20
Sep
Photo: Symbol image love / pixabay Deflyne
What actually makes us unhappy?
EVERYTHING REVOLVES AROUND HAPPINESS ALL THE TIME ...
Congratulations on your birthday, wedding, birth, exams, on dates and meetings, shamrocks and lucky pigs on every postcard. You almost automatically wish someone happiness, and often say the word "happiness" just like that. But it has such a serious meaning. What happiness actually is is tried again and again to define. Is it a feeling? Is it a special form of fate? Are they wishes?
Raghunathan, a professor at the University of Texas, is one of the numerous researchers looking into this. To find out what happiness is for people, he first surveyed more than 1 000 people about their desires. "If you had three wishes, what would they be?“ The most common answers were: success, fame, power, respect and fulfilling relationships with family members and friends.
Only six percent of the respondents wished for happiness. An unexpected result, when happiness is the claim of most people. Is it now the case that no one wants more happiness because he can not have it completely? Or were these mentioned wishes the key to happiness? Raghunathan started there and came to the decision, you just have to ask for the counterpart:
What are sins of happiness? What makes us unhappy? What stands in the way of our happiness?
1. THE CONTEMPT OF HAPPINESS
There are too many prejudices about happiness: "Happiness makes you sluggish and self-satisfied.“ - These thoughts are supported by showing pictures of tanned people on the beach everywhere, who look beautiful, but do nothing. Studies show that the happier people are particularly active and want to set something in motion and achieve it. "Happiness makes you indifferent and selfish.“ - But the opposite is true. According to the study, committed people are happier than loners. Sustainable happiness consists in sharing it with others and feeling gratitude. "Happiness is never long-lasting.“ - That's why it's not worth looking for it first? Even if not every feeling of happiness can be felt permanently, there is a lot that makes life positive.
2. FIXATION ON MONETARY VALUE
Raghunathan: "Although many people think that happiness is their top priority, they often get distracted along the way, for example, from the desire to save money.“ An important source of one's own happiness or unhappiness is the degree of fulfillment or meaningfulness in the profession. In addition, the desire to be financially secure. A study showed that young career starters prefer to accept a stressful working day with overtime, when there is more salary and better career opportunities. For many, happiness is an abstract goal that is difficult to define. In contrast to concrete "goals", such as money or status.
3. THE STRUGGLE FOR SUPERIORITY
"Life is like a competition," you learn that from childhood. Struggle and struggle to achieve something, because nothing is given to you. You always have to be better than the others. Because only the first get the attention, the love, the happiness. The positive side of it: one's own abilities can be developed, talents can be lived out and promoted, competencies can be developed. If this succeeds, one experiences a positive feeling and stabilizes self-esteem, reaps recognition and feels satisfaction.
The problem with this: one is limited only to the tangible feelings of happiness, the extrinsic (external) measures of happiness, until they become an end in themselves. The pursuit of superiority becomes an effort, loses all sense of joy and alienates one from the other and from stress-free opportunities for happiness. Extrinsic goals are "the worst luck killers". The intrinsic motivation for an activity is lost as a result: joy in doing, fun in the non-material aspects of a job. The psychologist Adam Grant has proven that the "givers" are more successful in work and business life and that they have a more stress-free everyday working life than the "takers".
4. WANT TO CONTROL EVERYTHING
Life consists of constant attempts to gain control over as many things as possible. This works more or less, but in the end fate is stronger. These control options influence the possibilities of happiness: to lead an autonomous life, to determine many and important things yourself, makes you happy. But when control slips away from you and others decide on you, it makes you unhappy. Too much control at every step of life means stress, is pointless and leads to exhausting perfectionism. "Compulsive controllers" are under more pressure than relaxed people. The addiction to control is a reaction to the uncertainty and complexity of our life. The right level of control is important to live happily with insecurities.
5. THE INABILITY TO TRUST OTHERS
Happiness and the ability to trust other people are closely related. To trust means to be able to live more relaxed. After all, trust is like an investment in the future – it forms a foundation for one's own life. Raghunathan believes that trust in everyday life is the most important and rational option when it comes to the balance of happiness. "Wise trust" is his recommendation, i.e. minimize the disappointment of breaches of trust and focus successful experiences with trust.
The conclusion of Raj Raghunathan:
"He who thinks too much makes himself unhappy.“ Those who are too smart and more successful than everyone else are not happier. The feeling of happiness after a success is short-lived, then it ebbs and demands to be recreated. This creates the pressure to achieve even more. It is compared and controlled, disciplined and put back. Just to catch the great happiness that does not exist at all. But it doesn't work like that, but rather like this: focus more on one thing, allow the little happiness, reward it by sharing it with others, be grateful for individual situations, learn to trust and not strive for even more work and money, but enjoy being active and still come to rest. All this helps to be truly happy.
