If You Want To Be Happy, Stop Making It All About You.

We need to stop focusing on personal happiness as the key measure of success. 

Beyond the countless studies that show that most people have a ‘set-point’ for happiness, the next biggest barrier is that focusing on your own happiness is paradoxically less likely to make you happy!

Multiple studies confirm this, including:

• The Pursuit and Assessment of Happiness can be Self-Defeating (Schooler, Ariely, Loewenstein (2003)
• Can Seeking Happiness Make People Unhappy? Paradoxical Effects of Valuing Happiness (Mauss, Tamir, Anderson, & Savino, 2011)

The most frequently cited reason for this is that placing high value on personal happiness tends to create inflated expectations of happiness increasing the gap between reality and expectation.

Happiness is letting go of what you think your life is supposed to look like and celebrating it for everything that it is. - Mandy Hale

Conversely, study after study confirms that true happiness comes from the strength of your personal relationships and having a sense of meaning. In-fact a recent Harvard medical school study found that volunteering had positive effects on both of those precursors and therefore overall happiness. 

So if not happiness, what should your goal be?

I think a simple goal can be: maximizing the happiness of those you care about most. 

That doesn’t mean slavishly martyring yourself to the wishes of others. What I’m talking about is a mental shift from ‘me’ to ‘we’.

Living for myself ends at myself, and that is a very small place to end. - Craig D. Lounsbrough

I’m talking about something akin to John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism, the idea that all human action should aim to promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number. 

However, good ole JSM had a nervous breakdown, so he might have gone astray somewhere.

Here’s the overly simplistic reinterpretation with a twist that I’m proposing:

STOP MAKING IT ALL ABOUT YOU.

I’m not saying you can’t do things you love to do, you should. 

However, if you think of those things that bring you the most momentary joy, they are those times when you ‘LOSE YOURSELF’ in the moment. Some psychologists have called this a ‘Flow’ state.

It’s more about mindset than action let’s call it the mens rea of happiness. Where happiness is the crime, because making it your goal is prohibited. 

Happiness is the absence of self-concern. Don't think about yourself; look up at the sky. - Marty Rubin

 I think the best example of this is when someone makes their own happiness the goal of ‘helping others’. Why? When the intent is inherently egocentric the action almost always veers to the narcissistic. 

We all know someone who fits this description:

• They start a new charity for a cause that already has a multitude of existing charities.
• They tweet about injustice, but take no additional action.
• They only take part in events where they will be personally recognized.
• They incessantly instagram photos of their supposed altruistic endeavours.
• My personal favourite: They refuse to take any job that doesn’t hand them THEIR life’s meaning on a plate.

I’m not saying we should stop all of these people. If by their egocentric actions, they actually increase the general happiness of others, I’m all for it. BUT, they are unlikely to achieve the personal happiness they are so desperately seeking.

The other extreme is far more detrimental, but much more universally condemned. The instagram narcissists that seem to live only to consume everything in excess. Clothes, cars, food and every other trapping they can find. What more needs to be said about them that hasn’t already been said. 

While the outcomes are vastly different, the goal is startlingly similar: the self-obsessed pursuit of personal happiness.

You can’t blame the internet, self-help books and gurus extolling the virtues of putting your own happiness first have littered bookstore shelves since the 60's. However, in the 2019 World Happiness Report the authors note that “several types of evidence are used to link rising use of digital media with falling happiness.” Not surprising, given the inherently egocentric and narcissistic nature of most social media platforms.

Finally, the 2019 World Happiness Report devotes an entire chapter to what it calls Prosocial Behaviour. Beyond the discussion of what these behaviours entail, it identifies the conditions under which it can increase happiness, specifically, people are more likely to derive joy from helping others when:

1. They feel free to choose whether or how to help.
2. They feel connected to the people they are helping.
3. They can see how their help is making a difference.

Again, the top determinant here is a mental state. When you choose to help those you care about and make a difference for OTHERS, that's when you feel the most personal happiness.

Being ‘all about myself’ is the surest way that I can end up being ‘all by myself.' - Craig D. Lounsbrough

So post all the instagram photos you like of 'living YOUR best life' or keep insisting you are 'living YOUR truth', keep searching for 'YOUR meaning' and keep looking for 'YOUR bliss'. Eat, Pray & Love your way across the globe if you like... You won't be happy unless you stop making it all about you.