The Key to Happiness

Hi there!

Welcome back to the MoodiNews. Every Thursday, we discuss a variety of matters related to mental health and self-improvement. 

I’m so glad you’re here.

This week, we will be discussing THE KEY TO HAPPINESS! YAY!

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve explored the Happiness Paradox, along with some other reasons why happiness is an unreliable thing to strive for all the time.

However, it is possible to experience a pleasant mood on a consistent basis—and probably elevate your overall levels of happiness beyond what they currently are.

People often get confused about how to achieve/sustain a happy feeling state, and they therefore fail to feel as happy as they could.  

But, if you want to feel happier more often, you’re in luck!

There is a formula for happiness, and here it is: 

The secret to happiness is PROGRESS.

(This idea is the brainchild of Tony Robbins, a well-known guru for self-improvement.)

Perhaps you remember from last week, that, in the brain, the neurochemical most responsible for pleasure is also the one responsible for desire and the pursuit of goals. That neurochemical is dopamine.

In life, we get spikes of dopamine from many things—sex, social media, and sugar, for example—but we tend to get the biggest spikes of dopamine (naturally, anyway) from unexpected positive experiences, as well as the anticipation of a desired reward, JUST BEFORE it occurs.

(**It’s important to note that, if we don’t actually get the thing that we’re anticipating, we won’t be rewarded for a failed prediction—in fact, the opposite is true. The key to happiness is therefore progress, not anticipation—which requires both aspiring to make an improvement and then actually achieving it.)

Because of how we are wired neurologically, one of the most consistent and non-harmful ways to keep dopamine flowing in the brain is to endlessly anticipate—and then accomplish!—gradual, successive achievements over time.

In other words, the way to stay  ‘up’ in life is to constantly progress beyond our current circumstances.  

In a previous post, I said:

“Measuring one’s overall success based on current levels of happiness will definitely lead to disappointment.”

That’s because success does not lead to happiness—happiness (progress) leads to success!

(When we consider the Happiness Paradox (which tells us that happiness is about pursuit rather than satiation), as well as today’s formula for happiness (i.e., progress = happiness), perhaps these statements now make more sense.)

Of course, we certainly can—and do!—get an abundance of happy feelings from lots of things besides ‘progress’ (think drugs, pets, TV, etc.).

Just keep in mind that, anytime that we feel happy, it’s probably because we are thinking that we’ve attained something important—for example, a great Black Friday deal—and that progress doesn’t have to be real, it just has to be perceived.

Either way, like many things in life, it turns out that the most sustainable way to achieve happiness is to take action, set small goals, and then work to attain those goals from a place of personal accountability.

True happiness, is, therefore, not a passive experience—it requires putting in the effort necessary to achieve small wins in pursuit of something meaningful, every day of our lives.

The challenge with this—as we often find in therapy!—comes in learning to place less value on extrinsic rewards, while investing instead in real, self-driven progress from the inside, out.

In summation, one of the easiest and most consistent ways to enter a biochemical state of happiness is to commit to a lifestyle of self-improvement and healthy growth.

(That is one of the reasons why this blog focuses so much on self-improvement and personal development—it turns out that change, challenge, and progress are critical ingredients for maintaining mental health and a happy life long-term!)

Next week, we will wrap up our recent discussions on happiness, as we explore some ways to apply today’s ‘progress principle’ for happiness in every day life.

New videos are also up the MoodiNews Youtube channel, so be sure to check those out in the meantime!