Why Does Everyone Want To Be Happy?

Why does everyone want to be happy? Like so many other things in this life, society tells us we should ‘be happy’ so that becomes our goal. What’s interesting is people will tell you that they want to be happy, but if you ask them what happiness means to them they cannot answer. Does that mean that we want something, just because everyone else wants it even though we don’t even know what it is? It makes a lot more sense to me, to strive to be content and at peace.

A Fleeting Feeling

I think happiness is a fleeting feeling. Sometimes we feel happy, sometimes we feel sad, sometimes we feel excited. But no one strives to ‘be excited’ as their life long state of being. Just imagine how exhausting it would be to be excited all of the time?! It’s quite unreasonable. Yet we seem to think it is reasonable to strive to be happy. There are even apps for happiness: 9 Best Happiness Apps for 2023 (jokes aside some of those apps are great for improving our well being). I don’t know where this endeavour to ‘be happy’ has come from but I think it is idealistic, unrealistic and misleading.

Content Vs. Happy

Of course, I am far from the authority on emotional well being. I just find it difficult to answer all of the below questions on the left and much easier to address the questions on the right. It’s just a simple change in the wording but it means something totally different, to me, at least. If you feel the same, this might provoke a new approach to life:

Am I happy with life now?
How can I be happy?
What does it mean for me to be happy?
Will I know when I am happy?
What will make me happy?

Am I content with life now?
How can I be content?
What does it mean for me to be content?
Will I know when I am content?
What will make me content?

A losing battle

I don’t strive for happiness or any other fleeting feeling. It has taken 30 odd years and a mindset shift to realise, that is a losing battle. A life full of happiness alone is not a full life. And frankly, I’d like to know who told me I should try to be ‘happy’ as I’ve subconsciously wasted a lot of time on that notion. Nowadays I strive to be content and to be at peace with my life. That does mean that sometimes I feel happy, sometimes I feel sad and all of the other complex emotions in between. which in themselves, are life.

For me, striving to be content allows for the ups, downs and the process of life itself. It feels like it allows us to acknowledge and celebrate what we have achieved in life so far but still strive for more. I am content with where my life right now, but I still have more to do. And having more goals in life actually contributes to my level of contentment right now.

"I'll be happy when.."

Sometimes to ‘be happy’ sounds like a finite goal that we must achieve. “I’ll be happy when..” leads us to a life of constantly chasing an elusive state, that never materialises. And that is because as humans we will never be satisfied. We are wired to always want more. But don’t despair too much, there are pros and cons to never being satisfied (check out our recent post on the topic).

I have no idea what it means to me to be ‘happy’ but I do know that to be content and at peace for me, means to be okay with where I am now. If I showed a snapshot of my life now to 22 year old me, would she be proud or would she be disappointed? Immediately, I can tell she’d be proud as we’ve achieved above and beyond what we thought we could.

My goal is to keep that up. The things I am doing now are helping me to be content with my life in my forties. I know there will be struggles along the way, I know everything will not work out exactly as I plan it. I hope I will feel happy some of the time but I’ll also feel a lot of other fleeting emotions. Overall, I hope to be content and at peace with my life, at any given moment.

Where to Start

If you look at your life and feel that you are not content with where you are, today is a great day to start working on that. Feeling content is not on the other side of any one specific goal. I promise, you will not be content and at peace if you simply achieve one of the following;

Lose 10lbs
Make an extra €10k per year
Have more friends
Run a marathon

However, the process of working on some areas that are important to you (anything that is important to you, these are trivial examples) will contribute to your overall contentment and peace. It is not just one thing, it will not happen over night and it is not on the other side of any one trivial goal. I realise this is also true for happiness but sometimes that is how people talk about happiness. And it is damaging and unrealistic.

For me, it feels like people talk about happiness like there is no fluidity. You either are happy or you are not. Where as being content is more fluid, it is on a scale. We know we will never be 100% content but we can always appreciate where we are on the scale now. So let’s all do ourselves a favour and stop trying to be happy.

Without even trying, we will be happy sometimes. And no matter how hard we try, we will never be happy all the time. But we can always be content and at peace. Let us know where you are today. Are you content now? What are you working on to move that scale in the right direction?