My aim is to help people become more fulfilled and evolved versions of themselves. While this might sound counterintuitive, one of the biggest blocks to people achieving this is their overwhelming and all-consuming desire to be happy. And I donât mean just experiencing the emotion of happiness. In society today we interpret happiness as no longer being an emotion but rather a perpetual state of comfort that avoids negative emotion. We want to evolve and grow and innovate â as long as it can be a comfortable process. I see this in organisations all the time. They want to take risks, just as long as they can control everything and ensure it will feel comfortable and avoid any chance of failure. I use the terms âhappinessâ, âcomfortâ and âfeeling goodâ interchangeably in this book. When I do that, what Iâm referring to is our desire to avoid struggle.
An important point to make is that I am not anti-joy or happiness. I think theyâre great. I am not the happiness Grinch. (I havenât even seen either of the movies.) Joy is one of my most favourite emotions and I believe cultivating positive emotion in our lives is important. By all means, seek out happiness and joy. Do things and surround yourself with people who bring you both. However, be mindful of when happiness is not serving you. In some contexts, we have gone too far with the desire to be happy all the time â and itâs come back to bite us on the arse.
The happiness movement has become massively dysfunctional for three reasons: we now think we need to be constantly happy, we feel guilty about negative emotion, and weâre not evolving. Letâs look at each of these in turn.
We want happiness to be our constant state
People today expect to feel good all the time. When they donât, they think something is wrong with them or their life. The problem is happiness is an emotion, and emotions come and go. Sadness, rage, jealousy, embarrassment, enthusiasm and delight â they come in, do a job, which is to steer our behaviour in a certain direction, and then they leave. This is how we were designed and itâs a great system. But we have messed with the system. We picked one emotion (happiness) and said this should be our constant state. Happiness in itself has become the goal. Feeling a constant state of happiness, however, is physiologically and psychologically impossible. It just canât happen. This expectation of perpetual happiness is not only delusional, it is also fraught with disaster. All too often we freak out and beat ourselves up about the fact that we are not experiencing enough happiness. Comparing ourselves to others does not help here and nor does social media bombarding us with images of all our friends being delighted, often leading us to feel inadequate.
Instead, a far healthier frame is to think of emotions as swings of a golf club. (Stay with me here and let me explain.) I am a terrible golfer but when I play golf I donât beat myself up about how many swings I take because my view is that the more swings I take at the ball, the more value for money I have gotten. The purpose I see for golf is to hit the ball. If I hit the ball twice as many times as a friend of mine, I have received twice the return on my investment. Look at emotions the same way. To get the most out of life you want to feel a whole range of different emotions, both positive and negative. The meaning of life is to experience as many things as possible and we should put emotions in that category as well.
A mate of mine, Todd Kashdan, co-authored a book with Robert Biswas-Diener called The Upside of Your Dark Side, where they very elegantly point out the importance of experiencing a range of emotions, including negative emotion (such as fear, jealously, anger, disappointment). They argue that negative emotion is often a signal you have made a mistake and a correction is needed. They also demonstrate in many cases positive emotion like happiness can be incredibly dysfunctional in the wrong context. For example, if you have to do a very important task, the fear and anxiety you naturally feel will help you to focus and put in your best effort. In contrast, if you repress that anxiety and are overly optimistic about your chances of completing it you may bring more of a blasé and careless approach.
Key message people: stop thinking you have to feel happy all the time.
Joy, sadness and dysfunction
If youâd like some popular culture to back up my point about seeking a constant state of happiness, check out the childrenâs movie Inside Out. It is a brilliant example of what can happen when we prioritise one emotion to the point of suppressing others. The story is set inside the brain of a young girl (Riley) when she goes through a difficult stage in her life. The main characters are five different emotions, Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust and Sadness. Joy is a control freak and tries to run the show and dominate. In particular, Joy wonât let Riley feel sadness. As the movie unfolds, Joyâs actions lead to huge dysfunction and Rileyâs life falls apart. By the end of the movie, Joy learns that for Riley to have a full life, she needs to feel a whole range of emotions, not just the ones that feel good.
Even negative emotions have benefits
I use negative thinking and emotion to be a better dad. As I get home at the end of the day, I take a moment to think, What if this was the last time I ever saw my family? What if they had a terrible accident tomorrow and they were wiped off the earth? Now that might seem like some weird, morbid shit, and it probably is. However, those negative thoughts and emotions put me in a headspace of gratitude and engagement, which improves my behaviour. Being a good dad is about displaying better behaviours so, regardless of how I got there, I got there.
I use this strategy in many situations at home, such as after reading my daughters stories and they ask me to climb up into their bunk beds and give them a cuddle, for the third time that night. Rather than thinking Iâve had a long day and I just want to go zone out, I think how many years I have left where my daughters ask me to climb into bed and give them a cuddle. These negative thoughts and emotions help me enjoy the moment and display better behaviours. Negative emotions and thoughts can be incredibly helpful and constructive, so donât feel bad for experiencing them.
Donât panic when sadness comes knocking
In January 2019, I was preparing to go back to work after my regular summer break from work. Over the Christmas period I tend to take three to four weeks off to totally switch off from work and immerse myself in my family and friends. I love this time off so much and it sets me up for the upcoming year. Joy, fun and relaxation are the words I would use to describe it. The last week of the holiday is always a little stressful as I think about going back to work, but this year my mood and mindset crashed to a new low.
I donât know what happened but I was engulfed in an incredible amount of sadness and dread, which I had never experienced before. I felt like a dark cloud was strangling the life out of me. My mood fluctuated between rage, frustration, sadness and despair. I had never felt so terrible. I found it hard to interact with people, especially my family. I just wanted to curl up in bed and remove myself from the world. I even had suicidal thoughts on occasion and thought, What is the point of going on if this is what life is going to be like?
To deal with it all, I sat down and started to write out all the thoughts and emotions that were going through my head. To say the least, my notes were pretty dark and concerning. But after getting it all out on paper, I came up with four focuses:
- Donât freak out. This didnât mean my life was over and I had some sort of big problem. It could simply be a transient low mood. Rather than panic and catastrophise, I sat with the discomfort and focused on what better behaviours I could do to reduce the impact of this situation on my life. (Obviously if this mood had continued for an extended period of time, I would have sought professional help.)
- Donât act on the impulses I felt. I wanted to take my mood out on other people, blame them, yell and scream, and be petty. I was channelling a three year old, mid-tantrum. I was aware of these impulses and how dysfunctional they were. When they came up in the moment, I focused on just shutting my mouth and not reacting.
- Do behaviours that helped me feel better. Even though I didnât feel like it, I dialled up how much exercise I was doing, spent more time in nature, increased how much meditation I was doing, and swam in the ocean. At one point, my wife sent me on a very long drive â probably more for her benefit than mine.
- Do turn to a couple of good mates. I chatted to them about what I was going through, and talking about it really reduced the shame and fear that I felt. Without fail, each of them said, âI hear you. I have been thereâ. That was amazingly powerful.
With these habits in place I sat in the discomfort and almost brought a level of curiosity to my terrible state, rather than slipping into panic. I became more like, Wow I am feeling really bad. I have never felt like this before. What is causing it? What things are making me feel better?
About a week after the dark cloud of sadness appeared, it suddenly left and I felt instantly better â and I have not retreated back there since. If I analyse this whole situation, the most helpful thing I did was not panic about my sadness. Rather, I accepted my mood and focused on constructive behaviours that would improve the impact I had on myself and others.
