8. Why You Should Stop Chasing Happiness

Yeah, I'm really excited to so today we're talking about the pursuit of happiness and on the surface of things the pursuit of happiness probably sounds like a good thing right? You know, everybody wants to be happy. But what we wanted to talk about today is how sometimes the pursuit of happiness can lead to us chasing happiness rather than living in the moment. And we're both really firm believers that life is about the journey, not just the destination, and sometimes Pursuit of Happiness can turn into that, you know, oh, when I move house, I'll be happy. When I get a new job. I'll be happy when I lose weight, I'll be happy. But actually, you know, if you're always waiting to achieve something before you'll be happy, you won't be happy because once you get there, you'll just move the goalposts and they'll be something else that you want. Instead, you need to learn to enjoy what you already have, while still looking forward to future goals.

That is so true. You're always going to be moving the goalposts no matter what happens, and I think we're all guilty of this, you know, we're always waiting for when we're ready, as we talked about before, when this happens when that happens. I'll feel this way we'll always put in feelings upon to ourself. And you know what, I really believe that one of the best things that you can do for yourself is to live in the moment because I know when I live in the moment, I feel so much happier. I mean it can be just simple little things like just going out and looking at the stars or you know you're at the beach and and the waves are hitting off the rocks and the on the shoreline. You know I can I can spend ages outside with my camera like just setting up and framing shots are a little bit of a loser. But for me, this is what brings me happiness. And when we talk about what makes you happy, the things that we're doing in that moment are the things that make us happy, but we just don't acknowledge that on a day to day basis. And I think we need to be more mindful of that. But this is something that I'm going to be discussing right at the end of the episode in more detail. So stick around because the little kicker this week is going to be a good

one as always, this is backed up by science, and we'll link to a couple of studies in the show notes. But basically what we've found is consistently these studies have demonstrated that individuals who actively Chase happiness as an end goal, usually report overall lower levels of happiness than individuals who are living for the moment and experiencing a full breadth of emotions as they go along. So I'll just quickly go through one of the studies because we both found this one quite interesting. So individuals were split into two groups, and one group was asked to monitor their happiness by continually adjusting a happiness metre. As they listened to music. The others weren't asked to monitor any sort of happiness. They just had to listen to the music. And then afterwards, all of the participants were given a variety of mood and happiness measures. And although there were varied results, what they found was that the individuals who were listening to music with a goal of trying to become happy, actually had reduced happiness compared to the individuals who were just listening to and enjoying the music. And I think it's also worth talking about as well. If you do find yourself constantly thinking, oh, when this happens, or when I do that, I'll be happy. Think about what will happen when you actually reach that goal. Because life isn't like a Disney film, there is no happily ever after. When you reach your goal, life will go on and even if you achieve all of your goals, life will still go on and you'll have ups and downs still to come after that. You know,

it's interesting what you said there about life is not like a Disney film, because how many people actually watch films or programmes or whatever. And I see these happier rafters on TV, and they think, oh, I want that my life isn't like that. Why can't I get that in my life? I think in society we've all been programmed to believe that we need these happy endings to be overall happy. But that's not the case. Because not everything is going to be perfect. And not everything is going to go right in your life. And you know, we're not robots, we're humans. So obviously we're going to have things in our life that go wrong and things are going to go up and down. And that is quite normal. I mean, it's normal to have a balance of that happy and sad that light and dark that ying and yang behind you know what I don't even know where I'm going with this. I'm just chatting again, while

Yeah, because it was just because I'm ranting all the time. Well, you know, as I'm saying, in the pursuit of happiness, we want things to be pleasurable all the time. We want happy things. We want to avoid conflict. We don't want any pain. We don't want any stress. We don't want any difficulties. And we're always thinking about the easiest way out the things that give us instant gratification. And really, if you think about it like this, if you're thinking about happiness on a scale where you need this to be happy or this has to happen for you to be happy. Then all you're really doing is setting yourself up for failure. Because if you're just expecting everything to be happy, even though life isn't like that, then you know, that's what's going to happen, isn't it? Absolutely.

I can think of a real example for my life as well. So when I got married, that was a huge deal for me, you know, weeks and months of preparation up to the event the actual day itself was great, had a fantastic time. Obviously, me Jamie really happy to finally tie the knot. And really, that was like the closest I would say to sort of a Disney moment for for the both of us very much happy ever after. But the story didn't stop there. And you know, two weeks later, we're both back at work. You know, my alarm was going off at six o'clock snooze in it and not wanting to get out of bed and trudging to work and feeling tired and just all these things that you don't really associate with a happy ever after. And I don't want it to sound like you know, I got married and my life was still crap afterwards because that's not what happens. What I mean is I had that Disney moment and fantastic day and it was great and it was wonderful. But then my life went back to normal afterwards and you know, I still had ups and downs and bad days and now I have new goals that are completely different.

You know, that's that's so true. Because like you've just said, you know, you put all this emotion and all of this stuff just into one day, this day of expected happiness. And to be honest, if you just put everything you had into that day, and that was all that there was then unfortunately, things are just going to come crumbling back down when you have to go back to reality. So you know, just just from night it's always important just to make sure that you know, each day when you do go through emotions, that you're not overthinking it and you're not thinking this particular thing has to make me happy. This is how my life has to be. Because if you put these judgments on yourself, and if you're just the kind of person that wants to just completely find and run after happiness and be happy all the time, you're going to find it so much more difficult to maintain that because all that's going to happen is when things don't go the way you expected them to. You're just going to be disappointed and that's just going to lead to sadness.

Well, I mean, I don't really have many big moments in my life. That's not true. Okay, so maybe there's maybe there's a few. So there's been a couple of things that I've done in my life and I've started yet I thought, You know what, this is gonna make me really happy. This is gonna make me really successful. And one of the examples that I have here is I started a YouTube channel and I started uploading videos of Birmingham town centre because obviously that's where I live and at the time, obviously, we just had the pandemic and it there was an opportunity to actually record it being abandoned. So obviously uploading it onto YouTube and a lot of people watched it, I'm not gonna lie and you actually think to yourself, Okay, so all these views all of these people watching things are going to make you happy, but actually when you stop and think about it, that sort of stuff doesn't make you happy, and and trying to be happy is like trying to get to sleep. The more you try the harder ease. So I guess I really

like that. I've never thought about it like that before. Like what that's like trying to get to sleep. That's so true, though. Like if you're if you're struggling to sleep, the harder you like, think I really must get to sleep I need to be asleep right now like the worse it is. And the more you stress thinking, tomorrow, I'm going to be so tired if I don't just get to sleep, the more awake you feel, and the harder it is to drift off. And that's so true about happiness as well the more you're like desperately clicked Boy, you're like desperately clutching at it, the further out of your grasp it is.

Now we're gonna talk about how to deal with the pursuit of happiness and some of the things that you can do to kind of combat it a little bit. So the first one that you can do is gratitude practising. And I know we talked about that a few episodes ago, but gratitude practising can really help because it kind of makes you aware of what you've got in your life right now, and how you can find enjoyment from doing that. So, gratitude practising is a really good one. And also by now you should have finished that challenge the gratitude practising challenge so we're really hoping that that helped to some of you and we'd be really interested to know how you did with that. So if you just send us an email or go on to some of our social media sites, which you'll find in the show notes, and let us know how you got on with it. That'd be really good because we really do believe that gratitude practising can help you lead a better life.

Yeah, I'd really love to know how you found the challenge. Whether or not you find it a struggle to write something for every day. If there's bits that you thought should have been included in it. That would be really useful, especially if we're looking at doing challenges in the future. It'd be nice to know what works and whether or not you found this helped you. So the next thing to avoid chasing happiness is to track your results. So I'm going to go back to smart goals again, Sparky. So sick of hearing about smart goals. I really

So you've already got your you should already have your SMART goals. If you've not listened to that episode, please go back episode number two go through exactly how to set a SMART goal and what every letter of that is tracking your progress and your results. It's really good to make sure not only getting a little dopamine kicks along the way, but it keeps you focused in the moment as well. You're not just thinking about that big goal at the end. You've broken it down into smaller, achievable goals. You're not just thinking about that big overarching goal at the end over to you.

The next tip is to take time to really be in the moment and this is about practising mindfulness. As some of you are aware because I spoke about it in a previous episode. I actually had CBT once and one of the things that they asked me to do was practice mindfulness. Mindfulness isn't for everybody, but I genuinely truly believe that if everybody takes the time to be a bit more mindful, it will help you relax and it will help you feel a lot happier. I know he did for me. I was told a simple little thing like just sit down and eat your dinner and focus on eating your dinner. I thought some stuff in it that's not gonna work. Like why would that lead to me being more happier sitting and thinking about my food, but actually doing it over a period of time made me realise that I appreciate being in that moment more because I've trained my brain in some way to appreciate those insignificant moments. And I'm not stressed about everything else. I'm simply just focused on this one task, and I'm enjoying it.

And the final thing that we've got for you is to find joy in your life. Now that can look like taking up a new hobby or spending time with loved ones. For me, it's very much about prioritising Experiences over Possessions. Whatever brings you joy in your life. Make sure you're taking time to experience that and to schedule and to actively schedule that in your life. You need to enjoy the journey along the way. Don't wait to find happiness. You can find joy in your life. Now if you prioritise the things that you value and things that you find meaning in, you can be happy and joyful along the way.

But it's such good advice because you want to always stay as present as possible. And also lower your expectations because making a big thing out of something and expecting things big things to be fun actually ends up leading to the opposite. And I just want to end on this little note that with this about dogs I always find now I don't know if this is just anecdotal. But for me, I always find that dogs bring happiness and joy to people's lives, not because they're thinking about something that's going to make them happy but because they they just live in the moment don't they? They are just that you can they can go for a run in the park and they are in the moment. You can give them their food and they are in the moment. I always think about this perspective as a perspective from a dog so be more dog like think about the things in your life. Never

Be more dog like it's so true. Like if we if we acted more like dogs, because our dogs brings so much happiness. And actually, they don't. I know they bring stress in other areas of our lives our pets do. But in general, they're just in the moment, aren't they? They're just so happy that you can go anywhere or do anything with a dog and find joy with them because they are the best the best motivators for happiness. And if we were more doglike, I truly believe that we would be happy that we would find happiness without even realising it. I'm going off on a tangent. I know what I'm trying to say. It just doesn't come out very articulate things. Well,

Yeah, so it is a little bit of a challenge. This week, but because you should have finished the gratitude practice in one. It's time for a new one, and it's not a massive one. So to understand this becoming more aware of the present moment, we experience things from a different perspective, which help us understand ourselves that little bit better. So the challenge that I'm going to set you this week is to start with just five minutes of mindfulness each day. And when you are doing something that seems mundane, and you notice it's a time when your thoughts are going to wander and your thoughts are out of control, stop and notice these thoughts and focus on what it is that you're actually doing. So if you're eating a meal and you notice this is the time your thoughts are going to wander, bring the focus back to what it is you're actually doing. Focus on all the pleasurable experiences of that meal. Decide what to look like the taste, what's the taste like? The smell, what does it smell like feeling gliding down your throat all of these experiences all of the senses that we have use them. The theory here is that mindfulness allows you to become more aware of the thoughts that we experience. And it also lets us stand back from those thoughts and see the negative patterns of thinking that we do ourselves. So by doing this every day for five minutes, we can notice our train of thoughts and relax them so they don't have control over us. Alright, that's everything this week, guys, but if you want to carry on with the conversation, join us over on our social media platforms. We're on all the major channels and our handle ease. I mean,