Better one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind.
Ecclesiastes 4:6
Happiness is subjective and rigidly associated with someone’s perception and personal-specific experience. However, generally, it often seems difficult and nearly impossible to feel happy when the uncontrollable external circumstances and environments are pathetic, horrible, unstable, uncertain, or not in a conducive condition. Some people, therefore, seek happiness (pleasure, enjoyment) through various ways such as buying and consuming as many (luxurious) goods as possible, doing some exercises, watching entertaining movies or TV shows, or by such a destructive way like overly drinking alcohol, consuming drugs in order to feel a good mood or temporary euphoria. Most people often get deluded in chasing after a pseudo-happiness, while true happiness might be the more proper one that they are truly looking for, and hence, it is pivotal to change the pursuit from a pseudo-happiness that is temporary and sourced from the external world of oneself to true happiness that comes from within the self and is long-lasting. This post hopefully might be a reminder for individuals in adjusting perceptions towards happiness so that they could avoid the bias in pursuit of happiness.
Happiness could be defined as a positive mood, a state of well-being that includes living a good life with a sense of meaning and deep satisfaction. It is found that most people in the world value happiness more important than other desirable personal outcomes, such as achieving awards, obtaining a great amount of money, and owning luxurious material goods. While the definition might be applied universally, what makes people happy could have different answers for different individuals as they have their own source of happiness that they perceive. Moreover, it is suggested that there are several factors which (could) affect someone’s happiness, e.g. genetic factor, life circumstances, achievements and awards, marital status, social relationships, physical environments, as well as individual ways of thinking and expressing feelings. Nevertheless, research concludes that happiness is under personal control.
Meanwhile, an individual should also be aware of a bias of perception in chasing after happiness – a pseudo-happiness – in which he/she thinks that possessing somethings, obtaining certain positions, having a relationship with someone or anything else sourced from external self would bring happiness. The bias might appear in many orientations, such as success, materialism, and hedonic treadmill. The bias in the pursuit of happiness lies in the perception that the more individuals have money – or any other tangible things, you name it – the happier they will be. When people reach a milestone such as buying a new house or securing a position, they have a strike of happiness, but eventually return to baseline – in other words, that happiness is a temporary feeling. This encourages the hedonic treadmill, where people continuously believe that the next change or transformation will bring happiness.
Moreover, misperceptions of happiness arise when it goes to what individuals think will make them happy. People often believe that happiness will be accomplished when they get into a certain milestone in life, such as finding the perfect partner or having a particular salary. Thus, the bias in pursuit of happiness is mainly sourced from someone’s dependences and overly expectations upon the external factors or things to make him/her feel happy.
It is not to say that chasing after material and worldly things or trying to achieve greater wealth is useless, yet it should be noted that the perception of having everything that someone perceives would make him/her be happy is a misleading objective in the pursuit of happiness. Indeed, such material and mundane things could be supporting factors to obtain pleasure and enjoyment for physical needs. A study from Binghamton University in 2019 suggests that success materialism – wealth and material possessions are perceived as a sign of success in life – affects life satisfaction positively by encouraging economic motivation of individuals that could lead to an increase in the future satisfaction with their standard of living, and further positively impacts the overall life satisfaction. Nonetheless, it is worth noting that it is not automatically fulfilling the true happiness which comes from the mental and spiritual needs – the core of human beings.
Ironically, the result of the pursuit of a bias and pseudo-happiness is the feeling of unhappiness and unsatisfied. For instance, the pursuit of happiness materialism (wealth and material consumption is the sign of a happy life) could negatively affect life satisfaction in two different ways (Sirgy, 2019). First, it could lead people to feel discontented with their current standard of living, which in turn affects overall life satisfaction negatively. Second, it could lead an individual to neglect satisfaction from other important life aspects, such as family and social life, health, etc., which in turn would negatively affect overall life satisfaction.
Furthermore, there are two more real examples to explain the paradox of pseudo-happiness. The first example is taken from research by Jebb et al. (2018) which shows that the ideal income for individuals is $95,000 annually for life satisfaction or evaluation and $60,000 to $75,000 a year for emotional well-being, excluding families with children which certainly will need more. Emotional well-being is defined as one’s day-to-day emotions, such as feeling happy, excited, or sad and angry, while life satisfaction or evaluation means an overall assessment of how someone is doing and is likely more influenced by higher objectives and comparisons to others.
Nevertheless, incomes above $95,000 are not associated with an increase in well-being. The study thus reveals that once the threshold is attained, further raises in income are actually linked with reduced happiness. This might be due to the importance of money in fulfilling basic needs, purchasing goods, and perhaps loan repayments to some extent. Once the optimal point of needs is overcome, people might be driven by desires such as buying more material gains and involving in social comparisons, which in turn could ironically lower their well-being. In addition, life evaluation is prone to be more affected by the standards by which individuals compare themselves to other people.
The second example comes from the acknowledgment of an Indonesian artist, host as well as an entertainer who arguably has everything that a man could dream of. People would easily think that he absolutely lives with happiness since he has abundant wealth, an elegant house, sophisticated cars, and lives with his beautiful wife and children. Yet, in an interview with a former journalist, he admits that he still feels unhappy or stressed with his life even though the current life is the life which he was once dreamed of when he was younger. In addition, he explains that true happiness is sourced from the inner self, the feel of gratitude instead of having everything that seems promising happiness.
Happiness is your original state minus the belief that happiness has to be bought, or minus the fear that happiness is somewhere else. Inner happiness is a release from foolish external conditioning and a return to divine saneness.
Robert Holden (2008)
Therefore, individuals need to be mindful of their perceptions of happiness. True happiness comes from within, it roots from the inner self, and could not be replaced by any of outer self might propose. Happiness generally sticks around for longer than a few moments at a time, while pleasure could come and go in seconds (Paul, 2015). Happiness encompasses curiosity, as well as the ability to tolerate risk and restlessness to reveal new passions, potentials, and aspects of an individual’s identity. It embraces a balance between momentary pleasure and longer-term striving toward objectives. Furthermore, happiness covers the ability to acknowledge and embrace various emotions, even the unpleasant ones. It involves seeing the macro views instead of getting stuck in the details. In sum, living with happiness means living with mindfulness, meaning, and purpose. Happiness encourages people to find joy in lasting relationships, being absorbed in working toward their objectives, and living life in accordance with their values.
As mentioned above, happiness is subjective and personal-specific, and hence it is also subject to each person. However, there might be several things to be noted which further could be some references in finding true happiness summarized from some sources. Those include doing everything with thoughtfulness, appreciation, and patience, keeping the good in mind and letting go of the bad, living with gratitude and counting the blessings, writing down objectives and taking steps toward them, accepting and being in the present moment, applying self-compassion by being mindful and taking care of the self (both physically and mentally) better, not relying or expecting happiness on others or things, incorporating balance, keeping positive mind and optimism (positive mental state), focusing on what could be done and taking a break appropriately, giving and practicing acts of kindness and generosity to others, stopping useless thought e.g. “if only” thinking and self-comparison to others’, taking a new perspective toward happiness, working on something and being fully passionate in doing it – in other words, being in flow, and experiencing happiness (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997).
Research suggests that while money could buy happiness to some degree, the quality of the expenditure is also as important as the quantity. Further, money could buy happiness, particularly if it is spent for the sake of the goodness of other people. It should be emphasized that someone does not need to have everything he/she wants in order to be happy since true happiness could be attained by being grateful for what he/she already has, no matter how much or little that may seem.
It is worth noting that an individual’s happiness is not others’ responsibility to take, vice versa. If someone constantly keeps trying to make others happy, when would he/she be happy? Thus, happiness is each self-responsibility. Individual’s true happiness comes from within, not in placing it to other people or things. Ultimately, true happiness comes in gratefulness.
References
Ackerman, E. (April 15, 2020). What Is Happiness and Why Is It Important?. Retrieved August 22, 2020 from https://positivepsychology.com/what-is-happiness/
Binghamton University. (September 3, 2019). Wealth can lead to more satisfying life if viewed as a sign of success vs. happiness. ScienceDaily. Retrieved August 22, 2020 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190903125622.htm
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1997). Finding Flow. Basic Books.
Holden, R. (2008). Authentic Success. [Audio File] Hay House.
Jebb, A., Tay, L., Diener, E. et al. (2018). Happiness, income satiation and turning points around the world. Nature Human Behaviour 2, 33–38. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-0277-0
Paul, M. (2015). The difference between happiness and pleasure. Huffington Post: Life. Retrieved from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-difference-between-happiness-and-pleasure_b_7053946
Sirgy, M., Yu, G., Lee, D. et al. (2019). The Dual Model of Materialism: Success Versus Happiness Materialism on Present and Future Life Satisfaction. Applied Research Quality Life. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-019-09763-8
Stoerkel, E. (October 29, 2019). How to be Happy: Is There a Secret Key to Finding True Happiness?. Retrieved August 22, 2020 from https://positivepsychology.com/how-to-be-happy/
hope. 
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