WHY YOU MAY NOT BE HAPPY
24 AUGUST 2021 (13 MIN READ)
You may not be as happy as you think. There, I said it, but hear me out and you may start to agree with me. I’m not saying that to push you down a dark road of self-deprecation, but rather, to help you realize what it truly means to be happy. (Spoiler alert! There’s no one-size-fits-all answer). Sometimes to invite positive change, it’s imperative to realize you may have been going about things the wrong way. That’s all this article is inviting you to do—to challenge yourself to see if you are content with the way you are viewing the world and your mental health. America has this sick obsession with always being happy; it’s deeply ingrained into our culture and media. And if you find yourself sad or struggling, you will start to compare yourself to those toxic societal expectations and try your best to repress those healthy emotions. This destructive habit highlights the first truth of happiness: it cannot be reduced to always having positive emotions. Rather, it’s mostly how well you react to your negative emotions and the harsh trials life throws at you. And no, the answer is not to forget about them and keep moving forward. That’s called repression, which is how you land yourself in a mid-life crisis. As the clever television show, Ted Lasso, pointed out in last week’s episode, “Issues are like mushrooms. They only grow in the dark.”
As a nineteen-year-old party boy, I genuinely believed I was happy. I had friends who liked to have a good time with me, attractive women fawning over me, grades that made my father proud, and really great weed at my disposal. In other words, I spent a whole lot of time smiling and feeling pleasure. However, once the smiles, smoke inhalations, and orgasms passed, it was me versus the wall in my room. And I lost that fight every time. The more time I spent alone with my thoughts, the darker it got in my head, and the more I ran towards smiling again. Two years later, this habit led me to have the tip of a knife at the top of my wrist, begging to no longer live with the amount of pain I was in. I know this sounds like a corny “Don’t Do Drugs” PSA, but I am genuinely scared that too many kids are headed in this direction. And no, it’s not because of the drugs, it’s because of this crazy obsession with always feeling the emotion of happiness. I was so bad at dealing with my negative emotions that the only solution I saw was to wish for happiness and try to forget the negative emotions. But after a while, we lose the ability to forget and repress, and once you are there, it’s a challenging place to get out of.
Happiness must be seen as more than a feeling; it’s a complex phenomenon filled with different variables. Here are the pieces that I think are essential to consider in finding happiness—or whatever the fuck that is.
THE CASE AGAINST HEDONISM
What exactly is hedonism? In simple terms, it entails solely being concerned with the feel-good nature of our experiences. In other words, a hedonist would see themselves as a happy person—if they experience more pleasure than unpleasantness—in all facets of life. For instance, a hedonist would solely be concerned with the delicious taste of a big, juicy cheeseburger—not the food coma and gut pain after. Unfortunately, in today’s day and age, most people fall into the category of hedonists, chasing pleasure at every pause they experience throughout their day. If you tell the average person to sit down with nothing to do for fifteen minutes, they will find it incredibly difficult, itching to refresh their social media feeds every minute. Our brains have become wired to constantly reach for immediate gratification, which although soothing in the moment, is terrible for our happiness levels. Basing happiness off of pleasure entails seeing happiness as a measure of your most recent experience. For instance, if a hedonist just had drinks with their friends, then they would see themselves as happy. Or if they just had a great time exercising, then they would say they were happy. However, if their most recent experience was negative, then they would view themselves as unhappy until a positive experience fell into their lap. This mental loop is an incredibly shallow view of understanding happiness—the reality goes much deeper.
Unsurprisingly, our phones make this habit much worse. Whenever a momentary negative experience or boring pause enters people’s lives, most go straight to their phones as a means of distraction and pleasure. Not only does this make people intolerable towards negative experiences, but it also leads to constantly needing something to make yourself feel good. In other words, it becomes an addiction. One cannot expect to immediately become happy—they have to understand that it’s a long, complicated process. Happiness is not about how many smiles and pleasing moments you have in a day. Rather, it’s how good you get at feeling bad. I know that sounds counterintuitive, but let these next three sections prove that point.
THE DEEPER LAYER
Let’s begin by unpacking the “getting good at feeling bad” concept. Life will throw horrible shit your way. Deaths of those close to you, heartbreak, failing at your dreams, the state of the world, etc. Since these terrible events are inevitable, the only choice is to work on your response to them. I believe that the happiest people in life are those who react to negative events the best. Those in your circle who smile the most and seem more happy than you—usually get absolutely crumbled by painful events. In other words, people who make it their objective to always feel the emotion of happiness usually cannot handle it when they are forced to feel down. They automatically try to repress the negative emotion and “put their best foot forward”—only to be followed by the inevitable expression of their repressed emotions, which they are not equipped to handle and have only gotten stronger through repression. In order to better deal with life’s trials and tribulations, here is a three-step process I always go to: feel, express, and find the silver lining.
Most human beings are scared to feel. Yes, they may love to feel their positive emotions, but they are petrified of the painful, scary ones. I hate to break it to you, but you cannot have pleasure without pain; they are two sides of the same coin. So, if you truly want to be happy, you have to get good at feeling pain. For the purpose of illustrating this three-step process, I will refer to a recent example in my life where I had to enact it: when someone incredibly close to me tried to kill themselves. When I heard the news, I felt sick to my stomach and my heart felt like someone covered it in acid. However, instead of running away, I allowed myself to sit down and feel the pain—to empathize with the amount of pain a loved one was in that they thought dying was the best option. I sat with the emotions of feeling responsible, and let them pass—eventually realizing they had no basis in reality. After having processed the negative feelings, I had to express my grief. I allowed myself to be alone and cry for hours. I then talked to my partner at the time about how I felt and the reality of the situation. In combination, I felt my pain and then expressed it through emotional outburst and conversation.
If we immediately try to numb our feelings through positive thinking or drugs, the pain will repress into the body and become a ticking time bomb—waiting to explode in the future. And the longer we keep pain repressed, the stronger it gets. This quality makes it especially important to process negative emotions as soon as you get the chance. Once you feel like you have owned your grief and expressed it in a healthy manner, it’s time to try and find a silver lining. Positivity has immense power, but it has to be used at the right time, especially when dealing with pain. Just like a baseball player has to warm up their swing before hitting a home run—feeling and expressing your pain is the warm up to finding the silver lining of a bad situation. In terms of a loved one attempting to end their life, the positive attribute I focused on was the beginning of a journey for them: the journey of redemption. When you are so down and God gives you another chance at life, the only way is up. I reminded them of this truth, and they took it to heart. Six months later, they are doing better than ever and are accomplishing their wildest dreams. No matter how bad a situation can seem in the moment, a silver lining always exists amidst the darkness, and it’s your job to try to find it. If you can’t seem to find it, loved ones are great teammates to help you set up the slam dunk.
Since we will encounter moments in life that will shake us to the core—and smiling or forgetting about pain does not work to combat grief—a deeper layer has to be cultivated within us to properly move forward. And the ability to healthily move forward from pain is the biggest signifier that separates those who are truly happy, and those who are not.
INEVITABLE STRUGGLE
We cannot grow without struggle. If you constantly avoid discomfort and challenge, you will stagnate and fall into negative patterns. Reminisce on the moments that define you. Did they come from overcoming obstacles or by bathing in comfort? We cannot reach our highest potential without going to war with our egos, and those dirty motherfuckers love comfort. So it is imperative to get uncomfortable to find out who you are beyond your egoistic wounds. Now, what does this have to do with happiness? In one word, everything. If we become accustomed to deriving happiness from immediate gratification, we will never accomplish any long-term goals, leading to self-deprecation and stagnation. Furthermore, when life throws challenges our way, emotional or physical, we will have no clue how to work through them if we have always been focused on finding a “quick fix.” For these reasons, among others, I believe the more we align our lives with delayed gratification, the happier we will be in the long run. The feeling obtained after grinding through a hard workout feels much better than ten push-ups (aka the “quick fix”). Not only does the endorphin rush after a hard workout feel more empowering, but the fact that you pushed through adversity to achieve a goal allows you to feel proud of yourself. And a major aspect of happiness is self-worth, which can only be truly developed internally. The best way to do that is to stay true to your own promises, which can come in the form of long-term goals.
Long-term goals go hand in hand with a purpose. For instance, I believe my purpose is to help young adults come to terms with their trauma—to help the future generation of adults restore peace to this broken world. I can only achieve this purpose through building long-term goals, such as writing a certain amount of articles per year or finishing a book by a certain date. However, these objectives do not come easily; they take hard work and overcoming emotional turmoil. But the fact that my purpose aligns with my goals makes them much easier to fight for. If I want to get comfy on the sofa and play video games, a voice in my head goes straight to: “Think of the people you could be helping.” After I hear that reminder, I run straight to my laptop and cast aside my egoistic need for comfort. As Friedrich Nietzsche puts it, “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” A purpose-driven life isn’t only essential for one’s long-term goals, it also makes overcoming life’s obstacles much easier. Personally, if something bad happens in my life, since I have to fulfill my purpose, I force myself to deal with the pain and process it as best I can. Because if I choose to deal with trauma in the wrong ways, such as avoiding pain through drugs or other distracting behaviors, the pain will get repressed and lead to depression. So, I’ll take the harder road of facing darkness over the quick fix of numbing. This habit makes life’s obstacles much easier to jump over.
Through living every day aligned with your purpose and consequently accomplishing your long-term goals, you will realize that overcoming challenges only makes you better. Each time I overcome a massive obstacle, I reach a new level of understanding myself, and a higher level of inner peace, which translates to more happiness. Renowned psychiatrist, Viktor E. Frankl says that, “When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.” You have to know what you’re fighting for to best deal with the obstacles life throws your way. If not, the hurdles will become higher and higher, making one take shortcuts to get around them, also known as a “quick fix.”
FIND YOUR PIECES
This is the part that’s entirely subjective, meaning it’s different for everyone. Although the previous sections make it seem like happiness has nothing to do with the emotion, that’s not entirely true. Of course, an emotional wellbeing component of happiness exists. This means that if you are sad or anxious for a majority of the time, it will be much harder for you to be happy. However, this part is where things get tricky. There will be moments in time where you are facing adversity, and it will be quite difficult to stay euphoric. But other strategies can be used to overcome this sort of obstacle, like searching for peace, rather than searching for the feeling of happiness. People and events can rob you of your emotional happiness, whereas it’s much harder to be robbed of your inner peace. In my own life, I try to consistently cultivate peace, rather than happiness. A smile can’t protect you from much internally, but peace can act as a shield against darkness. Furthermore, happiness cannot reside in every emotion, peace can. I can be peacefully upset, but not happily upset. If you’re laughing your way out of darkness or anxiety, you are not really allowing yourself to feel the emotion. Thus, to find happiness, I believe you have to find tranquility, which can be cultivated through your own habits. I strongly recommend trying out as many things as you can to see what works for you, but here are the things that help me stay calm; I hope they can serve you well along your path.
Like the predictable self-help softie that I am, the first thing I recommend is meditation. The action of meditating activates three specific parts of the brain that are essential in reaching a calm state: the posterior cingulate, the temporoparietal junction, and the amygdala. The first is responsible for controlling mind-wandering and having a realistic sense of self. The second controls empathy and compassion, which shines light on the things around us. And the third creates the fight or flight response, which shrinks with meditation. In combination, by tapping into these parts of the brain through meditation, you will find yourself having more inner peace and less egoistic control over your mind. Furthermore, in times of distress, you can always go back to the breath, which will help restore peace in any situation. In comparison, going back to a false smile and repressing the pain of a situation does the opposite of that. The two other habits that follow this are exercise and cold water exposure. A lot of times, anxiety is simply a central nervous system issue, meaning we have too much energy inside of us. Exercise serves as a perfect opportunity to ground ourselves into our bodies and release the pent up energy inside. If I find myself lacking in my daily exercise, I notice myself experiencing more negative emotions and less tranquility. Another shock to the central nervous system is ice baths, which really help to cool you down. (Yes, the pun was intended). My article, “Healthy Habits To Optimize Mental Health,” dives into the science behind why ice baths are great for you mentally. Check it out to learn more.
Lastly, and probably most importantly, is cultivating friendships, but not for the reason you might think. Yes, friendships are essential to have in your life for various reasons; I would not be anywhere close to where I am today without them. However, they also, in addition to romantic relationships, serve as an invitation to see your codependent habits. Codependency in friendships and dating is the biggest robber of inner peace. Because if you are using somebody to calm yourself down, they will become a drug to you. You are the one responsible for your peace—you must own that shit. And the more you realize tranquility has to come from within, the less likely people are to rob you of it.
