Why Your Search for Happiness Is Futile

We have all thought that it was a success that led to happiness, but research is showing otherwise. Rather than success leading to happiness, happiness leads to success. You can choose to be happy in this instant. The pursuit of happiness, on the other hand, is futile.

Science shows that positive emotions can lead to success.

Emotion researchers Sonja Lyubomirsky, Laura King, and Ed Diener show that a positive mindset leads to significant gains in productivity and three times creativity compared to a peer group. A large number of studies and research with Fortune 500 companies have confirmed gains in productivity, morale, efficiency, and creativity from positive emotions in a wide range of occupations.

Happier people were even able to fight off the flu virus that was injected into them in the laboratory, compared to less happy mates. Researchers attributed this to the emotion’s effect on the inflammation-causing protein interleukin-6. The higher the positive emotion, the lower the interleukin-6 (IL-6), so the less the inflammation.

Happy people solve 25% more insight puzzles than sad or angry folks. Even temporary feelings of delight can improve creativity. Mark Beeman has demonstrated that people who watched humorous videos had significantly more insights than those who watched boring or scary videos.

Beeman says that since positive moods relax us, our brains can form connections between remote concepts, enabling creativity. Thus, we can prime ourselves to be creative and productive by doing something that makes us happy just before the task.

Happiness is commonly used to denote a number of positive emotions such as joy, serenity, hope, interest, pride, serenity, inspiration, amusement, love, and awe, as per Barbara Fredrickson, leading authority on the subject of happiness.

According to Fredrickson’s “Broaden and Build Theory”, positive emotions broaden our mental and physical resources to enable us to consider a large number of possibilities from where we could build and develop our creative response. This makes us think divergently, more creative, and open to new ideas. Positive emotions release a cocktail of feel-good chemicals, dopamine, and serotonin, enabling learning and creativity.

Doctors in a positive mood diagnose faster and more accurately; that was the happy outcome of a psychology experiment conducted by researchers at Cornell University in 97. All it took to put the doctors into a happy mood was to offer them a small gift of candy right before the task!

Note that these doctors were not even allowed to eat the candy to prevent sugar levels from interfering with the results.

Shawn Achor, who has been studying happiness for decades and consults on implementing positive psychology principles, laments the opportunity missed by hospitals and organizations to increase their productivity and revenue by ensuring better working conditions for their employees. On the contrary, work life is filled with unhappy interactions. Toxic work culture has become far too common, even taking the lives of employees who are forced to go the extra mile and grave and prove themselves without any support.

Marcial Losada’s mathematical modeling shows that approximately three positive interactions are required for every negative interaction to counter its adverse impact and make the team successful. This has come to be known as the Losada ratio.

How can we have more happiness in the moment? Is there a formula for creating happiness?

There is. We will discuss that in the next one.

(This is an excerpt from my book, The Last Skill: The Science of achieving success and a fulfilling life with skills that matter.)

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