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Yesterday, I did a quick search on Amazon that turned up more than 40,000 books about happiness. You can read The Happiness Curve, The Happiness Trap, The Happiness Equation, The Happiness Track, The Happiness Project, The Happiness Reset, and so many more. On page three of the Amazon list was a book promising 31 Days to Happiness. The next book on the list promised 30 Days to Happiness. The second one’s got to be better, right? Or maybe the first one’s more in-depth.
Why so many books about happiness? My theory: We all want to be happy, but we don’t know how. I think we also have misconceptions about the value of happiness. We want to be happy all the time, and if we’re not, we think something’s wrong with us. But the truth is it’s not possible to be happy all the time. Even if you could be happy all the time, happy would just become the new normal, the new baseline against which all new experiences would be judged. After a while, you would become incapable of noticing that you’re happy. You’d just start chasing after something better again.
In their book, Mindfulness: Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Psychology, Feldman and Kuyken say “happiness is countercultural.” That quote struck me and became the impetus for this episode. I agree with the authors, happiness is countercultural. We’re encouraged, not just by advertisers, but by parents, peers, and others to always strive for something else. Sometimes they come right out and say it. Other times, it’s implied, but the premise is that what we have isn’t good enough. We don’t have enough money, our house isn’t posh enough, our phone isn’t new enough, and our teeth aren’t white enough… the list of shortcomings is endless. And, of course, when we finally get that new thing, it’s not long before it’s not good enough, either.

Peaceful Moment of the Week: Pileated Woodbecker in Monica's Backyard
 

Chasing happiness creates suffering. Whenever you put yourself in a state of wanting or waiting for more, you’re not appreciating and generating happiness from what you have now. And that’s the problem with wanting perpetual, non-stop happiness.
Another common tendency is to postpone our happiness. We tell ourselves, for example, that things will be great when we finally lose that weight and can fit into that outfit, or when we’ve graduated and have time for hobbies, or when we finally get that promotion. Grasping for happiness in the future leaves us with never-ending feeling of discontentment and dissatisfaction, a feeling that something is missing.
If your goal is to feel more positive more often, then it’s worth exploring the difference between happiness, joy, and contentment. There’s no one authoritative definition for any of these three terms, but among psychologists, there’s general consensus.
Happiness is a temporary emotion based on external conditions. It’s triggered by things, events, people, places or thoughts. When those triggers pop up, you’re happy. When they’re absent, you’re not.
Joy is cultivated internally. It’s an internal sense of positivity and peace, and because it’s internal, it’s more consistent than happiness. Joy comes from making peace with yourself and aligning your actions with your own values.
Contentment is a sense of satisfaction regardless of external conditions. It comes from acknowledgement and acceptance of whatever is happening. Like joy, it is more consistent than happiness, because it’s internally generated.
So, if you want to feel more positive emotions, you might want to cultivate joy and contentment.