How To Create Happiness
And stop pursuing pleasure.
Aristippus, an ancient Greek philosopher of 4th century BC, was the first person who put forth the idea of living a life of happiness. The pursuit of pleasure. He advocated that the goal in life should be to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. As long as you’re not hurting anyone, maximize your gain.
Aristippus never understood the notion that you could be in pain and yet be happy.
How can there be happiness in pain and misery? A woman who has just given birth. A struggling writer working on a minimum wage during the day to feed his family and his book at night to fulfill his dream. Imagine their pain and misery. And yet, they are the happiest they’ll ever be.
Many people think that chasing pleasure is happiness. They’ll chase better widgets, luxurious experiences, and comfortable life thinking it will provide them the happiness they are seeking. But there is no connection between pleasure and happiness. Like there is no connection between misery and happiness.
Pleasure doesn’t always make you happy. And pain doesn’t always make you unhappy.
There is a difference between pleasure and happiness.
Pleasure is a fleeting feeling. Happiness is longer lasting.
Pleasure is a reaction. Happiness is a state of being. It comes from within you.
Pleasure can be pursued, whereas happiness ensues. You need to have a reason to which happiness can be anchored.
The evidence behind anchoring happiness
Eva Telzer and her colleagues from the psychology department of the University of Illinois conducted an experiment on teenagers.
They posed hypothetical situations to the teenagers while they were under an fMRI scanner. The participants were said to imagine that they were given money. In some instances, they could splurge the money on themselves. While in other instances, they had to give it away to someone else. Then they tracked their brain responses.
The teenagers who had a greater brain response when they imagined splurging the money on themselves were more likely to face the risk of depression than those whose…