Why It’s Time To Redefine Our Perception of Happiness

I recently spend a lot of time reflecting, primarily on the topic of happiness and what “being happy” actually feels like. Generally, I would describe myself as a happy person. Of course I experience the highs and lows of life, but my default state (for lack of a better phrase) is somewhere between being happy and at peace. What I have observed, however, is that my description of happiness tends to differ from my peers.

Look at it this way, if I were to say to you “tell me about a time that you felt happy”, you will more than likely describe a fleeting moment in your life. Perhaps it’s buying the car you’ve always dreamed about, your favourite sports team scoring a last minute winner… whatever it is, for most, it is a brief moment in time. Is that not somewhat distressing? All our lives we have been conditioned to relate happiness to these infrequent experiences, and if we accept this as true, then what about our day-to-day existence, what is our default setting?

The stark reality is that it should come as no surprise that we’ve been conditioned this way. More often than not, particularly when describing an emotion, most of us imagine a 1:1 relationship between an emotion and how it makes us feel. But the very definition of happiness is a sliding scale:

Thinking back to my default state for a moment, I sit firmly at the “contentment” end of the happiness scale, which is the exact word I would use to describe what being happy feels like for me. Though as I’ve said already, for most, happiness is equated to the feeling of pleasure, but I would argue that this is an entirely different emotion and this relationship between pleasure and happiness is doing more harm than good. It is my belief that this connection between the two is driving more and more people to be miserable.

Now I am certain there are people reading this that are already drafting a tweet to me, telling me I’m wrong and that I have no idea what I’m talking about, but before you do, give me a chance to explain.

If we were to accept that these fleeting moments of pleasure are the trigger for us to be happy, then naturally we will spend our lives lusting for these moments, constantly looking forward to the next opportunity for one to occur. We will spend our lives wishing away the present moment like an addict pursuing their next fix, longing for the moment where we may feel happy again.

If you are a regular reader of my blog, I have spoken time and time again about how time is our most valuable form of currency. No matter how much we will it, we will never have more time than we do in this very second, yet if we accept this definition of happiness, we are going to waste away, waiting for these sporadic moment in the great tapestry of life to occur. Not only that, but each time we experience those hits of dopamine, the bar for reaching that feeling again is slowly moving higher and higher, much like our tolerance for alcohol increasing whenever we drink.

Yet if we look to the other end of the scale, towards contentment, this is a far more achievable state. In a sentence, “be satisfied with what you have today, rather than lusting after what you want tomorrow.”

Listen, I am not for one second suggesting that we should not have dreams or that we should not want to have nice things. Frankly, aspiring to achieve something more is what drives each of us day after day and it’s what gets me out of bed in the morning. But, what I am saying is that we should disconnect the feeling of happiness from fleeting moments, material objects and hits of dopamine. It was put perfectly on a podcast I listened to recently, “sometimes the journey is far more enjoyable than the destination.”

So perhaps if we all spent a little more time being grateful for what we already have in our lives, learning to be grateful and content with what we have, maybe that feeling of happiness will come a little easier and by extension, make those infrequent moments of pleasure that little bit sweeter.