Chasing happiness can bring about the exact opposite where we feel low, anxious or defeated. It can be so helpful to know where to invest our energies best.

We can pleasure-seek and pursue dopamine hits which invariably make us unhappy afterwards. We chase after unrealistic goals that the mass media sell to us as a way to be happy. Have the fastest car, biggest telly, be famous, be popular, wear designer clothes. All this meaningless crap doesn’t help.

We can be left feeling defeated as we’ve set unrealistic goals and feel like losers compared to the happy looking insta influencers. We have to remind ourselves that what we see is people putting on a show. There may be some reality in there and do we have the time and effort to pick out the true bits or would it be more helpful to focus on the great things that we have in lives.

Self-soothing behaviours such as gambling, doom-scrolling alcohol and drugs invariably leave us feeling low in some way which then encourages us to chase the nice feelings again by repeating the same self-defeating behaviours. We’re possibly genetically engineered to chase and gather resources as this allows us to be secure first of all and then to be powerful. That’s why money can be so important and it allows some of us to have status symbols that are expensive to show off our wealth and power. The cliché about it not making us happy rings true.

The following article may be of interest, especially for those that have had deep anxiety, severe depression or PTSD.
‘I spent 30 years searching for secret to happiness – the answer isn’t what I thought’ – https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5ye6d43rqwo

For those familiar with mindfulness, you’re likely to be able to see the clear references to being present, accepting and noticing what’s going well.

As always, feel free to leave any comments.
Best wishes, Duncan