Why happiness is overrated?

The most common reason most people come into treatment is they want to be and feel happier. Simple right? It seems as if happiness has become the end all be all. It has also become almost an intangible feeling because people don’t seem to connect other behaviors to happiness anymore. Understandably, people want to be happy, but some don’t know how to get there anymore. When you think of happiness, you think of all the things that create a smile on your face in your heart and mind. This might look like a person, an event, or a specific feeling. Many people associate happiness with things. All of these things we can’t necessarily control. Most people will agree that a huge amount of satisfaction leading to happiness actually emanates from focus, hard work, or exploration of an area of interest. Happiness can be created out of behavior. Though, the idea of happiness can also be overrated because it is a feeling that comes and goes, and the constant chasing of that feeling can set people up to be very discouraged.

One of the reasons happiness is overrated is that the feeling is not necessarily fed without the connection to a specific positive behavior. Feeling happiness, joy, or even a sense of contentment can also be developed through a state of mind and creating that mindset to walk through life with a specific set of coping mechanisms and life views. If people are always looking at satisfaction through only the lens of what they might think feels happy, they are missing out on all of the other really positive feelings and some negative ones that can come up helping us grow and shape ourselves into who we are.

Some of the most important feelings that a person can experience and behaviors that can get them there outside of happiness would be feeling of satisfaction, accomplishment, a healthy challenge, peace, calm, appropriate pain in terms of physical movement, and stimulation from a book, movie, or other activity. Happiness is certainly a great goal to have in terms of what people want to bring to their life. Still, each person can draw from their own experience to figure out what gives them the most satisfaction and sense of happiness, and these things don’t necessarily have to look happy in the traditional sense. To only chase after happiness would be closing the doors to a lot of other opportunities.