Is Happiness Sustainable?

Estimated reading time: 5.6 minutes

Calories: Zero (unless you snack and read)

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happiness is overrated.

coung lu

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·     As a “Certified Happiness Coach,” I wonder about happiness.

·      Is it sustainable or is it intrinsically fleeting and ephemeral?

·     Is sustainable happiness realistically achievable -  without spending most of your life in a Buddhist monastery?

·     Do we just create more misery for ourselves believing in this dream, reaching for an unreachable brass ring?

Why does this matter?

·     If I coach you to happiness, should we expect you to remain there?

·     If not, shouldn’t we get real and acknowledge all experiences of happiness have a shelf-life; we should not expect “good times” to last.

·     When life seems to be going well, would it be wiser to expect the “other shoe to drop”?

When you think you got it made,

boy,

that’s when the trouble starts. 

Duke Robillard 

·     Does this lead us to some form of fatalism?

·     Is this a nail in the coffin of doubling down?

·     If happiness is not sustainable, what does this tell us about optimism and pessimism?

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What the hell is “happiness”?

·     Precisely what “happiness” is raises a host of issues. [1] According to Barbara Ehrenreich, in Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermining America, [2] as early as 2006, El Jefe of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, abandoned happiness altogether.

·     At a conference she attended, Seligman announced, “I have decided that my theory of positive psychology is completely wrong. Why? Because it is about happiness, which is ‘scientifically unwieldly.’”

·     Followers of Seligman may have noticed in his recent work, he has shifted the focus from happiness to flourish and well-being.

·     Are these descriptions “wieldier”?

·     Ehrenreich blames the sub-prime crisis of 2008 on positive thinking and unbridled optimism.

·     The notion that optimism is omnipotent came along with the “manifestation myth,” preached by Norman Vincent Peale, Ernest Holmes, and Napoleon Hill (“whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve”)

·     More recently, Rhonda Byrne, author of The Secret, with the help of Oprah, revived the idea that if you think about something hard enough, and tape post-it notes on your bathroom mirror with sufficient emotion, your thoughts will “manifest.” If you get really good at this, you can always get the best parking places and concert tickets!

·     This blind faith in the power of intention led the world economy to the brink of disaster.

·     The housing market always goes in one direction – up.

·     Right?

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Then, everything changes

The harder they come, the harder they fall, one and all.

                                                                                   Jimmy Cliff

·     On March 15, 44 BCE, 40 Roman senators assassinated Julius Caesar, one the greatest warriors and military tacticians the world has ever known.

·     Caesar proves: one day, you’re a hero; the next, you’re a zero.

·     Now all that is left of Caesar’s formidable skills is a footnote in a textbook, which has, or will be, banned in Florida.

·     I wonder how many men have died from excessive optimism (“Icarus syndrome”) – not good marketing data for the cult of positive thinking.

·     In the 6th Century BCE, the Buddha deduced everything in “reality” is temporary; nothing stays the same.

·     You may have some control over the boat, but you have no control over the river.

·     If you can’t control the river, controlling the boat may not do much good.

·     Who is steering the damn thing anyway? You or your unconscious mind?

·     Oh great! An unconscious captain!

·     On second thought, maybe your conscious mind does not control anything! Yikes!

·     Some days the river flows peacefully, and some days you find yourself navigating unexpected rapids, like a roller coaster run amok.

·     Is it realistic to expect sustained happiness amid such unpredictability?

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Those pesky choices

·     To complicate our analysis, you constantly confront choices.

·     All day, every day, you confront the question of: should you stay the course or change directions?

·     Staying the course is good news and bad news.

·     Consistency can bring a (sometimes false) sense of security.

·     Just because what you are doing worked yesterday, when the river was calm, does not mean it will work tomorrow, when the snakes and alligators come out to feed.

·     The longer you stay in one place, the more stuck you may become; the more you may fear change; inertia becomes more stubborn with time.

Voluntary change and involuntary change

·     Change can be voluntary or involuntary. 

·     If life is not working out the way you expected, you may find yourself in an obsessive dilemma to voluntarily change or “stay the same” (as best you can).

·     Staying the same may be disguised avoidance.

·     Many of us fail to understand that confronting a problem is a better method for solving it than avoiding it and hoping it will go away.

·     Involuntary change can be trivial (doctor is late for your appointment – one to which we can all relate) or deadly serious (cancer diagnosis: stage 4).

·     Involuntary change may encourage voluntary change (stop smoking or die of lung cancer?).

·     Voluntary change, however, may present more challenging decisions.

·     You never have to make a voluntary change, and, if you make one, you will have to overcome the inertia of the status quo and take full responsibility for your decision.

·     If you risk voluntary change, you win some, and you lose some.

·     Most of us are risk-adverse.

·     We do not like gambling unless it is a sure thing, and sure things do not exist (unless you are Arnold Rothstein, and it is the 1919 World Series).

·     We vacillate continually between the rock of continuing to live as we always have (and expecting a different result?) and the hard place of voluntary change.

·     Is it possible to experience sustainable happiness when we chronically vacillate between here and there, never knowing which is best, uncertain whether our choices will lead to calmer waters or greater turbulence?[3]

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What to do?

·     Get real!

·     Understand that, as human beings, our nature is to vacillate.

·     It’s what we do! We are vacillating entities in an uncertain universe.

·     A realistic person does not expect happiness to sustain.

·     Stop looking “out there” for it and “build it behind your eyes.” [4]

·     The next time you feel happy, savor it; see how long you can make it last; journal about it (good reinforcement).

·     Do the sages know something the rest of us don’t?

·     Time requires me to save that topic for another day.

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Is happiness sustainable? For most of us, I think not. If you have a different opinion, please email me at tom@coachingwithwisdom.com (or write the book).

For the rest of you, happy vacillating!

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More croutons! 

Et tu Brute?

[1] Since the days of Aristotle, philosophers have distinguished happiness as (1) hedonic (pleasure) or (2) eudaimonic (the pleasure derived from self-transcending behavior, acts of kindness, altruism). Experts agree eudaimonic happiness is qualitatively superior. If anyone has done a study about how sustainable it is, I am unaware of it.

[2] Barbara Ehrenreich is not the only critic of positive thinking/psychology. More about that in future posts.

[3] Some argue our evolutionary past triggers our dissatisfaction. “We’re still primarily motivated to protect ourselves from threats and to seek resources, and these two evolved systems are the source of a lot of stress and anxiety.” More Than Happiness: Buddhist and Stoic Wisdom for a Skeptical Age by Antonia Macaro (2018) at p. 126.

[4] James Taylor.