I’ve talked before about the rise of self-help and the near-obsessive pursuit of happiness that has arisen over the last few decades. There is an opposing narrative, though. That to chase happiness is inherently useless, because the mere pursuit of it leads to unhappiness. And now there even appears to be research to back that up.
In order to understand this counter-intuitive sentiment, we need to understand a little bit about human psychology.
In his excellent book, Stumbling on Happiness, Dan Gilbert, a Harvard psychologist, writes about our happiness set point. That’s each individual’s natural inclination towards happiness. We all have one. For some, it’s higher than others. And it’s essentially the starting point on your happiness journey. From there, you can increase or decrease your happiness by some moderate amount, but it will always be starting from that same set point.
Think of it kind of like your body type. There are those people who regardless of how much they eat right and exercise will never develop six pack abs. On the flip side, there are those who can seemingly eat burgers and drink beer every day, do three sit ups, and suddenly they’ve got washboard abs. It might be unfair, but it’s reality.
This set point is a big part of why the impact of all of the tactics to increase happiness don’t seem to work as well as they should, because you’re still managing around your genetic baseline.
The other reason striving for happiness seems to fall flat is, because as Gilbert writes, humans are really bad at predicting what will make us happy. We believe we’re more special than we are (we’re not), we believe that chasing a specific goal will make us happy (it won’t), and we think we remember what made us happy in the past (turns out we don’t).
All of this being wrong leads to unrealistic expectations. And when our reality falls short of our expectations, that leads to disappointment and ultimately unhappiness. In other words, we’re kind of hardwired to be unhappy.
So, should we just throw in the towel and accept our lot?
Well, not according to Arthur C. Brooks, who writes a weekly column at The Atlantic about living a good life. In Brooks’ estimation, the nuance here is that people who are unhappy are those who wish to be happier, but don’t actually do anything about it. However, those who take concrete steps (and the right steps) to actually improve their happiness can still benefit.
It sounds like a nice thought, but is there any evidence to back it up?
Well, kind of.
There are a number of techniques that have been proven to increase what scientists call “subjective well-being” or “positive affect.” These two terms are the closest thing to a scientific definition of happiness we have, and while they may not be perfect they’re close enough for our purposes.
A regular meditation practice, exercise, practicing gratitude and doing something to help others, are all proven methods of increasing happiness (or at least “frequent positive affect”). There are a number of studies that support each of the above, and in fact an entire discipline of positive psychology has arisen to study ways that we can be happier.
So, is the pursuit of happiness a lost cause? No, it’s not. It’s just a little more complicated, and a lot harder than those airport bookstore paperbacks would have you believe. But, is that really any different than finding out that staying in shape is a lot harder than any of the miracle diets claim?