can pave the way for a more fulfilling and genuine experience of happiness.
Remember though happiness although the preferable emotion is still only one of many valid emotions and each serves its own purpose so it’s ok to not be happy all the time, feel everything, you’ve got this!
