Happiness: The Ultimate Paradox
What if I was to tell you that that in order to be happy, you can’t try to be happy. The more you pursue happiness the more likely you are to be unhappy. Sounds a bit nuts, right? Like a bit of a paradox? I’m still amazed by this discovery myself. It completely goes against common sense.
This is the opening scene of my first ever YouTube video below.
Let me try to explain. I recently found a video on the internet made my a Youtuber called Matt D’Avella which talked about Alan Watts’ Backwards Law and its implications to happiness. Now, in case you don’t know who Alan Watts is…he’s that old dude with the fucking awesome voice who you always hear on YouTube narrating motivational videos. You know, the ones that pump you up so much that you just wanna quit your job, get down and bang out a thousand push ups, whilst booking a flight to Oz to pursue your dream job of being a dolphin trainer? Ye, he’s that dude.
So, what is the ‘backwards law’ and how can it be applied to happiness? His law basically says that the more you chase something, the more unsatisfied you will become with the result. In a quote from his book ‘The Wisdom of Insecurity’ he says “when you try to stay on the surface of water, you sink; but when you try to sink, you float.” And this same thinking can be applied to anything. The more you crave being rich, the poorer and more undeserving you feel, regardless of your actual bank balance. The more you want to be slim and sexy, the more you realise that you’re not, and you come to see yourself as ugly regardless of your actual appearance. And it’s the exact same with happiness. The more you desperately want to be happy and feel better all the time, the less satisfied and happy you will become. Why? Because pursuing something only reinforces the fact that you don’t have it in the first place. The more I chase that ranking goal by the end of the year, the more I’ll realise, “shit, that’s a long way away”.
Mark Manson, the author of ‘The subtle art of not giving a fuck” wrote something that so eloquently sums up this paradox. He said “Wanting positive experience is a negative experience; accepting negative experience is a positive experience.” The thing is, in our advancing materialistic society, we’re flooded with fake lives on Instagram where everyone seems to be chasing perfection. Girls are chasing those barbie doll waist-lines and Kylie Jenner lips, whilst guys are chasing status through fast cars and smoking hot chicks on their arms. And what’s the end result? We’re conditioning ourselves to believe that happiness is a destination. We tell ourselves “I will only be happy when I attain my goal. I will be happy when I get the promotion, win my next tournament or get that Jay-lo ass.” We’re always spending our time in the mindset of not having. Which is a load of crap when it comes to our happiness.
The thing with trying to get happiness through achievement is this- it’s result dependent and often completely out of our control. Doesn’t it seem stupid to take a chance on our happiness? But so many of us do it. And even when we do achieve our goals, the gratification that we receive is fleeting. We get a buzz of happiness for a few days, a week, maybe a month if we’re lucky. Why? Because as soon as we achieve one thing, we move onto the next thing. The target keeps moving. We’re always going to be one step away from that happiness that we crave.
And you know what, when we put so much emphasis on the end result, we end up not enjoying the process. We start to see the daily work as a means to an end, and as a result, we don’t perform as well. We don’t improve and push forwards. We become unhappy, self-critical and judgmental in the day to day work. And ultimately, we fall short of our goals because of this.
Holocaust survivor, Victor Frankl, wrote in his book ‘Mans Search for Meaning’, “don’t aim at success, the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued. It must ensue.” So, the key is to just let it happen. Like Mark Manson puts it, it’s all in the subtle art of not giving a fuck. Only then will success and happiness come to us. So, we must go after our goals, but not get attached to them. We must make the day to day work the reward in itself, rather than a means to an end. We must go about our day to day lives whilst not caring about success and happiness. It will ensue in the long-run, precisely because we don’t care about them.
So, the question is, how do we make sure that our personal ambition doesn’t get in the way of our own happiness? How do we stop chasing after happiness so that it doesn’t always come around to bite us in the ass? The answer comes in 2 simple practices: the practice of gratitude and acceptance. For the last 6 months I’ve been keeping a journal, and one of the things I do each morning is write two or three things that I’m grateful for each day. I find this is a nice simple practice that can remind us to be thankful, and it only takes literally 2 minutes in the morning. Another gratitude practice which honestly has had the biggest impact on me is through meditation. Only in the last couple weeks, after I eat breakfast each morning, I put on a 10-minute gratitude meditation video from YouTube and close my eyes on the sofa. This practice can have such a big impact our happiness because it shifts our perception from always wanting, to what we have is enough. It stops us from seeking happiness in the future, and gives it to us in the present. When you are grateful, it’s impossible to be stressed, fearful or unhappy at the same time. It’s like shining a positive light on all the good stuff that are most important in our lives, whilst keeping the bad stuff in the darkness. As Tony Robbins says, whatever you focus on you’ll get. If you focus on all the good stuff in our lives, we’ll attract and find more good stuff because that’s what our minds are looking for. Practicing gratitude has the ability to instantly change our mood. And ultimately, when we are grateful, we will be more successful too. Firstly, because happiness flows from gratitude. Secondly, because gratitude changes the lens through which we see the world, allowing us to see opportunities that we were blind to before. And finally, we stopped caring about success. We just let it happen.
Acceptance is the second practice, and it is very closely linked to gratitude. As I mentioned before, Mark Manson said accepting negative experience is actually a positive experience. Accepting every moment for what it is and being truly grateful for where you are in the moment is at the heart of happiness. I know this is a difficult. But it’s a skill to develop. The more we can consciously decide to accept the frustrating times, like accidentally liking that picture from 5 years ago whilst insta stalking a crush, the more we will make it a habit of accepting the crap in life. We will begin to see failures as learning opportunities. Our limitations as time to grow. And challenges as the moments which build strength and character. So, make a conscious effort to start accepting the negative experiences in our lives, and diminish the never-ending search for positive experiences through the practice of gratitude.
I hope we can all learn something from this video. I think this is one of the most important lessons that I’ve learnt in a while, and a big part of me making this video is to engrain it into my mind. It’s so easy to lose golden ideas like this one along the way because we get side tracked and lost in all our Instagram scrolling and tinder swiping. So, I’d advise that you take some time and write down the things that you can take from the video. If we can keep the message in mind as we move forward in our quest to be happy, then we stand a lot better chance at finding it. I’m going to link Matt D’Avella’s video down below where I got most of the inspiration for making this video, and also a couple of my favourite 10-minute gratitude meditations. Hope you enjoyed and thanks for watching.
