As I’ve studied happiness over the past few years, I’ve learned many things that surprised me. Each day for two weeks, I’ve been debunking one “happiness myth” that I believed before I started my happiness project. Yesterday I wrote about Myth No. 7: Doing “Random Acts of Kindness” Brings Happiness.
Happiness Myth No. 8: You’ll be happy as soon as you …
We often imagine that we’ll be happy as soon as we get a job/make partner/get tenure/get married/get that promotion/have a baby/move. As a writer, I often find myself imagining some happy future: “Once I sell this proposal …” or “Once this book comes out …”
In his book
Happier
Why? Because usually by the time you’ve arrived at your destination, you’re expecting to reach it, so it has already been incorporated into your happiness. You quickly become adjusted to the new state of affairs. And, of course, arriving at one goal usually reveals a new goal. There’s another hill to climb.
In fact, working toward a goal can be a more powerful source of happiness than hitting it—which can sometimes be a letdown. It’s important, therefore, to look for happiness in the present, in the atmosphere of growth afforded by making gradual progress toward a goal (technical name: pre-goal attainment positive affect ).
When I find myself focusing too much on the anticipated future happiness of arriving at a certain goal (as I often do), I remind myself to ” Enjoy now .” If I can enjoy the present, I don’t need to count on the happiness that is—or isn’t—waiting for me in the future. The fun part doesn’t come later, now is the fun part.
So the arrival fallacy doesn’t mean that pursuing goals isn’t a route to happiness. To the contrary. The goal is necessary, just as is the process toward the goal. Nietzche explained it: “The end of a melody is not its goal; but nonetheless, if the melody had not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either. A parable.”
* My former boss, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, has launched a wonderful site, Our Courts , a fantastic new resource about civics for students and teachers. There’s a great video of Justice O’Connor explaining the site—I was laughing as I watched, because it so captures her personality. My favorite line: “The Founders of our Constitution and our government created three equal branches of government. Like superheroes, each branch of government has special powers, but each one also has certain weaknesses.”
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