Stop seeking happiness

How going against this typical advice can help you

By JuliaPublished 4 years ago • 3 min read

I understand you are busy. You are tired, overstimulated, under-stimulated, and perhaps a little despaired. But here you are.

If you have been on a self-improvement journey, seeking to find constant happiness or meaning in life, let me break it to you: You are not supposed to be happy all the time. I'm not saying that you will not ever find happiness, it's just unnatural to feel happy all the time.

Funny enough, once I understood that and stopped chasing it, I feel much happier in general. But not all the time.

We are human beings; we have needs and emotions and so much going on in this fast-paced modern world of ours. We are dealing with a lot. But that is not the point; the point is that in order to have a true human experience, you should just... Experience it all.

Isn't that the whole point of life, to live everything?

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

I have suffered with anxiety and over-thinking throughout my youth, and as I got older (and wiser?), I started seeing some patterns. I realized I did not want to live carrying around negative feelings most of the time; but it was hard not to, once you I was stuck in that "wheel of misfortune".

So I started chasing happiness. How do I find it?!

I went down this self-improvement path, attempting to replicate other people's apparent success through methods like waking up extra early, cutting down on caffeine, having a side hustle, and more.

This experimentation led me to start breaking my patterns, which helped immensely. But then, the coin had turned. I was now in a pattern of a sort of toxic positiveness. It felt like I needed to perform, to pretend I was excited about anything, to be grateful for everything, and... This was draining. Not only that, it was plain unauthentic.

Here is the thing.

Trying to stay happy all of the time is not a realistic goal, nor should it be. We have thoughts all the time, and these thoughts can be wild and largely out of our control. Trying to stick to certain thoughts while ignoring others is ineffective.

Allow yourself to feel whatever you are feeling. Notice any labels you attach to crying or feeling vulnerable. Let go of the labels. Just feel what you are feeling, all the while cultivating moment-to-moment awareness, riding the waves of “up” and “down,” “good” and “bad,” “weak” and “strong,” until you see that they are all inadequate to fully describe your experience. Be with the experience itself. Trust in your deepest strength of all: to be present, to be wakeful.
― Jon Kabat-Zinn

So happiness doesn't necessarily have to be the ultimate goal, but perhaps understanding and acceptance. We all have a lot of thoughts and emotions, and the beauty of it is that they come and go. We might just have to try and let go of the control.

And this goes the other way around as well. Not everything is all doom and gloom. For my fellow anxiety-prone folks:

There will always be a problem to be resolved. There will also always be something to look forward to.

So to conclude this, I am not stating that you cannot have happiness or that you should not try to keep a positive outlook on things. I am just hoping to shift your perspective to focus on your life experience as a whole. The not-so-great moments will make the great moments feel even greater.

I hope this resonated with you in some level or that it has sparked some food for thought.

During this "self-improvement" journey, I ran across many insightful books and videos. I have included a few of these resources below, if you'd like to check them out:

Nathaniel Drew's newsletter and YouTube

Books