The happiness It is not only difficult to record (it is also said that life is what happens when you are busy making other plans) or measure, but, above all, to predict.
In fact, several studies suggest that we are essentially unable to determine what will make us happy or unhappy in the future, much less to what extent. In other words: perhaps it is not so much about pursuing happiness (or an ideal of beauty) as enjoying what is presented to us.
The obsession with goals
More and more evidence suggests that, in general, we are increasingly obsessed with the process of achieving objectives, goals and purposes, and that therefore it is common to achieve the objective brings with it the feeling of anticlimax. To combat this unease, then, we set another objective, perhaps more ambitious.
Proof of this is that the use of the phrase "pursue objectives" (goal pursuit) did not appear in books written in English until 1950. As explained Adam Alter in his book IrresistibleUntil the 19th century there was not even a precise word to define this concept, which is synonymous with perfectionism. Perfectionism, a century ago, appeared in 0.1 % of published books. Today it appears in 5 % of the total books. Adler sums up like this:
Like the curse that condemned Sisyphus to push a boulder up a mountain forever, it's hard not to wonder if life's great goals aren't, by nature, a great source of frustration, whether because you must face the anticlimax of success or the disappointment of failure. All of this is now more relevant than ever because we have solid reasons to believe that we live in an unprecedented era, in which the culture of the objective prevails, led by addictive perfectionism, self-evaluation, long hours working and few enjoying our time.
Pursuing goals and ironing out our defects is not necessarily bad, the problem is setting these goals as priorities or, even worse, as a balm of future happiness.
What really happens with the consecutive pursuit of goals is that much more time is spent on it than on enjoying the success achieved. Even when the goal is achieved, success is brief, as the human behavior expert wrote Oliver Burkeman:
When you see life as a succession of goals to achieve, you find yourself in a "quasi-permanent state of failure." You spend most of your time away from what you have defined as the embodiment of achievement or success. And if you do achieve it, you will feel like you have lost what gave you a sense of purpose, so what you will do is set a new goal and start again.
The diffuse horizon
Setting long-term goals is also doomed to failure in the sense that we are unable to predict how happy or unhappy something will make us. The psychologist Daniel Kahneman, in his book Think fast, think slow, offered questionnaires to 119 students that included questions about how happy they thought quadriplegics were.
The results showed that we have a wrong preconceived idea about how people feel in certain circumstances if we do not know them firsthand: those who knew paraplegics (friends and family) considered them happier than those who did not know them.
Those who best described the reality of such patients were, naturally, those who knew them best. That is to say, that quadriplegics were happier than previously believed.
Given our inability to be solvent futurists, it seems most appropriate to focus on the present. Focusing on what we do daily is how the psychologist proposes Daniel Goleman in his book focus:
Peak performers (whether in education, business, sports, or the arts) intuitively use forms of focus and mindfulness. The crux is not in practicing concentration for many hours, but in the way we pay attention to what we do and how we absorb feedback to self-correct.
In short, being aware of our present, that is, having our mind on what one is doing, and opening our eyes to contemplate the beauty that surrounds us with curiosity and interest, instead of spending all our time daydreaming about an idealized and unattainable beauty.
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The news
Why is pursuing goals, purposes and success so often the opposite of happiness?
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.