The absence of problems does not guarantee happiness. However, opening yourself up to change, tolerating uncertainties, and dealing with the fear they generate is a great help, of course, understanding this and integrating this idea into life may not be so easy.
As Albert Camus said, people are obsessed with the pursuit of happiness as if they were looking for the Holy Grail, yet well-being is not a goal to achieve, it is a daily exercise that requires the ability to change concentration and adaptive behaviors.
- Several decades have passed since psychologist Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania in the United States highlighted the need for psychology to study man beyond pathological.
- With the aim of promoting positive emotions and well-being and promoting beneficial life dynamics.
It was in 1990 that positive psychology began and, since then, the explosion of well-intentioned theories and advice in this regard has continued to grow.
Every year thousands of books on happiness are published, universities offer hundreds of courses on this subject and, today, people like Ben-Shahar continue to make themselves known as gurus in this field.
In addition, several new fields have emerged in neuroscience, where several experts tell us what happens within our brains when we are happy and what we must do to improve this state.
All these currents, theories and perspectives are very interesting and also inspiring, however, there is a problem that arises from all these voices: we have turned the concept of happiness into a marketing product.
And more than that, because we educate people on the subject of “how to be happy,” we create a growing intolerance of discomfort, sadness, anxiety or uncertainty.
Our immediate reality isn’t exactly a fairy tale. Many times, no matter how happy we try to be, context does not help us. Therefore, we should change the concept of happiness a little bit. Let’s see how to go on.
Happiness is not the absence of problems. If so, it would be a place we could reach or a goal we could reach. Only our environment is not a game in which we can get to the end. There are and always will be unforeseen changes.
Almost every day we inform others and disagreements arise, differences of opinion, frictions, no matter what our state is, our age, where we live, problems will always arise and no one is immune to what happens around them. and in the inner world itself.
In this context, it is necessary to bring to the discussion the voices that, in recent years, have emerged in academia and which have a very clear objective: to offer another vision of happiness.
Have psychologists such as Jerome Wakefield (New York University) and Allan Horwitz (Rutgers) written very interesting books like Sadness Lost?How psychiatry turned depression into a fad.
In this work, we can understand how we try to eliminate realities such as sadness and frustration from our emotional repertoire, as if the life we were looking for was good only if those feelings were not part of it.
By not recognizing them and including them in our speech, by making positive emotions more relevant, we are making people emotionally illiterate. Today, not everyone knows what to do with their stress or anxiety.
Not everyone knows why you owe a knot in your stomach, the fear that arises and paralyzes and can even prevent us from leaving home, dealing with adversity and these complex emotional states is also necessary to be happy.
At this point, I would like to keep a definition of happiness at once appropriate and inspiring, with which many agree, both neuroscientists and psychologists, psychiatrists, economists and even Buddhist monks.
It’s about giving meaning to life, having goals and being active means being ready to grow and accept daily adversity and challenges, that would essentially be the key to being happy.
Eduard Punset once said in his time that happiness is the absence of fear, this misinterpreted idea can become a very perverse statement, in fact, human beings cannot fail to be afraid, which is an emotion inherent in who we are and, as such, fulfills a various evolutionary function, actually.
This would be an example: “Maybe I’m afraid to move on and start a new life, but I know I should at least try. Taking this step will allow me to evolve. So, I decide to take the risk and I will do it despite my fear?.
So no, happiness is not a lack of problems, in fact, happiness begins to gain ground when we stand above challenges.
Sonja Lyubomirsky, a professor of psychology at the University of California in the United States, is one of the leading experts in dispelling myths about positive psychology and happiness. For example, he often says that well-being is not about success, achieving goals, leaving alone having things.
The human being achieves a sense of balance and fullness when he feels good about himself, when he realizes that he is able to do what he needs, when his self-esteem is high and can face fears, stress, worries, etc. way, everything flows and goes well.
Therefore, it is essential to understand that life is not easy, it is not easy at all. It will always leave marks and scars and make us face battles.
This is a reality that we cannot change and that is why we must accept it, to know from the beginning, to understand that we cannot change this fact is fundamental to being well.
No one is immune to the problems and turns that life gives, sometimes without warning and suddenly, so let us now accept that there are stones along the way and work on our personal growth, as well as on the development of psychological strength.
All this will allow us to invest and cultivate our own well-being.