The Happiness Myth
Interview by Clare Mann from Social Myth Busters
with Tao de Haas, Co-founder of Minds with Integrity
Registered Psychotherapist and Social Ecologist
What is happiness?
Happiness is generally referred to as an experience; a feeling of joy, satisfaction and contentment. Most people refer to happiness as a state of feeling good.
Why are we all pursuing it?
We like being happy, who doesn’t? It is only natural that we would rather pursue feeling good than feeling bad. Like any other creature on this planet, when we feel good it biologically implies that we feel safe because as we are without burden or threat. It is hard to feel happy when you are in danger. Being happy is a great feeling, we like feeling happy, we want it, crave it, strive for it, and we want more of it. Being happy all of the time would be fatal however, from a biological survival point of view you should not be happy and content all the time. If you would be happy and content all of the time, you might not be alert and fail to see a lion slowly approaching you, ready to pounce making you its next meal.
Is happiness a myth?
Happiness and being happy in itself is not a myth. Feeling happy is definitely a real experience and hopefully we all experience many happy moments in our life. Where the myth comes into play is when we are seduced into believing that we should be happy all of the time and if we are not then there must be something seriously wrong with us. We then question and blame ourselves for not doing the right things in order to be happy. Why me? Why am I not happy? Particularly if others seem to be happy and have their act together.
What created this myth?
We are constantly bombarded with messages from our consumerist society; you need external ‘stuff’ to be happy, a big house, a nice car, the right brand of clothes etc, etc. Our economy relies on it; consume more, buy more stuff. The capitalist society is built on making people want more. How do you do this? The more discontent and unhappy you can make people feel and the more ‘solutions’ you can offer to ‘remedy’ this discontent, the better this is for the economy that needs to grow every year. Interestingly, the more we have and the more we can afford to buy (and even if you can’t there is always credit), the more unhappy and discontent people in the West are becoming. Winston Churchill famously said “Capitalism is the worst system there is, except for all the other systems”.
So it is in the interest of the economy to create dissatisfaction?
Yes definitely. Do you know how to make a teenage girl unhappy? Give her some fashion magazines! We have just done a major survey here in Australia and found that 1 in 3 females between the age of 18 and 25 are very dissatisfied about the way they look. By the way it is 1 in 4 for males.
I don’t know how long we can sustain the need for yearly economic growth, sooner or later something will have to give. The evidence is already prevalent that it cannot, and will not sustain itself. Look at the toll that creating discontent and promoting unhappiness is having on the planet, and how our insatiable demand for resources is damaging the environment and our planet. I recently heard that if everyone lived like we do here in Australia that we would need 2 ½ planets to support our lifestyle! Trying to purchase happiness through consuming more and more is indeed a fool’s paradise, it will never work.
So seeking happiness is selfish?
Yes it can be. The pursuit of happiness and the way people are encouraged to achieve it seems to be a rather hedonistic endeavor. Can I really be happy if my happiness comes at the cost of someone or something else? Can I really be happy if a dress or fancy shirt is made in a sweat shop where people work in appalling conditions for next to nothing? Or where children are being exploited rather than being educated?
Look at the term ‘Happy Meal’ for example. This is a term used by one of the planets largest fast food companies. Isn’t this in itself a myth? It implies that eating this product will make you happy. Yes eating it might make you feel good in that moment but how on earth can it make you happy if animals are suffering in order to produce ‘the happy meal?’ I know most people don’t want to know or think about it. They’d rather create the myth that a cow just runs around in a nice green pasture, carefree, eating lovely fresh grass and living a happy life; then bang it becomes a hamburger. Eating Animals– by Jonathan Safran Foer is a best seller and certainly is opening a lot of people’s eyes to the horror of the meat and poultry industry. Neuro science tells us that the more we care, and the more care we take of each other, our fellow species as well as our environment, the better we feel.
Like me, you seem very passionate about that.
Coming back to happiness, are we not told by some new age gurus that happiness is our birthright?
Yes that is right and not even by just new age gurus. Do we really believe that happiness is our birthright? What would the implications be if that were true? What struggles do we now create for those who feel or think that they are not happy? Some “experts" even say that all you have to do is visualize the things you want, generally meaning more material stuff, and somehow it just will magically appear. Of course you can visualize all the things you want. If it is all so easy why not visualize more important things in life, like the happiness and well-being of others? I have never really heard anyone suggest or visualize the end of world poverty, hunger, the trafficking of women and children or wars.
Even the Dalia Lama has said; “the very purpose of life is to seek happiness”. Is it? Is that really the very purpose of life? Too seek? Now if he means that happiness is the result of feeling complete or living a rich, meaningful and purposeful life, than I partly agree with him. The part that I don’t agree with is that you should seek or pursue, that is probably the worst thing you can do. A rich man may be miserable, a poor man maybe happy. The overwhelming conclusion is that happiness is subjective. It is your attitude to your circumstances rather than the circumstances themselves that are most important. Your attitude is something that you can change, it is not something you can seek or pursue. Seeking or pursuing happiness is like looking for laughter without there being something funny. One is the result of the other.
So it is counterproductive to pursue happiness?
Yes it certainly can be. I truly believe that the pursuit of happiness and seeking it often has the opposite effect. You see when you pursue or seek something it means you haven’t got it and you will start to look for it. We are then told by people who try to sell us stuff where and how to find it and we start looking in the wrong places. It reminds me of a silly joke. I am not sure if I remember it correctly or if I have made part of it up, but it goes something like this. When God created man he said to the other Gods, let play a game, let’s play a trick on humans. Let’s give these humans the key to happiness and then hide it. Good idea said the other Gods, but where shall we put it? Let’s put it deep inside them said God mischievously, they will never find it there.
That is so true isn’t it, what we think will make us happy often does not.
Yes, what we are sold and told will make us happy often does not, especially when we seek it. Hopefully you will experience many happy moments while you are alive. But we are also kidding ourselves if we think that life is about being happy. You will also experience many other human emotions like sadness, grief, fear, anxiety, worry, anger. I personally would not want to be happy all the time and I don’t want other people to just be happy all the time. For example discontent and finding solutions are part of our development and evolution. If we were just happy all the time we would not have advanced and would still be using Stone Age tools. I don’t mind creative discontent for example; it makes me do things, act, hopefully creating lots of things that will make a positive contribution to others and create positive ripples in the pond. I get frustrated when I see people fight with each other in relationships for example, where children are suffering because of the parent’s poor communication skills and lack of awareness and basic understanding of emotional intelligence. I don’t want to be happy about that.
This frustration drives me to help people gain a better understanding of personality differences for example, or teach people good communication skills based on emotional intelligence. Anger is a great emotion, when anger is used as a catalyst for positive change. I wish that people were more angry; angry about some of the injustices in the world. I often think that people accept things that are unacceptable and get angry about the things that are not worth getting angry about. Aristotle said “Anyone can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person at the right time, and for the right purpose and in the right way - that is not within everyone's power and that is not easy”.
We need other emotions rather than just feeling happy. Dr Martin Seligman in his book Learned Optimism, says something I really like. He says, “The genius of evolution lies in the dynamic tension between optimism and pessimism continually correcting each other. Some of his other books are: A Primer in Positive Psychology, and Authentic Happiness,
Through emotions we experience life. Emotions make us come to life. How would you know happiness if you never experienced sadness? It would be like trying to make it summer all the time. Emotions are like the seasons in nature and sometimes we experience them all in the same day. What you don’t want is getting stuck in any one of them; experience emotions but do not become them.
Just to come back to your question about the pursuit of happiness being counterproductive.
Interestingly, chasing happiness is a rather resent phenomenon in human evolution. But I think it has back fired. The more we have chased happiness, rather than people becoming happier, the more depression and loneliness have increased. Here in Australia we don’t appear any happier than we did back in the 1950’s, despite an increase in wealth. As I mentioned, have you noticed when people talk about wanting to be happy they talk about their own personal happiness? What they can get and what they can gain for themselves? Is it any wonder that we feel so disconnected, lonely and even depressed? So the pursuit of happiness is, I believe, a great recipe for being unhappy.
I don’t think you can find everlasting happiness outside yourself, I don’t believe you will ever find it there, happiness is an inner state.
It reminds me of another story about a key, this time it is a Nasrudin Hodge story. ‘The tales of Mulla (Master) Nasurdin’, the age old teaching stories from the Sufi tradition have become famous throughout the world. Mulla Nasurdin Hodge is a mystical figure. Sometimes he is the wise man and sometimes he is the fool. On my story CD This Too Will Pass there are three wonderful Nasrudin Hodge stories.
A man is walking home late one night when he sees his friend Mulla Nasrudin down on all fours, crawling on his hands and knees in the market place, searching frantically under a streetlight for something on the ground. “Mulla, what have you lost?” the friend asks “I am searching for my key,” Nasrudin says axiuously. “I’ll help you look,” and the friend immediately joins Mulla Nasrudin in the search and crawls on the ground on all fours. Soon both men are on their knees under the streetlight, looking for the lost key. After some time, the friend asks Nasrudin, “Tell me Mulla, do you remember where exactly did you drop the key?” Nasrudin waves his arm back toward the darkness and says, “Over there, in my house. I lost the key inside my house…”. Shocked and exasperated, the friend jumps up and shouts at Mulla Nasrudin, “Then why are you searching for the key out here in the street?”. “Because there is more light out here than inside my house” Mulla Nasrudin Hodge answered.
People are constantly looking for the key to happiness, outside themselves. Happiness ultimately cannot be found in the outer world by accumulating more and more stuff. I know it is what keeps the economy going, but accumulating more and more stuff is in the first place unsustainable, and in the second place there is such a thing as the adaptation principle, and in the third place it really is fool’s paradise that stuff will make you happy. Sure stuff can make you feel more comfortable and you need a certain amount of stuff to do that but if you think that this gives you long lasting happiness you are really kidding yourself. I don’t think we can be truly happy in isolation, yes, moments perhaps, but definitely not as a default position.
What is the adaptation principle?
The human brain quickly adapts to new situations. Let’s say you really wanted something badly and then got it. You might have been excited for a while but soon the novelty wears off. What is new and exciting soon becomes part of the norm. Or let’s say you bought a brand new car and not long after you saw an even newer model, with better features for a lower price, how long did the happiness last?
What paradigm shift is required to live a meaningful life?
Three words: Soulfulness (essence = core values) Mindfulness (attitude) and Gratefulness.
Let’s start with soulfulness. I truly believe that happiness, or perhaps a better word here would be contentment, is the result of living a soulful, meaningful and purposeful life. Interestingly when you ask people what is the most soulful or meaningful thing in their life they are rarely able to answer that question. An easier question is; what are the most important things in your life? The answers people will give often provide an insight into their core values. They mention things like: their partner, their kids, their family, their friends for example. Others might say when I help others, do something worthwhile or when I am creative or lose myself in a project that really interests me. One thing is certain; people hardly talk about accumulating more stuff as part of their core values.
We at Minds with Integrity have developed an inventory; it is what we call Mi Inventory. Mi Inventory helps people discover and connect to their core needs and values. In other words we help them discover more about the essence of who they are. The more we align our activities with our essence self, our core needs and values, the more meaningful, purposeful and satisfying life will be.
The key to a more content and happy life lies inside, and what is required to uncover that key? A paradigm shift; moving from our external world to our internal world. Aligning your activities with your core nature, your needs and values, in other words doing what is important to you, doing what honors the essence of your soul. But it is more than activities and doing, at the same time it is also extremely important to learn more how to ‘be’.
By the way I don’t see ‘the soul’ as separate from you, I refer to soul here as your unique essence. When you get in touch with your ‘souls essence’, you are likely to live your life meaningfully and purposefully. Do what you love doing, do what is meaningful and purposeful to you and others around you.
If you do that, than happiness or contentment are likely to flow from that more often. I personally don’t think that there is a greater purpose or meaning to our life. I think it is important to just live your life more purposefully, filled with purpose and meaningfully, filled with meaning. And just in case there happens to be a greater purpose or meaning of life, you can’t go wrong living your life like that in any case! The second way to be more content is mindfulness.
We hear that word used more and more often but what does this is actually mean to you?
I refer to mindfulness as a mental quality of non-judgmental attention, an awareness and appreciation of the present moment. The ability to see things directly as they appear, without judgment or even without interpretation. See, adults are rarely present in the moment. They either live in the future, which is more the domain of the younger adult, or the past, when adults become older, but rarely do we humans live life in the present moment. We are constantly doing without much awareness. We work, eat, sleep etc, without paying much attention to the actual activity. When was the last time you really, I mean really were completely present and focused on a meal you ate? Where you tasted and were conscious of everything that this involves? We have become human doings rather than human ‘beings’. It is like our whole society is suffering from ADHD, no wonder alcohol and drug consumption is epidemic. People are trying to slow down and anesthetize themselves, tune out, escape, watch more TV etc. When you are mindful in the present moment it is near impossible to be discontent or unhappy. In order to be unhappy you have to think about what makes you unhappy. In the moment you do that you are no longer in the present moment but somewhere else, somewhere where you don’t want to be. So practice being mindful, which is an anathema in itself is it not? The word practicing implies doing, and enjoying the little moments is much more satisfying than living with core discontent. One of the more popular authors that write about mindfulness in a comprehensible way is Eckhart Tolle. He has written several bestselling books such as The Power of Now, A New Earth, Oneness With All Life and Stillness Speaks amongst others.
What about gratefulness?
Gratefulness and being grateful is like counting your blessings, appreciating those things that you do have. In other words being thankful for what you’ve got rather than being disgruntled about what you haven’t got. Research clearly shows that being grateful changes a person’s perspective and therefore their attitude. The way you look at things and how you interpret the outer world, very much affects your mood and ultimately your well-being. I like the word well-being especially in the context of mindfulness, meaning being well with the emphasis on the word being. Adults who frequently feel grateful are happier people. People who have a feeling of thankfulness and appreciation tend to also be healthier.
Research shows that these people are far less likely to be depressed. They have more energy, and are more pleasant to be around, they ‘ripple’ positive energy. They have more quality social connections. They more often experience feelings of satisfaction, contentment or happiness if you will. People with this positive attitude are also less prone to drug and alcohol addictions and are generally less envious of others, less greedy and more generous. Interestingly people who have more gratitude also are less prone to viral infection as their positive attitude boosts their immune system. This is why positive psychologists like Martin Seligman recommend that people have a gratitude journal, to write on a daily basis the things that they are thankful about during that day. You see the human mind easily forgets the good things, the good experiences and will often focus on the bad. There is a good reason for this and again the answer can be found in neurobiology. The brain is an organ mainly concerned with survival. In terms of survival, when you have to make sure (worry) about getting your next meal, your last meal is less relevant isn’t it?
What about teaching children about gratitude?
Yes I think that it is very important, yet quite challenging in this day and age where marketers are already conditioning very young children to become consumers. Research shows that children who feel and act grateful tend to be less materialistic, get better grades and set higher goals in terms of personal achievement. They will also attract more friends, and people like to be around them. No wonder, who wants to be around a whining, dissatisfied and ungrateful child? And why would this be any different for adults? Would you like to be around a person like that? Worse still would you like to be that person? So there is a lot to be said for gratitude. But rather than telling children it is far more important to be a role model as a parent. Do as I do not do as I say.
Did you yourself have good role models?
Yes, I had great role models as far as that was concerned. One of my mother’s favorite sayings used to be; “He who does not appreciate the little things in life does not deserve the big things either.” Both mum and dad went through the German occupation; Dad went underground because he refused to work for the Germans. Many Dutch people experienced severe hunger especially during the winter of 1944. Dad resorted several times to stealing potato peels, potato peels, not even potatoes and scrapped off the last bit of potato; “do you know how amazing that tastes when you are hungry?” he would say.
I have always had a happy life, says my father who turns 90 this year. But Dad, I once asked, you went through a war, had to hide from the Germans, went hungry, how can you say you were always happy!? You are still jumpy when the doorbell rings! I was very happy when the war ended, when we saw the Canadians roll in with their tanks, and liberating us. I still cry when I think about that and hear the national anthem being played. Every time I hear our national anthem I remember those moments and still feel deeply moved and overjoyed. Both Mum and Dad never wanted for anything much. Both were a real example of gratitude. Mum was the happiest, like most mums I know, when the whole family got together. She would often sit and observe; contentment was written all over her face. Dad found much joy, pleasure and happiness in his creativity; his paintings, his art and his writing. Now at the age of nearly ninety he really enjoys giving much of it away.
Winston Churchill said; “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give”. I really like that quote. Neuroscience backs that theory. It tells us that when we do something for someone else we active the altruistic centre in the brain, the brain involved with social interaction called the posterior superior temporal sulcus. It gets activated when we do something for someone else. When this part of the brain lights up we feel good. This releases all kinds of feel good hormones. By the way this is an intrinsic biological functioning not learned behavior through religious instructions for example.
Jean Paul Satre, the French existentialist philosopher said it is up to you to give life meaning. Life has no meaning a priori. Before you come alive, life is nothing; it’s up to you to give it a meaning and value. It is nothing else but the meaning that you choose. I agree with him.
What is one of your favorite books on this topic book you would recommend people read?
Besides the books I mentioned, one of my favorite books is How to Meet Yourself by Dennis Waite. He enlists the help of sociologists, evolutionary psychologists, philosophers and historians. I find it engaging and inspirational.
I also like Australian Social Researcher Hugh Mackay's book What Makes Us Tick
So where can people start to bust their own happiness myth?
Well a great first step is to ask yourself questions such as; what is my personal definition of happiness? How do I live my life so it has purpose and meaning for me and those around me? In what way do I honor the essence of who I am? How does my life reflect what is important to me?
Not easy questions.
No, these are generally not simple questions that can be answered just off the top of your head. If you want to live a meaningful, purposeful and fulfilling life, then exploring and knowing the answer to these questions is essential. And to do that you need to know what makes you tick, what drives you and ultimately what satisfies the essence of who you are. You need to know the real you, your authentic self.
To help people with this important process Minds with Integrity is a new concept in personal transformation and empowerment. As I mentioned Minds’ has an inventory system called Mi Inventory. Mi Inventory is a personal inventory to help people explore these questions. It is also a powerful and guided process that will help people to unlock the door to infinite possibilities.
People can visit Mindswithintegrity.com and get their free copy of Mi Evolution, the introductory module of Mi Inventory. It could be the most empowering decision they’ll ever make. I certainly hope people will at least have a look at this as I love for people to live their lives more consciously and feel more fulfilled, rather than looking in the wrong places to ‘find’ happiness, after all it is my passion to help people achieve this.
Thanks for your insights Tao
It has been a great pleasure speaking with you Clare
Tao de Haas is a director of a brand new organization MINDS with Integrity. MINDS with Integrity provides and shares personal and professional development information, tools and resources for a community of likeminded people; people who share a passion for higher thinking and who want to live more fully and consciously. Tao de Haas has been registered psychotherapist and social ecologist for over twenty five years. He has influenced and inspired tens of thousands of people in developing their higher thinking, empowerment and transformation. Tao’s interests lie in Emotional Intelligence, People Skills, Communication and Management and Leadership Development. He also is a corporate mentor and executive coach. Tao is also a composer and musician.