We all believe that we know what will make us happy. Each of us has an idea of what that might be — good health, financial freedom, a loving relationship, a cute pair of shoes. But do we really know?
Part of what gets in the way of us accurately predicting what makes us happy is that our assumptions about what will make us happy are often wrong. Dan Gilbert, a Harvard psychologist, believes that in our lifelong pursuit of happiness most of us have the wrong map. We project into the future how we think we will feel about an experience. We can simulate something before we actually experience it.
While this experience simulation can sometimes be on target, it can also lead us astray because we have a tendency to overestimate the impact of future events …. to believe that different outcomes are more different than they really are. That winning the lottery will make us happier than having a stroke. Research shows otherwise. Why? Because happiness is something that we create, not something that happens to us.
We think that happiness is something to be found. But happiness is what we create within us. We have a psychological immune system, mostly a non-conscious thought processes, that helps us to change our view of the world so that we can feel better about the world in which we find ourselves in. It defends our mind against unhappiness the same way that our physical immune system defends our body against illness. It allows us to feel good enough to cope with our situation and bad enough to do something about it.
There is no single formula for finding happiness. But one thing is certain. We have the capacity to be the very thing we are constantly pursuing.
Happiness resides not in possessions, and not in gold, happiness dwells in the soul. -Democritus
When you finally allow yourself to trust joy and embrace it, you will find that you dance with everything. -Emmanuel
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