What is Happiness?
Why is it that although we know we want to be happy, we don’t actually understand what happiness is?
Is it that society is designed to confuse us because we certainly know what happiness is when we are children?
Give a child love and safety. Make sure they eat well and given the opportunity to explore and love, and generally they are happy.
However somewhere along the way we are told to grow up and then laughter is replaced with hard work. Walking barefoot in the sand is a luxury we save for special occasions and happiness becomes both complicated and expensive.
Why Happiness is so important.
Stress, anxiety, poor mental health, many illnesses and even suicide are all linked to our level of happiness.
Happy people live better lives, it’s that simple.
Not only do happy people live better, but they also live longer, healthier lives.
The Dalia Lama stated that
“Happiness is the highest form of health”
A good reminder of how important happiness is to our general health.
We may know that to live longer we should take care of our body. Eat and sleep well. Regular exercise. Don’t drink, smoke or take harmful substances. These habits are more likely to help us stay healthy.
However if we suffer from low mood, stress, depression or other mental health problems, we may lack the motivation to take care of ourselves.
If we are unhappy, we will more likely resort to behaviours that do not support our wellbeing.
So perhaps its time to get clear about happiness.
What is Authentic Happiness?
A very simple definition is that happiness as learning to be ok even when things are not ok.
Possibly not a sexy way to think of happiness and it may even sound quite unrealistic, after all we are not built to be happy when the world is falling apart around us. Usually we’ll do our best to hide or distract ourselves from difficulties.
But it is this constant need to avoid what we don’t want that adds to an already difficult experience.
Gabor Mate is a bestselling author and physician well known for his expertise on addiction, trauma, childhood development and the relationship of stress and illness. He defines addiction as follows:
“An addiction is any behavior, substance related or not, that an individual pursues because they find pleasure, relief, or they crave it temporarily, so they pursue the pleasure and relief despite negative consequences. And they don’t give it up, in the face of negative consequences. I said any behaviour. So that could be sex, gambling, eating, shopping, work, relationships or substances”.
He goes on to explain that
“Addiction is not a choice that anybody makes; it’s not a moral failure. What it actually is: it’s a response to human suffering.”
So instead of using addiction, in whatever form it is for us, it might be more beneficial to learn to live “The Middle Way” (A term commonly used in Buddhism).
Three Ways to be Authentically Happy:
Happiness V Pleasure
Nothing will transform your level of happiness than to fully understand the difference between pleasure and happiness.
Pleasure is temporary and whilst there is nothing wrong with having moments of pleasure, the need to keep chasing pleasure to be happy does exactly the opposite.
As Gabor Mate explained above, pleasure can be likened to addiction. It is the idea that to be happy we must be on a constant “high”, when in fact happiness is quite the opposite. It is this way of thinking that is fuels toxic positivity.
2. The Middle Way
The most important thing that we can do for ourselves is to learn to be happy or at least content with the ordinary and the not so exciting moments.
Can we learn to be ok with boredom without running to the fridge for a little distraction?
Now I’m not suggesting that we start living uneventful, boring lives, what would be the point of that? What I am advocating is non-attachment to having things exactly was we want.
So, when we are experiencing something joyful, then we are fully enjoying it but when that moment passes because it will, we can drop into the next moment without feeling down or wishing for the next exciting moment.
Living the Middle Way doesn’t require us to become passive or disengaged, it requires us to learn to cultivate an inner sense of peace with whatever might be going on around us.
3. Happiness is an inside job
Lastly and perhaps most importantly is to accept that true happiness is a state of mind.
Note this does not mean a contrived state of constant positivity.
A happy state of mind is one that is not easily disturbed by external conditions and the only way that this can be possible is to be less reliant on external conditions, which incidentally goes against everything we are taught.
You see as we covered at the beginning of this article, children we know what happiness is, so it’s not that we don’t know, it’s that we have forgotten.
We have been conditioned to think that to be happy we must follow a certain path and often that path takes us in directions that completely conflict with our true values.
To be authentically happy we must:
Know ourselves.
Accept who we are, without judgement.
Live according to our truest, deepest desires.
Maybe we are following someone else’s path, chasing a career when we would rather paint or write. Perhaps we have outgrown our relationship but won’t move on because we don’t want to let others down.
But know that it is when we are being authentic that happiness naturally arises.