Why You Can’t Be Happier
And how to change that
We spend our whole life trying to be happier, searching for meaning and purpose. We set more and more goals, sometimes even managing to achieve almost all of them. We deserve happiness, we have earned it. At the end of the day, however, we don’t feel happier than before.
Emotions are psychophysiological reactions to our environment, the events in our lives, and the goals we have set. It often happens that people completely ignore the rational approach to a situation and make an emotional decision, but this is part of the essence of a person. Thanks to our emotions we understand whether something is right or wrong.
Negative emotions are a call to action. If we feel them, it means that we have to change or do something to stop experiencing them. The pain of touching a hot stove teaches you not to touch it again. The sadness of loneliness makes you want to not do the things that made you feel lonely again.
Positive emotions, on the other hand, are like a reward for doing the right thing. When we feel them, life seems easy and carefree, but soon after that, they disappear because we discover new problems. Emotions are a big part of human life, but they are not the whole life of a person, so we should not always trust them, but question them.
For a variety of personal, social, or cultural reasons, people learn to suppress their negative emotions, but it’s like suppressing some of your most important feedback mechanisms that help you solve problems. Many of these people have difficulty solving important problems, and if they can’t solve problems, they can’t be happy.
Other people identify too strongly with their emotions. They justify their actions with “it just felt right” Making decisions based on emotions, without reasonable thinking that can keep them within certain limits — often leads to negative results. Obsession with emotions fails for the simple reason that emotions are impermanent. What makes us happy today will not make us happy tomorrow, because we always need something more.
We are constantly striving to achieve not some goal — promotion, new house, new relationship, completion of a project. We work hard to achieve what we want, imagining how happy we will be in the end.
After weeks, months, or even years of working to achieve the goal, you experience euphoria for just a few hours or a day. Sometimes there is even no euphoria, but just relief from the release of accumulated tension. We immediately think, “Okay! And now what’s next?” Lack of enthusiasm for success is completely normal.
People have many goals and therefore many sources of satisfaction. The dopamine mechanism works only hours after reaching the goal, but we are always convinced that we will receive a large and long-lasting dose of dopamine every time we achieve an important goal.
Two types of positive effects are defined — positive effects before the achievement of a goal and positive effects following the achievement of a goal. Therefore, the very action and effort to achieve the goal is more important than the end result, because we feel a positive effect every time we approach the goal. We surround ourselves with goals, hopes, expectations, and every time we achieve one, we immediately replace it with a new one.
We aim higher and higher, and despite our hard work, in the end, we do not get the expected extraordinary euphoria, but just moderate and short-lived pleasure. We often devalue our achievements, pursuing unattainable goals.
The “principle of progress” in psychology is the assertion that pleasure comes from approaching goals, not from achieving them.
There is also a principle of adaptation, also called by psychologists Hedonic adaptation or Hedonic treadmill. It refers to our general tendency to return to a certain level of happiness, regardless of the ups and downs we experience. This phenomenon is known as the “hedonistic treadmill” because it seems as if we are constantly increasing our happiness and yet returning to the original level from which we started.
People who win the lottery tend to return to approximately their original levels of happiness once the novelty of winning has passed. The initial increase of joy is great but after about a year their levels of happiness return to normal. These people begin to take things for granted and they no longer make them happy.
The same is observed in people who have suffered serious accidents and lost the ability to use their limbs. This change may indeed be devastating for them at first, but they tend to return to the same levels of happiness as before the disaster, after getting used to it.
Studies show that the first bite of something tasty brings more pleasure than the third or tenth. People get used to pleasure quite quickly and it no longer brings the same surge of joy. A person’s attitude to his new condition is based on a comparison with the condition to which he is accustomed.
Some activities are more affected by hedonic adaptation — the happiness they bring vanishes faster. They are known as entertainment or pleasures. They have clear sensory and strong emotional components — “raw feelings” or “simple sensations”: ecstasy, excitement, pleasure, joy, high mood, and contentedness. They involve little or no thinking. These pleasures can lift our spirits and make us feel great, but it will last a relatively short time. The reason is that we get used to them quickly.
Satisfying activities and those that give us a strong sense of meaning, are less susceptible to the effects of hedonic adaptation. These are activities that require more effort and thought, in which the reward is higher — the more we engage, the more we enjoy. They are often considered as hobbies — creating art or learning new skills.
Combining the principle of adaptation with the statement that the average level of happiness is largely genetically determined, we can conclude that in the long run, our successes do not matter much about the happiness we experience. Regardless of successes and failures, we always return to the set genetic level of happiness.
We like the idea that there is some form of incredible happiness that we can experience. We like the idea that we can feel satisfied with life and what we have achieved. Unfortunately, this is far away from reality.