When it comes to the question “What is the most important thing in life?”
the most popular response people give is happiness.
That was my number one goal in life as well during my young adult years.
But those were also the years that I struggled the most with my depression.
In this video, I’m going to talk about why it’s NOT a good idea to live for happiness.
Happiness and unhappiness are both normal parts of life.
No matter how hard you try to keep yourself feeling up, you’re still going to have times
when you feel down.
This is inevitable, especially when we live in an imperfect body in an imperfect world
with other imperfect people.
Even though both happiness and unhappiness are perfectly normal, even though they can
both bring people closer together, help us to appreciate life more, and inspire us to
think on a deeper level and come up with great ideas and solutions, one is widely accepted
while the other is not.
For a lot of men living under a broken concept of masculinity, unsettling emotions can threaten
their own identity as a man.
Growing up, so many boys are told to “man up" when they cry.
So, all for the sake of becoming “man enough,” a lot guys find ways to “fix” (or more
like “get rid of”) their emotions.
They teach themselves all kinds of ways to stuff down, numb, intellectualize, and distract
themselves from their emotions.
Consequently, there’s a lot of guys that are so detached from their emotions and unable
to empathize with others.
This can be quite frustrating for those trying to have a relationship with these men as they
quickly find out that their man constantly tries to fix their difficult emotions.
And then when people don’t fix their emotions the way that these men would, but instead
take the time to feel their emotions, a lot of these men can’t help but make the same
unmerciful judgments that they’ve been hearing in their head since they were boys: “You’re
so stupid.”
“You’re so illogical.”
“You’re pathetic.”
“You’re so weak.”
“You’re too unstable.”
And then people start to believe that these claims are true and, when they become parents,
they pass down this unhealthy way of looking at emotions to their children.
And the cycle repeats generation after generation.
See, if you believe that happiness is right and unhappiness is wrong, you’re more likely
to buy into this idea that your existence, as well as everyone else’s existence, should
be about maximizing happiness and minimizing unhappiness, or what Russ Harris calls “The
Happiness Trap.”
Living for happiness, I’d say, is even more of a trap than ever because of social media
and most people just publicizing their happy times.
It’s a trap with a lot of problems.
And one of those problems, as you can see from my example, is developing an intolerance
for difficult emotions.
If you keep running away from your difficult emotions, they’re not going to get any easier
to face when they come back.
Sure you’ll be able to temporarily control what’s bothering you, but that will be at
the cost of robbing yourself of the opportunity to learn from experience that you’re going
to be ok.
Another problem with living for happiness is that it can ironically make you more pessimistic.
If you’ve got your hopes up and things don’t work out, it can be extra disappointing, right?
Well, a lot of people rationalize that if they keep their expectations low, they can
maximize their delight when things surprisingly do work out and minimize their disappointment
when they don’t.
But it doesn’t actually work out that way.
There is no more delight that comes out of this psychological strategy, just more negativity.
But I’ll go more into detail about this point in a separate video.
Next, if you’ve been used to adding this or that into your life to make you happier,
when you do feel unhappy, you’re more likely to think the problem has to do with that external
thing you added to your life.
You might think it’s just run its course, it’s not what you thought it would be, that
it was the wrong choice all along, and that there’s something better out there that
can make you happier.
People do this all the time with their careers and romantic partners, and they end up just
filling up their time restlessly jumping from one happy thing to the next happier thing.
To me, that sounds like a lot of wasted time and energy.
But still, happiness is probably the most common reason in the western world why people
choose to get married and why so many marriages don’t last through the unhappy times.
So, because of all of these reasons, I don’t think it’s such a great idea to live for
happiness.
I think living just for happiness is like working just for money.
Yeah there’s plenty of people living and working that way, but... what if it’s possible
to still get happiness and money as byproducts of living and working for something greater?
Something more meaningful?
Well, Kim and I think so and we've been trying to live for a greater purpose, which we’ll
talk about in a separate video, all while accepting all the ups and downs that come
along the way.
Thanks for watching you guys!
We've made a related video about why we vlog our unhappy times and the benefits around
doing that, so check that out as well.
And we wanna know your thoughts on this topic too, so do leave us a comment.
And if you haven’t already, subscribe to our channel for more videos on emotional well-being
and relationships.
Alright, see ya next time.
Bye.