It would seem that the main thing on the way to happiness is to avoid grief. And so we try to hide, to protect ourselves from possible troubles – but this only increases our anxiety, and happiness does not come closer. What are we doing wrong?
To achieve happiness and avoid adversity are the natural desires of man. However, being overly afraid of the onset of trouble, we spoil the moments of joy for ourselves. Psychologists call this tendency “impact bias”: people forget to live in the present if they highly estimate the likelihood of negative events and states.
The Power of Prejudice
American professors of psychology Timothy Wilson and Daniel Gilbert in their article “Affective forecasting. Know what you want” [1] explain the tendency of people to overestimate the expected duration or intensity of the emotional impact of any current or anticipated event. This prejudice leads us to believe that there is unhappiness around every corner, and the expectation of trouble becomes worse for us than the trouble itself. Thus, what we now think about the future can become our “man-made” barrier to happiness.
Wilson and Gilbert cite focalism, the “illusion of focus,” or the tendency to overestimate the impact of any one possible future event on our emotional state, as well as underestimate the impact of other circumstances of the situation on feelings and thoughts, as one of the reasons for this bias.
Another reason for the emergence of “impact bias” is that in their forecasts and predictions, people often cannot adequately assess how easy it will be for them to find new meanings in unexpected or new situations and events.
But giving new meanings not only to an exceptional event, but also to other factors influencing us, allows us to emotionally adapt not only to what has already happened, but also to the future. However, there is a small catch here: Gilbert and Wilson found that introducing new semantic content into events and situations reduces the duration of pleasure from the onset of a particular situation.
The Pleasure Paradox
Although people seek happiness, strive, as Sigmund Freud [2] stated, to maximize pleasure, they are still forced to take into account the influence of the reality principle. When we find ourselves in a situation that does not always promise maximum pleasure, we look for it ourselves. Giving meaning is one such way, but the paradox of pleasure is that giving new meaning to an event takes away some of the attention and reduces the emotional return of the situation itself. In other words, our focus shifts from simply living in the here and now to explaining the here and now. In this case, the unique value of the moment is reduced.
MUTE IMMUNITY
The psyche of people has the property of self-healing, so we are able to get out of unpleasant situations using various psychological defenses. The common feature of the latter is their unconscious nature, so in most cases we do not even feel their continuous work. Ignorance leads either to the denial of our built-in defenses, or at least does not allow us to take into account the potential of these mechanisms, to hear our own inner voice. Timothy Wilson and Daniel Gilbert call this “deafness” “immune neglect.”
Extend moment
Psychologist Andrea Polard, in her book The Universal Theory of Happiness [3], suggested three ways to learn to direct your attention “where you really need to” and not spoil the moment, but enjoy even unexpected and emotionally loaded events.
First of all, you need to build confidence in yourself. When we feel that something might trigger a strong emotional reaction in us, whether it be external or internal conditions, we try to avoid it. Recall a past situation that you managed to deal with emotionally. Under the influence of various forces, you were simply forced to overcome it one way or another, appealing to your inner forces. Write down your personal characteristics that appeared in that difficult situation, get to know yourself better.
Second step: build confidence in the world. We tend to underestimate not only ourselves, our capabilities, but also the world around us. Andrea Polard finds it useful to formulate an individual mantra that can be repeated in situations of uncertainty: “Nothing stays the same forever. My heart is beating and will continue to beat. The planet is spinning and will continue to spin. I feel the pulse of life and trust it.” Each of us can forge for ourselves such a “ring of Solomon”, on which would be written with our words “everything passes, this too will pass.”
And the third step on the path from avoiding unhappiness to enjoying happy moments is calming the mind. When we willingly and sincerely refuse to see happiness as a mere sum of pleasant feelings, but experience each moment as a “deal with life”, then we can be “here and now” and not in the past or in a vague future. Learning to open up to every moment of life can be done by devoting just a few minutes a day to exercises to calm the mind. Relax, watch your breath, observe what feelings and thoughts arise at any given moment. We must simply allow ourselves to get in touch with ourselves so that the whole world can get in touch with us.
* Timothy D. Wilson, Daniel T. Gilbert. Affective Forecasting. Knowing What to Want. University of Virginia, Harward University. Current Directions in Psychological Science, Volume 14 – November 3.
** Z. Freud. Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 1920.
*** Andrea F. Polard, Psy. D. A Unified Theory of Happiness. Sounds True, 2012. ISBN: 9781604077889