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Barriers to Happiness | Requirements
for Happiness
HAPPINESS:
What it is
and what it is not
Happiness. Subjective Well-Being
A state of being
involving choice, beliefs, gratitude, and accurate appraisal of self, others,
events. Happiness involves emotions but is not an emotion and also requires the
ability to effectively manage emotions. Happiness is not the result of good
things happening to one.
Positive
Psychology: Understanding and building human strengths.
Goals of positive psychology: To enhance experiences of love, work,
perseverance, originality, responsibility, civility, altruism, and tolerance.
Basic Goal: Optimize Life
Happiness requires
effort, whereas unhappiness is easy.
Life
is full of tragedies and loss; happiness or unhappiness is not predicated or
determined by one's personal tragedies or losses.
In fact, it has been demonstrated that happiness is not correlated with the
circumstances of a person's life.
Happiness is not determined by money or success.
BARRIERS
TO HAPPINESS
-
Dissatisfaction and insatiability: There is such a thing as enough: enough money,
enough housing, enough things.
Needs vs. Wants: Basic needs need to be met for happiness, but not wants.
Basic needs include: shelter, food, clothing, transportation, love. Wants
include everything else.
Unnecessary dissatisfaction: dissatisfaction over something that is
unimportant or something that is unchangeable.
-
Comparing
ourselves and our lives to others, either negatively, leading to decreased
self-esteem or positively, leading to jealousy and unnecessary
dissatisfaction.
Believing incorrectly that
something or someone external to ourselves will make us happy. Happiness
is an inside job. Someone or something can add to or detract from our
happiness, but no one and nothing else can create that state for ourselves. Images
of perfection: the tendency to think about one's life, job, partner, self,
etc. in terms of what "should" be as opposed to the reality what actually is and/or what
is reasonable. This is influenced and fostered by advertising and societal
expectations. One can either alter the images to fit reality or change one's
reality and it is important to know the difference. "Missing Tile Syndrome": with images of perfection, there is the
correlated tendency to fixate on whatever is flawed, without seeing and
appreciating the overall picture. Since perfection is impossible, one can
always find flaws. Further, if one can imagine perfection in something or
someone, one will always imagine that something is missing. Expectations: This is similar to
the above. Expectations more often lead to unhappiness, because when
expectations for one's life, self, partner, etc. are not met, one tends to
be unhappy about this; however, if one's expectations are met, the ability
to be grateful is diminished and gratitude is an essential ingredient for
happiness. Seeing oneself as a victim: this automatically precludes happiness. Victims
abdicate control of their lives which leads to unhappiness and blaming
others for one's unhappiness leads to anger and anger makes happiness
impossible. Victims also cannot allow themselves to enjoy life because
enjoying life challenges the perception of victimhood. Unfortunately
victimhood is appealing because it is easier to blame others and not assume
responsibility for one's life. Ways to be a victim:
a) Victimization by parents - parents are imperfect people and make
mistakes, sometimes egregious, harmful mistakes. Become an adult.
b) Identification with a victimized group, i.e., ethnic minorities, women,
gays/lesbians; One can blame one's unhappiness on how this group is treated
or on whatever makes one different.
c) Victim of perceived slights - due to hypersensitivity , personal
insecurity and poor self-esteem; tendency to take one's self too seriously,
and to take things too personally.
d) Victim of one's own behavior - engaging in behavior(s) that lead to
negative consequences and blaming those consequences on others, i.e.,
getting a DUI and blaming the police for losing one's license.
Genetic predisposition and biochemical factors - Some evidence that about
50% of variability accounting for a tendency toward unhappiness, depression,
anxiety may be genetic. However, this leaves another 50% over which some
personal control can be exerted: through therapy, medication, learning
accurate thinking skills and emotion management, changing one's environment,
and improving coping skills. Seeking unconditional love - Basically this does not exist in this world
and people, being imperfect creatures are not capable of this. The closest that
we come to this is a parent for a child. - Erroneous
beliefs about happiness:
a) Success does not lead to or create happiness.
b) Money does not lead to or
create happiness.
c) Fun is not the same as
happiness and having fun constantly does not lead to
happiness.
d) Avoiding pain does not lead
to happiness.
e) Avoiding fear does not lead
to happiness.
f) Avoiding responsibilities
does not lead to happiness.
g) Avoiding commitment does
not lead to happiness. Basically, avoidance is limiting and whatever
serves to limit precludes happiness.
REQUIREMENTS
FOR HAPPINESS
- GRATITUDE
- This is the most important component to happiness and largely dependent
upon the belief and realization that what we have in this life should not be
expected and certainly is not an entitlement. There is a tendency to take
many things that we do have for granted, such as a home, a car, a job, a
partner, health, etc. It is important to realize that we do not have full
control over all the circumstances of out lives and over many of the most
important things in our lives, such as our health, the health of the ones we
love, how long we/they will live, whether we get the job we really want, the
house we desire, etc. It is thus important to be grateful for what we do
have.
It is also important to be aware of what we can control, such as how much
effort we expend, our behavior - including civility, decency, kindness,
morality. We can also learn emotional control and how we choose to appraise
situations.
Gratitude -(minus) Expectations and Entitlement are primary ingredients to
happiness.
- LOVE - All humans need to love and be loved, to feel connected to other
humans. This includes family, parents, partners, siblings, children,
friends. Love and emotional connections also can include God and animals.
However, there is no such thing as unconditional love from other humans and
this expectation precludes happiness. Loneliness also makes happiness
difficult at best, and unlikely in most cases. Love can also be an obstacle
to happiness as well, including problems in relationships, death, illness,
or the loss of the one who is loved.
In order to make love and connections with others last: forgive them their
flaws, no one is without them; have reasonable and modest expectations and
communicate these expectations as well as communicate one's needs, and do
not expect clairvoyance from the other - no one can really read minds.
- SELF-ACCEPTANCE
and concomitant accurate self-appraisal. Accepting oneself in a positive and
accurate manner is crucial for happiness. If self- rejecting, happiness is
automatically rejected as a possibility as well. One does not have to be
perfect to be acceptable or worthwhile; to be 'good enough' does not require
perfection; the fact is, perfection is impossible. (So, give it up!)
Objective self-esteem scale:
0__________________________5_______________________10
Jeffrey
Dahmer (Morally
Ambivalent)
Mother Teresa
Few of us are Mother Teresa's and equally few of us are Jeffrey Dahmer's.
People who are morally ambivalent do not deliberately set out to harm others,
but would steal if they would not get caught. So, where are you? You may be pleasantly surprised to find out that you are better than you think you
are.
- ACCURATE APPRAISAL SKILLS -
Learning fact-based thinking skills.
It is unusually not the event that is as upsetting as the negative
judgments, beliefs, attitudes, or 'self-talk' that we formulate in response
to the event.
This includes jumping to conclusions, magnifying the situation, taking
things personally, assuming the worse, etc. Such self-talk is almost always
worse than the actual event or situation. 'What if..." thinking also is
a flawed way of coping, in that the myth is that if one can anticipate all
of the terrible things that could happen, then one could either prevent the
occurrence of such things or deal with them better if they occur. This is a
myth and only generates anxiety. These incorrect ways of thinking obviously
serve to exacerbate stress and diminish happiness.
- OPTIMISM
- This is a corollary to fact-based thinking and accurate appraisal and is
the belief in the reality that bad times never last and things are bound to
improve. This is not to be confused with an unrealistic Pollyanna approach
to life with associated unrealistic expectations.
- EMOTION MANAGEMENT AND SELF-CONTROL
- This is essential for true adulthood and necessary for happiness. If
emotions are in control, you aren't. And, unruly and unstable emotions do
not lead to happiness.
- MEANING
AND PURPOSE IN LIFE – One
needs to develop a guiding philosophy, religious faith, or spirituality to
make sense of why we are here and what is important to accomplish. Having a
set of values to guide behavior is also necessary. A sense of rudderlessness
and 'just going with the flow' does not lead to happiness and usually no
where else one wants to end up, either.
- DO GOOD/PERFORM GOOD DEEDS - Altruism is
important. There is an
emotion known as 'elevation' which results from witnessing others performing
good deeds and from performing them ourselves. It is also a protector against
self-absorption, which hinders happiness. Contemplating one's navel will not
lead to nirvana or happiness, but it probably will contribute to “neurosis”.
- ENJOYING
ONE'S WORK - This is a
factor in happiness. We spend at least and often than a third of out lives
at work. What we do frequently contributes to our sense of identity and some
portion of out self-esteem. Enjoying work also can contribute to a sense of
purpose in life, which is also an ingredient to happiness.
- HUMOR - The ability to perceive the humorous, the funny, the absurd, and
the irony in daily stressors, frustrating events, and various difficulties
that are inevitable in life. The physical act of smiling and laughter and
the actual display of positive emotion has been found to actually mitigate
depression, anxiety, and sadness (although by itself, it will not actually
lead to the automatic elimination of these emotions, and certainly not
clinical depression and anxiety).
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