Why You’ll Never Be Happy

You’ll never be happy and here’s why…

There is a lot of debate over what brings true happiness, from pursuing your passion, to achieving your goals, to having a lot of money in the bank, to marrying the perfect person, or simply having a good cup of coffee every morning; and while yes all those things are great, its not going to guarantee you true happiness… well except maybe the coffee, thats pretty important…

Ok, I might have been making some assumptions there at the beginning; but if like me, you are on your own journey of self improvement, and working to better your life, you may have found that the more you strive toward achieving those goals of happiness and self fulfilment, the further away it feels from you. Which begs us to ask the question, “have we been going about finding happiness and self fulfilment all wrong…”

About a year ago I stumbled upon a talk by a British writer by the name of Alan Watts. In this recording of one of his lectures, Alan Watts spoke about a concept that addresses the question we just posed; he termed it “the backwards law”. In this talk Alan explained how the backwards law works by using this example and I quote: “When you try to stay on the surface of the water, you sink; but when you try to sink, you float, and that insecurity is the result of trying to be secure.”  This can be similarly attributed to the quote from Matthew where he states “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.”

While that’s a great illustration and a helpful tip on how to float on top of water, but how is that going to help us find happiness? Let us look at another example to illustrate this point a little further:

Imagine with me if you will, that it’s a cold winters night, and it’s just bucketing down with rain, and you think maybe even hail by the sound of it. You’re wrapped in blankets in front on the TV or the fire whichever you prefer, and you have a mug of hot chocolate in your hand with marshmallows and everything… You take a small soothing sip as it warms the insides of your mouth, you can almost taste it as you imagine it. Ok now stop thinking about the hot chocolate, stop it! Do not think about that delicious cup of hot chocolate. It’s difficult to do right? Asking yourself to stop thinking about the cup of hot chocolate is recalling that same cup of hot chocolate that you know you need to stop thinking about; and therefore causing you to think about it even more. Where as if you just focused on something else instead, you wouldn’t have that problem; and thus you are at the same time not thinking about the thing you needed to stop thinking about.  

This can be directly applied to our pursuit of happiness and self development, the more we strive to become happier the less happy we feel as we are essentially focusing on its absence. The more we focus on becoming better versions of ourselves more we realise how imperfect we are. 

So essentially in order to achieve the state of being we so desire, we should not focus our efforts on becoming so, rather we should just let it be and you will have it. 

So why is this so hard for us to grasp?…

In the world where we are constantly being sold to at every turn; being told that we need to get the latest and greatest versions of each new piece of tech, that new car, that fancy watch or that collectors edition starwars figure in order to be truly happy. We have been conditioned to feel like we are in constant lack and that to keep on striving for more is the answer to happiness and success.

We know though that this simply isn’t true and we know that all too well. If you just take the time to think back to when you really wanted something like… the latest iPad for instance; maybe you saved up for it, debated which one was the best for your needs, you possibly read reviews and watched countless videos on why this iPad will change your life, change your marriage, make you more productive, make you more attractive and land you that new job you wanted. You couldn’t stop thinking about this one thing and how happy you would be when you bought it. Then finally that day came and you bought the new iPad. You experienced what seemed like absolute pure bliss… This must be what happiness feels like…. Till next month when the hedonic treadmill has run its course and you return to a relatively stable state of happiness…

The point I’m trying to make is that what you thought would bring you everlasting happiness, was probably very short lived, and that in pursuing happiness you eventually become less happy as you are focusing on your own lack of happiness in your current state. 

As Socrates said brilliantly so many centuries ago: “He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.”

This therefore debunks the myth that happiness and fulfilment can come from any external sources. 

So… then what do we do now? Does that mean that we should not strive towards anything? No that’s not what the backwards law is proposing we do at all…

This does not mean we accept mediocrity, and that we should not pursue anything, this should however make us realise that “the thing”, the goal we set ourselves and work towards will not make us any happier or any different than we are right now. Having more money once your basic needs are met, will not provide you with much more happiness than you already are offered by your current life, and studies show this. 

When we stop trying to be rich we will live in abundance because we are happy with what we have. Inversely if we are striving to become rich as our beacon for success and happiness, our current reality will leave us focusing on the lack we have and magnify that lack as we look to what we aught to achieve in order to be happy. 

So continue improve yourself, make goals you are excited about and continue to strive to become better; but do not let your goals become a hinderance to your own happiness; but do so with the knowledge that you are not striving towards this goal for the sake of achieving a different state of being.

It is also important to note that if you are here wondering how to become truly happy you are in a very fortunate place, because this is kind of a higher order problem to have. If we take a look at the Maslows hierarchy of needs, you would probably already have most of your basic needs met, otherwise you would not be asking yourself questions about happiness, self fulfilment and so on. Therefore recognise how fortunate you are to be in this position. 

So how do we make this practical and actually remember the backwards law to help keep ourselves from falling back into the grind of striving for happiness and success?

It all ultimately boils down to practicing gratitude, acceptance and contentment. 

Practice gratitude for the things you have in your life that you can be thankful for.  You can practice gratitude by getting a morning journal and as you wake up, just write down 3 things you are grateful for everyday. This will change your entire outlook for the day and shift your mindset overtime to become one of abundance rather than one of lack. 

Practice acceptance for accepting that where you are may not be where you think you want to be in life, and that’s ok. Accept where you are and that what you are doing in order to get to your desired goals are enough. Practicing contentment is very similar to acceptance as we are deciding to be happy with current circumstances, not complacent, but happy with life as we have it, while we are on our own journey.

I would like to leave you with one last quote from famous neurologist Viktor Frankl which really reaffirms what we have just said and I hope this sticks with you, he says and I quote:

“Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it.

So I really hope that this made you think about your happiness and self fulfilment in a different light and made you realise that the things you want are not as far out of your grasp as you might have thought. I hope you continue to remind yourself of this because something like this can easily be forgotten in the rush of everyday life…

Take care and I will see you next Time..