Life is easy. Why do we make it so hard?
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Happiness is not something that we can buy, sell, trade, or exchange. If we want to be happy we have to stop trying so hard and pay attention. What would make you happier? Perhaps a bigger house or a better car; a sexier or more understanding mate; surely, wealth and fame. Or maybe you would simply be happy with finishing everything on your to-do list. Well, stop deluding yourself. Psychological research suggests that none of these things is very likely to. The truth is, it's hard to be happy. These days, it's become almost a truism that simply fulfilling our narcissistic and materialistic desires is not enough to make us deeply happy. But how many of us have really dug deeply enough to reconfigure our own ideas of what happiness means in light of a higher set of values than.
In the s, a psychologist named Martin Seligman led the positive psychology movementwhich placed the study see more human happiness squarely at the center of psychological research and theory.
Since then, thousands of studies and hundreds of books have been published with the goal of increasing well-being and helping people lead more satisfying lives. Why have self-reported measures of happiness stayed stagnant for over 40 years? Some types of happiness may even conflict with one another. For example, a satisfying life built on a successful career and a good marriage is something that unfolds over a long period of time.
It takes a lot of work, and it often requires avoiding hedonistic pleasures like partying or going on spur-of-the-moment trips. Relaxing days and friendships may fall by the wayside. Source dilemma is further confounded by the way our brains process the experience of happiness. Consider the following examples.
Yet we continue to think that this is the case. These are the bricks that wall off harsh reality from the part of our mind that thinks about past and future happiness. Entire religions have been constructed from them. Most of us possess something called the optimistic biaswhich is the tendency to think that our future will be better than our present.
I then ask them to anonymously report the grade that they expect to receive. The demonstration works like a charm: Without fail, the expected grades are far higher than one would reasonably expect, given the evidence at hand. Cognitive psychologists have also identified something called the Pollyanna Principle.
It means that we process, rehearse, and remember pleasant information from the past more than unpleasant information. An exception occurs in depressed individuals, who often fixate on past failures and disappointments. For most of us, however, the reason that the good old days seem so good is that we focus on the pleasant stuff and tend to forget the day-to-day unpleasantness.
Our memories of the past are often distorted, viewed through rose-colored glasses. These delusions about the past and the future could be an adaptive part of the human psyche, with innocent self-deceptions actually enabling us to keep striving. If our past is great and our future can be even better, then we can work our way out of the unpleasant—or at least, mundane—present.
All of this tells us something about the fleeting nature of happiness. Emotion researchers have long known about something called the hedonic treadmill. We work very hard to reach a goal, anticipating the happiness it will bring.
Read more, after a brief fix we quickly slide back to our baseline, ordinary way-of-being and start chasing the next thing we believe will almost certainly—finally—make us happy. Assistant professors who dream of attaining tenure and lawyers who dream of making partner often find themselves wondering why they were in such a hurry.
But this is how it should be, at least from an evolutionary perspective: Dissatisfaction with the present and dreams of the future are what keep us motivated, while warm fuzzy memories of the past reassure us that the feelings we seek can be had. Perpetual bliss would completely undermine our will to accomplish anything at all—among our earliest ancestors, those who were perfectly content may have been left in the dust.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. I propose the reason we are this councipusly evolved is due to the humans unhappiness creating the individual to look inward.
The pardigm shift in perspective led the imagination to manifest a world of interconnected energetic beings. The people who fund click the following article control the study outcomes, or which study gets published.
Follow the money and everything will start to make sense. The people with the most money are often Why Is It Hard To Be Happy and have children, or believe strongly in marriage and families. They also control the money that funds psychological studies. So it is no surprise that the experts that study happiness find that working hard, spending time with spouses and families brings people happiness.
Wasting time is defined as spending time with friends and spontaneous trips. It is extremely humorous to consciously consider the fallacy of time spent with friends and travel adventures not contributing to an individuals' happiness. Laughter, the most visible form of happiness, is considerably more apparent within interactions between friends than throughout family intercommunication.
Therefore, it is obvious that the definition of happiness sculpted by the investors of these studies needs to be redefined! Leaving in the "dust" those who are happy and content in a state of non-ambition, has played out time and again as the restless, goal-setting civilizations of the west trammeled the non-ambitious, blissful societies around the world.
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Perhaps the west's happiness is founded on this drug of ambition. Like a chemical drug addict, the west hedonistically pursues this ambition often at the expense of those not hooked on this drug.
But that is the way of our genes, no? The west's "ambition strategy" has allowed its genes to be replicated to a great degree around the world. You don't trust women blindly because they will never live up to your expectations and never be jealous of what others have.
Replies to my comment. You need to deliver results, even when making excuses is easier. Who you hang around makes a large difference: You are not in competition with anyone else; plan to outdo your past, not other people. Click here to read more.
I think the type of thinking discussed in the article is prevalent when you are young as the future always seems full of promise when you are young. Once you have some experience under your belt however, you realize that today will be the past of tomorrow and if you live for today like tomorrow will never come then you will always look back with a sense of pride and accomplishment.
I believe people waste to much time and energy thinking, wishing and planning for the future. It's always best to embrace today, loosely plan for tomorrow Dudley Professor of Psychology at Knox College. Get Listed on Psychology Today. Out of the Ooze. Fascinating research into exactly how we achieve and lose happiness.
WHY ITS HARD TO BE HAPPY FOR CHELSEA
The people in power control the definiton of happiness Submitted by Anonymous on August 22, - 9: Time defined by happiness? Submitted by Alexander Smith on August 22, - 1: Left in the dust Submitted by Douglas Wilder on August 26, - Not hard to stay happy if Submitted by Ron on August 27, - 7: You can trust me Ron! Submitted by Lisa Johnson on August 27, - You can trust me Ron!!! Trust me to tell you that you are an idiot Past is always better Post Comment Your name.
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1. Your happiness is dependent upon external things.
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