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Chasing Happiness

When it comes to happiness, research has found that many people fall prey to what is known as the impact bias: the tendency for people to overestimate the initial impact and/ or duration of an emotional event (Gilbert, Driver-Linn, & Wilson, 2002). Simply put, this means that many people believe that certain future events, like buying a new car or house, getting married, or passing an exam, will make them happier than is the case. These events may provide some increased level of happiness, but the duration and intensity are far less than often expected. A possible reason for this is that we quickly adapt to new situations. In the literature, this is called “hedonic adaptation” (Frederick and Loewenstein, 1999).

As the counsellors or coaches (depending on specialisation) at Wellness Dialogue Group, we would assist in doing a few simple exercises to create insight and value for the person in the coaching or counselling session. The goal of these exercises is to make clients aware of the impact bias and the implications of faulty affective forecasting for well-being. It can make clients aware that it is important to enjoy the present moment, rather than (continuously) believe that happiness will be found in the future if certain conditions are being met. In other words, postponing happiness for some uncontrollable future circumstance is unlikely to result in happiness.

The counsellor will ask the client to become aware of his/her tendency to believe that happiness lies somewhere in the future. What exactly are the promises that the thoughts about the future hold? What does it feel like to believe that a future event will cause happiness?

We then allow them to draw conclusions and ask what kind of conclusions can you drawn about the real sources of your happiness.

When it comes to raising children well, oftentimes parents say “I want to raise happy children”, and what a noble request or goal. In fact happiness in itself is not a a bad goal, it is just HOW we facilitate the process of attaining happiness. We need to realise that according to Neuro science, happiness is not a primary goal and is a result of a combination of things, often times SAFETY, as we would find in strategies of inclusion and others, is a big one. Others are being cared for or authentically loved. Sometimes and often times, it comes from Self-compassion and self-love

Further research suggest that, happiness must be one of the highest goals on everyone’s lists at the moment, and research is still being done to understand the reasons; a few ideas could it be the fast-paced environment we find ourselves in? The increase in the internet era and / or that we are trying to be like or keep up with others and not allowing ourselves to be authentic before we try and “fit in”?

With that being the case, much of the work we do with parents, men and women (whether parents or not) are around this idea of “Happiness” and the understanding of what makes us individually happy – which gives us further ideas on how to consider depression. Although “depression” as many of our counsellors find that we define depression by drawing it to the opposite to connection: with ourselves and with others

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