8 Common Myths About Happiness
Myths make it much harder to make an informed decision that may guide you to a solution. Of course, there are several myths about how to be happy. Understanding them can help you find more joy and stop being miserable. Here are 8 such myths you need to unlearn.
1. Happy people are always happy.
Don’t assume that happy people are always happy.
People that look happy also feel the other spectrum of emotions they should be feeling.
Allowing yourself to feel the full spectrum of emotions helps you become happier in the long term because feeling those other emotions gives your brain time to process and work through them.
Negative emotions can fester, derailing your happiness if you never let yourself feel angry or sad, for instance.
Furthermore, there are plenty of people who may be dealing with mental illnesses or life’s problems who still wear a smile on their faces.
It’s easy to appear to be fine if that’s what you want to do. All it takes is a bright smile and not talking about what you actually feel.
2. Acquiring more will make you happy.
There’s an old saying that “Money can’t buy happiness.”
Like most pithy one-liners, that phrase doesn’t clearly communicate the entire story.
Shockingly, money can buy happiness. For some, buying a new thing or some stuff might give them a bit of fleeting happiness.
But fleeting is all it is. You may feel good for a bit and then those good feelings go away.
Money certainly buys happiness when you’re paying for security—that is, when you can afford groceries, pay your bills, and have a roof over your head.
It’s hard to be happy when you’re living one disaster away from homelessness.
Yes, stuff will make you happy temporarily. Experiences will make you happier than stuff, though both experiences and stuff only provide fleeting happiness.
3. Positive thinking will make you happy.
Does positive thinking matter? Yes, it does.
Of course, the world is full of cynics who will loudly proclaim that it doesn’t.
Then you have folks who are dealing with difficult life situations or mental illness who may not feel like positive thinking helps them at all.
And that’s true to some degree. You can’t out-think mental illness or terrible life situations that you may be going through.
However, to say that positive thinking doesn’t matter at all isn’t correct either.
Your thoughts often drive your emotions. If your thoughts lean toward the negative, bitter, or cynical then those are the emotions that you’re more likely to feel.
The good news is that there is a third option: if you can’t be happy, just try to not be negative.
You don’t have to try to find the silver lining in terrible situations. You can just let the situation be what it is.
What you want to avoid is dwelling in the negativity of the situation if you’re able.
Because the more you dwell on the negativity, the worse it’s going to feel and be.
4. People with less are happier.
There is a common myth that people who have less are happier because of it.
The message is that you should give up more of your things, sacrifice ambitions, and just be happy with less because people with less are supposed to be happier.
In fact, the opposite is true.
This trope is harmful to disadvantaged people because it causes advantaged people to sympathize less.
After all, if you have less, then surely you’re happier with less responsibility.
Right?
Well, no.
As anyone who’s lived in poverty can tell you: not having much is incredibly stressful. Can you pay your bills? Are you going to get to eat more than one meal every other day? Can you pay your rent?
Not having much, or enough, makes you more vulnerable to the ebb and flow of life. You’re not going to be happy if your car breaks down, you don’t have enough money to get it fixed, and lose your job because your local public transportation is unreliable.
5. Earning the approval of others will make you happy.
Do you have a need for approval?
Do you think that you will be happier if you can make someone proud of you, envy you, or have an accomplishment to point at?
Earning the approval of others is not a good way to live your life. You can’t hinge your happiness on the whims and desires of other people.
What if the person you’re seeking approval from is a miserable person?
You may ask, “Well, why would I seek approval from a miserable person?”
The truth is that many people do. They may want approval from a neglectful, abusive parent or a romantic partner who just isn’t all that good of a person.
By seeking approval, you are essentially handing the keys to your happiness and sadness to that person.
At the core of the desire for approval is a need or want for attention. A desire for attention isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Attention is just another type of socialization.
It may not be that you’re looking for approval by seeking approval at all. Instead, consider whether or not you’re lonely.
Lonely people often seek approval as a means to socialize and connect with others even when it’s not healthy.
6. The best years of your life are behind you.
Far too many people think that getting older means you have to leave the good times of your life behind you.
That couldn’t be further from the truth. However, you can easily make it your truth if you buy into this myth.
There are plenty of things you can do with your present and future if you take care of yourself and keep working toward it.
Sure, life has its ups and downs. No one’s denying that. You may be going through a difficult time right now or may not have had as good of experiences as you did in the past.
That shouldn’t stop you from trying to make the most of right now and what’s to come.
The great thing about getting older is that you also develop a better understanding of who you are, what you want out of life, and greater wisdom to pursue it.
The best years of life can be ahead of you if you want them to be.
7. Negativity creates the most beautiful art.
Quick! Name a happy artist!
You may find that it’s difficult to come up with one immediately. However, it’s incredibly easy to think of the miserable and struggling. We tend to focus on artists we view as tragic like Vincent van Gogh and Ernest Hemingway.
But why? Maybe it’s because they are more relatable to the average person.
Many people tend to romanticize misery and suffering with the creation of high-quality, meaningful art.
That isn’t the case at all. Sure, there are plenty of artists who’ve created great works when they were miserable and depressed but there are many more that haven’t.
It’s difficult to dedicate the time to develop an artistic style when you’re too depressed, unhappy, or unstable to do consistent work.
Artists like van Gogh and Hemingway didn’t just accidentally stumble into their skill and quality. They both worked hard to develop their skill; just as hard as happier artists like Diego Vélasquez and John Constable.
And what many people don’t consider is that both artists also sought help to improve their happiness—van Gogh checked himself into an asylum and Hemingway sought help from psychologists going so far as to participate in electrotherapy for his depression.
8. Finally getting the thing you desire will give you the happiness you expected it to.
Many of the things that you believe will make you happy don’t make you happy in the way that you may think.
The author of Stumbling on Happiness, psychologist, and Harvard psychology professor Dr. Daniel Gilbert studies our perceptions of happiness and misery.
What he found is that people often overestimate just how happy or miserable an event will make them.
Yes, you will be happier if you’re in a healthy relationship, make more money, or accomplish your goals. The problem is that we still look for silver linings in those events to tell ourselves that they will make us happier than is actually the case.
In reality, the happiness these situations provide is often a brief improvement before your mind settles again.
Similarly, misery would often be less intense if we didn’t focus so much on the miserable circumstance.
It’s reasonable to be sad and in the dumps if you lose a relationship, a job, or have any kind of negative experience. The problem is that we tend to focus on, ruminate, and make the situation worse for ourselves.
Most people are more resilient than they give themselves credit for. Better coping skills and a change in what you allow yourself to believe about your happiness can help if you don’t find joy in life anymore.
Finally…
Understanding these common myths about happiness can help you navigate life’s ups and downs with greater clarity and resilience. By embracing a more nuanced view of happiness, you can cultivate a more authentic and sustainable sense of well-being. Remember, true happiness often lies in finding balance, accepting life’s complexities, and focusing on personal growth rather than chasing fleeting moments of joy.
