Video Transcript

Emily: $5 trillion dollars. That was the estimated global size of the “wellness” market in 2022. Just counting books alone, the self-help industry represents billions of dollars spent every year around the globe. And a lot of these books intend to help people find happiness. 

But what if focusing on finding happiness makes you less likely to be happy? New research seems to indicate just that. The Journal of Experimental Psychology measured how motivated college students were to find happiness compared to their reported levels of well-being. You would expect that the students who were more consciously aware and seeking happiness would also be the ones with higher levels of well-being–and that’s exactly what researchers found for students in Russia and East Asia. But for Americans, “desperately wanting to be happy is linked with lower psychological health,” says study author Brett Ford.

Another study found the same result, they noticed “Valuing happiness was associated with lower hedonic balance, lower psychological well-being, less satisfaction with life, and higher levels of depression symptoms”

If happiness is a fundamental desire we all have, and something we naturally seek out, why is it so hard to find?

And why the difference across countries? The answer may lie in the way different cultures view and define happiness. In societies like Japan, for example, happiness is seen as a social endeavor: spending time with friends, caring for parents, etc. And more generally, Japan is a country with a community and collectivist focus that is reinforced culturally. This kind of social connection is integral to well-being, Ford says.

People have been trying to define and measure happiness for centuries. In 1780, the English utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham proposed that happiness was important enough for us as persons that measuring happiness should be a way of determining how well a government is performing.

The country of Bhutan even created a Gross National Happiness Index that measures Bhutan’s performance across more than 30 key areas to calculate the country’s overall happiness. Other countries, organizations, and research groups have also tried quantifying happiness in many different ways. 

But in the West, happiness is often seen as an individual pursuit. What comes to mind when you think of a happy American? Maybe you imagine someone with an impressive job, living in a luxurious house, with an expensive car in the driveway. Bonus points if their social media following is worth bragging about. The problem comes from the expectation that these things will bring happiness. And this is worsened by social media, where we scroll through our friend’s curated selections of the highlights of their life. These expectations seem to set up individuals for one thing: a lifetime of letdowns. But Ford says that “most people live in a pretty neutral state. A happy life doesn’t consist of happy moments every hour of the day.”

We also know there are many different forms of happiness. You can be happy to finish a difficult task at work, or happy to be married to someone you love… or happy just to eat a piece of carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. And these are all very different experiences of happiness, and very different types of happiness to seek out. 

And even though we all may recognize happiness when we experience it, we might have a difficult time explaining or predicting what, exactly, will make us truly, deeply, happy.

Psychologist Dan Gilbert explains that “we tend to overestimate the emotional impact of positive life events.” We might think a great roommate or a major promotion will make us permanently happier, overlooking the fact that we’ll adapt to the new circumstances and those will become our new, neutral state. In a classic study, researchers found that even winning the lottery didn’t appear to yield any lasting gains in happiness.

So we are left wondering: What should we do to experience more lasting happiness? What type of happiness should we seek? 

Which brings us to the real challenge we face: life is filled with disappointment, suffering, limitations, restrictions, and struggle. What kind of happiness can stack up against a life of challenges?

Arthur Brooks began studying happiness as a professor at Harvard Business School. He even teaches a class on the subject. 

In an interview, Brooks commented on the relationship between happiness and the pursuit of pleasure. “All happiness is a combination of enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning,” he said. “That’s what we need. We need to enjoy our lives, which is not the same thing as pleasure. The pursuit of pleasure is what leads you to addiction and misery.”

It seems that happiness is hard to find because while we know that we have a desire for happiness, we don’t necessarily know where to find it. Maybe what we need is a better definition of the “happiness” that we’re seeking. We need a view of happiness that will help us better understand and focus on what leads to true and lasting happiness.