A Happiness Paradox
Posted on February 06, 2024 by Faith Feuer, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.
This articles considers the question of whether or not contemplating happiness and the capacity to experience happiness are mutually exclusive.
I’d like to begin this article by presenting you with a paradox. Well, more accurately, I want to present you with two seemingly conflicting pieces of information and solicit opinions as to whether or not they actually constitute a paradox. The first is a quote by the 19th century English philosopher John Stuart Mill. He states:
“Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way. The enjoyments of life (such was now my theory) are sufficient to make it a pleasant thing, when they are taken en passant, without being made a principal object. Once make them so, and they are immediately felt to be insufficient. They will not bear a scrutinizing examination. Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so. The only chance is to treat, not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life. Let your self-consciousness, your scrutiny, your self-interrogation, exhaust themselves on that; and if otherwise fortunately circumstanced you will inhale happiness with the air you breathe, without dwelling on it or thinking about it, without either forestalling it in imagination, or putting it to flight by fatal questioning”
Gotta love those long-winded 19th century English philosophers! What Mill is essentially saying is that, in order to achieve true happiness, we can’t ask ourselves whether or not we are happy. If we want to be happy, we shouldn’t explore happiness too much because, as he claims, “Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so” Well, if this is true, then it doesn’t bode very well for the future of this swellcast because all I’m DOING is exploring happiness, whether or not we are happy and how we can increase our daily dose of joy.
This leads to me to the second piece of information that I have for you guys, which is actually a statistic. Did you know that there are over one MILLION Google searches a month containing phrases such as “ways to increase my happiness”, “how to be happier”, etc. ? That is a LOT of searches a month concentrated on this particular topic of happiness and seems to refute Mills’ claim. Those performing the Google searches are most certainly thinking about their happiness and actively seeking to increase it!
Let’s bring in another piece of the puzzle. Perhaps it is not whether or not we focus on happiness that determines that happiness or lack thereof, but rather, what we choose to focus on with regard to our happiness. One of the instructors in my happiness coaching accreditation classes brought up an interesting point. She suggested that many people are unhappy because of what they believe they don’t have. I’m inclined to agree…we have all heard people around us claim that they are unhappy because they DON’T HAVE money, they DON’T HAVE a significant other, they DON’T HAVE their dream job or pretty much anything else you can think of, material or intangible. However, she also explained that people who say that they are unhappy because they don’t have this or that aren’t really unhappy because they don’t have that thing. They are unhappy because of the THOUGHT of not having that thing. And if we think about it, that makes a lot of sense. I can say for example that I’m not happy because I don’t have an Apple watch, but when I’m out and about having a blast and living life with family and friends, I’m NOT thinking about not having an Apple watch and therefore I’m NOT unhappy! I know it’s a bit hard to wrap your head around and may seem a little like the old philosophy question of if a tree falls in the woods but no one is there to hear it fall, does it actually make a noise? A lot of CBT, or cognitive behavioral therapy, coaching focuses on changing our thoughts in order to change our reaction to a particular situation and therefore our experience of that situation. What does this mean for our thoughts about happiness? Is it better, as Mill tells us, to not contemplate happiness and our experience of it? Or should we instead follow the lead of our Google searching friends and actively explore happiness and seek to amplify our joy? Or, as a third option, should we continue to focus on our happiness, but shift that focus from an abstract questioning of whether or not we are truly happy to a more narrow purview that includes altering our THOUGHTS about what makes us happy or not? All food for thought and possible topics for a discussion of what makes us happy!
