Does chasing happiness have the opposite effect?

And how does technology play into the chase?

Are you truly happy? In your life, in general, at this precise moment? 

How does my asking you that question make you feel? Is your answer a simple “yes” or is there more to it? A “Yes, but” or a “No, but”?

I’ve been chewing on this topic for a few weeks now – the idea of happiness, or I should say the question of happiness, the measure of happiness, and the chase of happiness. 

As Americans, we’re uniquely consumed by the subject. It’s quite literally in our founding documents. We are owed “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” We have the innate expectation that happiness will come to us if we work harder, if we obtain more. 

I didn’t know this was unique to America until I went down the rabbit hole of the parenting books, The Happiest Kids in the World and The Danish Way of Parenting, then further discovered the World Happiness Report. These sources all explain that the “happiest” people all live in Denmark, Iceland, and Sweden. But it seems the reason they find “happiness” easier than Americans is they are actually seeking “contentment.” 

They are not trying to work harder, they are not seeking more. They find happiness in the life surrounding them, they don’t compare themselves to unfair bars of expectations. 

Discover Magazine writes, “Contentment is less common in the U.S., where striving for the American dream makes us one of the most ambitious countries on Earth. So is all this striving impacting our happiness?”

I can feel this in my bones. I used to have an incredibly demanding career where “the highs are highs, but the lows are lows” almost became a mantra of our industry. I experienced a level of happiness and pride in my work that was unmatched, but it was balanced with extreme dark points, insecurity, and anxiety. I was never satisfied, and I was always seeking the next “high.” I can tell you this — from the outside, my peers likely thought I was an incredibly happy person, but I was very low on most days.

So are we capable, as Americans, as innate happiness pursuers, to rewire our thinking? Can we be happy with less? Can we really strive for contentment? And what’s technology’s role in all of this?

Does technology exasperate our strive for happiness? 

Before social media, you only knew what someone’s house looked like if you were invited inside. You only got glimpses of people’s lives when you were a part of them. It wasn’t common to know what a stranger’s closet looked like, what they bought their husband for the holidays, or intimate views of their family vacations. 

We are consistently exposed to hundreds (maybe thousands) of people’s highlight reels on a daily basis. We know what they buy, what they wear, and how they decorate their homes. It’s impossible to avoid comparing our own lives, to imagining how our life could be different, better, if only we had what others have, if we looked like others do, or if we had lives like others have. 

I struggled to find real research on how social media affects the happiness of adults, but there is no dearth of studies on youth. From Ox Journal, “the use of upward comparison in social media more often than not leads to a decrease in self-esteem and a worsening of people’s mental health, which can sometimes lead to depressive disorders.” This study might have focused on young people, but I don’t have to be a scientist to hypothesize that the same effect would translate to adults.

We see more, we see different, and then, we want more, and we want different. 

Can we be truly happy with less? 

Seeking contentment seems to center around the idea of peace  — peace with what you have, peace with the decisions you’ve made thus far, peace with where you’re going. To be content doesn’t mean you’re devoid of goals, that you aren’t striving for success, but that you don’t let your goals define how you feel. 

In The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt writes, “As the Stoics and Buddhists taught long ago, happiness cannot be reached by eliminating all ‘triggers’ from life; rather, happiness comes from learning to deprive external events of the power to trigger negative emotions in you.”

I also quite like this quote from the abstract for Happiness Vs Contentment? A Case for a Sociology of the Good Life “I argue for a sociologically grounded distinction between happiness and contentment that defines the former as positive affect and the latter as positive reflection. Contentment is therefore understood as a fulfilling relationship with the self and society (to borrow from G.H. Mead's terminology) and happiness involves pleasurable experiences.” 

Instead of pitting happiness against contentedness, it's a unique way to shift your focus towards having both – fulfillment with your life and pleasurable experiences. 

Finding fulfillment 

Here’s where you might allow me to get a bit cheesy: You are truly enough. The life you have, the people you surround yourself with, the things you have – they are enough. 

Me, a stranger on the Internet, can’t tell you that though. You must tell yourself. 

If you don’t believe this, if you find you are always chasing happiness, if contentment feels out of reach, I challenge you to make a change with technology. Take a break from social media. Spend time offline and in your own existence. Find your contentment and sprinkle in some pleasurable experiences – real life experiences. 

Scrolling on the internet will not make you happy. Buying more things will not make you happy. Chasing a body or a lifestyle that you see reflected on your phone will not make you happy. 

Put your phone down, look around you, and find that you don’t need to chase happiness. You can find it right in front of you.