The Happiness Trap
by Russ Harris
Image From Goodreads
“If we live a full human life we will feel the range of human emotions: the pleasant ones, like love, joy, and curiosity, and the painful ones like sadness, anger, and fear. All these feeling are a normal, natural part of being human.”
“Of course we all like to feel good, and it makes sense to appreciate and enjoy pleasant feelings when the appear. But if we try to have them all the time, we’re doomed to failure.”
In case you haven’t noticed, there is a cultural fixation on happiness. There is an insane amount of pressure for us to be happy all the time. If you are not happy, something is obviously wrong and you need to be cured. Bookstores have whole shelves of self-help books dedicated to helping people find happiness. Entire podcasts are devoted to this topic. Magazine articles give tips and tricks to maintaining a happy outlook. And the result of all this, Russ Harris explains, is that paradoxically we are increasingly unhappy. The premise is simple enough: avoiding bad feelings and only seeking good feelings is only bound to increase the negative. We soon realize the impossibility of this endeavor and since we are told our default state should be perpetual happiness, we get down on ourselves when we fall short or even experience a bout of anger, express frustration, or feel sadness. Hence, the happiness trap. This book is the antidote for those feeling stuck in their quest for eternal happiness.
I am a seeker. I strive for self-improvement, wisdom, and small ways to hack my way into the ideal life. When I was younger, I sought books that could provide tips, tricks, and insights into becoming happier. I wasn’t depressed. I wasn’t a sad person. I was, and still am, relatively positive. But I was stuck in the trap of thinking eternal happiness was the panacea. I wasn’t seeking contentment. I wasn’t seeking meaning. I was looking for joy – all the time. It took time to realize this was an impossible task. As it turns out, nothing was wrong with me. When I began embracing my sadness, my frustrations, and even my loneliness, I became freer. I’m human. Stress and worry and anger are normal human emotions. Accepting it meant I was better able to cope and deal with stress rather than keep it bottled up. Because for the longest time, keeping it suppressed was what I did when dealing with the negative emotions I thought I wasn’t supposed to have. Fortunately, I was younger when I came to this important lesson. I found this book much later in my journey and Harris put into words, more eloquently than I ever could, the eureka moment I went through many years ago.
Fast forward to the present, I feel like I’ve been failing my kids. As parents we want our kids to be happy. When something is visibly wrong or I know the kids are bothered by something, my first question is “what is wrong?” That is quickly followed by “what can I do to fix it?” I find myself doing this so they can revert to their ‘natural’ childhood state of constant bliss. I inadvertently find myself trying to maintain and cultivate their happiness. This, I have come to realize, sends my kids the wrong message – unintentionally of course – that sadness and other emotions are wrong. This quest to make them happy does little to equip them for life and how to deal with whatever life throws their way. They need to know that all emotions, not just happiness, are normal. In recognizing the normal human range of emotions, they can then develop the tools necessary to deal with, rather than repress their feelings. The Happiness Trap found me at a time when I was still able to examine and alter my parenting approach regarding my kids’ emotional development. They, like all of us, need to know that all emotions are valid and nothing is wrong with them if they don’t feel happy all the freaking time.