Who does not want to be happy? The pursuit of happiness is a legitimate concern of all human beings, and since ancient times there have been many thinkers and philosophers who have reflected on this subject. It is, however, a tricky question, to begin with because the concept of happiness is diffuse and has been approached from many disciplines. For example, at the public policy level there is a growing interest in developing methods to measure the well-being of citizens, and the United Nations publishes each year a report that ranks countries according to the global happiness index.
On a personal level, we all would like to be a little happier in our day to day lives but, paradoxically, the incessant search for happiness understood as immediate pleasure can have the opposite effect. “Viktor Frankl, who was a psychiatrist who started logotherapy, proposed that happiness has more to do with the purpose or meaning that each person gives to their life, ” explains the director of the RNCR Psychology Center and a researcher at the University Valencia International, Fatima Servián. “It is a generic definition that can be adapted to each person and that has more to do with subjective well-being.”
Numerous research studies in psychology have delved further into subjective well-being, which can be defined, as explained by the expert, by the way we experience three different mental states: negative affect, positive affect and evaluations of satisfaction with life . “To survive and adapt to the environment, the human being needs to experience unpleasant emotions, these are negative affects. There are certain moments in life, such as mourning, when they are necessary ”, indicates the researcher. “The problem arises when we experience negative affects that are not necessary, for example a person with generalized anxiety is continually anticipating possible dangers or problems, and that negative affect is not adaptive but deregulatory.”
On the other side we have positive affects that, as Servián reminds us, can also be adapters or deregulators. “This is very important, because not because it is positive is it going to be good . For example, during the loss of a loved one it is not normal to experience positive emotions, if that happens the person is unregulated ”.
Lastly, life satisfaction evaluations have to do with the perception we have about ourselves and our environment and, obviously, if we experience more positive than negative affects, our vital evaluation will be better. From all this it follows that, many times, the feeling of happiness does not depend so much on whether ‘good’ or ‘bad’ events happen to us in our lives, but on our way of dealing with them. Things happen to us in life that we cannot change, and we must learn to accept them, as well as to face those that do have a solution.
If happiness has such an important subjective component and is not 100% dependent on the events that occur in our environment, it seems logical to ask whether it is possible to learn to be happy. Servián explains that there are subjective well-being training programs aimed at enhancing psychosocial variables that we all have to a greater or lesser degree. An article published a few months ago in Frontiers in Psychology magazine analyzed the effectiveness of one of these programs that was based, using techniques such as mindfulness, on developing virtues and strengths such as emotional balance, self-awareness or solidarity with oneself and with oneself. others. “This article shows that, although it is not easy and requires a lot of effort and perseverance, we can work on these strengths that we all have and enhance our subjective well-being.”
The danger of seeking immediate pleasure
As we have already mentioned before, positive affects do not always help us achieve happiness. Currently, the constant search for external and immediate pleasures could be interfering with our well-being. In the case of children and young people, who have not yet reached that certain capacity for adaptation that maturity gives us, it is a growing problem: “we are finding cases of depression in adolescents at levels that have never been seen before” , reflects the psychologist. “You have to see all the components, it will not be something that can be explained by a single variable, but we are talking about a youth that grows up in the hedonism of social networks and television … and also of the adults around them, because we are taking short-termism and immediacy to extreme levels. And this is precisely the opposite of what research on happiness proposes to enhance our life satisfaction ”.
As the expert explains, all the scientific works that have explored subjective well-being have seen that although, obviously, we need hedonic (pleasurable) components, the so-called eudomonics are also necessary. “We are talking about the motivation that encourages us to develop as people, to be proud of our cognitive, moral, emotional development … they are internal variables that are in disuse, now everything is easy and external satisfactions”.
To enhance these capacities in the younger population, the expert recommends, first of all, to work on them ourselves. “You cannot explain to a child what we ourselves do not know. Maybe we parents and teachers are the ones who have to do this emotional learning first ”. The psychologist reminds us of the importance of those negative affects that help us to adapt: “In this society, being unwell is penalized. ‘Don’t be angry, don’t cry’ … We don’t want children or teenagers to be bad, but that’s normal. You have to understand that emotions are neither good nor bad, they simply adapt us. We are going to have to cry, we are going to have to be sad, and all that is also good and necessary ”.
