Decoding Happiness: Stop Chasing happiness!

 

(3 minute read)

It does not take a genius to say that we all become happy and sad numerous times. For most of us, happiness giving moments are very few, and the remaining time is filled with frustration and boredom. We all want to be happy. We all do everything we do for the sole reason of becoming happy in life and yet we don't succeed a lot. What is this mystery? Why can't we live happily ever? Can we? In this series of articles, “Decoding Happiness” we will try to understand the reality of happiness. 

In this series of articles, we will shed some light on different aspects of happiness one by one. This is the Third article of the series. We recommend you read the other two article as well so that these articles together make a better sense. Click on the following links to access the other two articles:

Article 1: Ice cream cannot make you happy

Article 2: Stop worrying dude!

We want to make these articles a learning experience for you. We want you to freely communicate your thoughts on happiness and article with us. So, freely comment, give feedback, write an email, or contact us on Whatsapp. Rest assured we are not here to judge you from your comments at all. Let's Get started...

Stop Chasing happiness!

So, another day I was with my friend, and we felt the urge to have some snacks again. He asked- “what would you like to eat?” and much like most of the times, I replied, “Anything would do”. He thought about it. We considered some options like having samosas, Gajar ka halwa, Pizza, smoothies, and a few more. Finally, we agreed to have a plate of Khaman (see the pic below) each.

So, we went to the shop, bought the token and went to the counter from where we had to collect our order. In our part of the country, Khaman is served garnished with sev, coriander and a couple of fried chillies.

While handing over the token to the serving person my friend especially told him to garnish it with one specific type of sev (namkeen) other than the usual one at that restaurant. Well, don’t know if that person didn’t listen accidently or intentionally, he still served it with the type of sev he usually serves.

Seeing this my friend got a little irritated and reiterated to server that he asked for the other sev. The server a bit of frustratingly added the other sev on top of the old one. Although my friend accepted it, he was not fully satisfied.

A moment ago when we decided to have Khaman, we both were thrilled and had our mouth watered by the thought of eating it. The moment we finalized Khaman, our minds immediately created an image of we biting into a spongy piece of khaman. However, there was a difference in our imaginations. While my friend imagined that he will have Khaman with that specific sev, I on the other hand who had not thought about my garnishing choices just imagined it with or without any specific garnishing.

So, when the server messed up with order, my friend’s imagination couldn’t materialize and his happiness was reduced. I on the other hand was still happy about eating those spongy pieces of khaman since I had not got into finer details of garnishings.

But why am I telling you all this? This small incident reminded me of something very interesting.

Maximisers and Satisfiers

The thing is 'Duniya me do tarah ke log hote hai' (there are two type of people in this world)! Maximisers and satisfiers. Maximisers want to maximize benefit in every single activity they do. Like a foody maximiser would always try to maximize the taste he can experience at a place, city, restaurant, and food item. For him/her getting the maximum taste is the goal. A satisfier of the other hand, would be ok with fulfilling his/her general appetite along with a little consideration for taste. A satisfier will decide whether he/she wants to eat or drink something, spicy or sweet, hot or cold and that’s it. He/She doesn’t pursue a specific taste. And guess what it has been observed that satisfiers outperform maximisers on happiness front. Satisfiers are more happy in their lives as compared to maximisers.

If you try to become happy by trying to maximize each and every experience you have, you will ultimately end up unhappy. 

In other words, the more you chase happiness, the more it evades you. And no, I didn’t invent this theory but rather many renowned philosophers have concluded it. One such person Victor Frankl said in his famous book Man’s Search for meaning “Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself.”

So, the crux is that if you want to be happy, then stop chasing happiness. Although this is counterintuitive, its one of the most important paths to happiness. You must accept that some experiences will not give you maximum happiness that they can. Its perfectly ok if by chance, you get to eat a lesser tasty samosa or khaman, or you have to experience lesser happiness than you had imagined. We are not ideal beings and neither do we live in an ideal world. In fact, its this variation is what brings the actual happiness. How? That I will explain in the next article...

 - Pratik Badgujar

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