Is it happiness or wellbeing that we should care about? And what’s the difference anyway?
Interest in the science of happiness has grown rapidly over the last decade. This has been a wonderful development as many more people and organisations are becoming aware and concerned about our mental wellbeing. It can get a little confusing though. Self-help and wellbeing tips are often being thrusted towards us from many angles. It can become hard to know what is actually good for us, and what we should be aiming for. Should I be happy all of the time, or just some of the time? Is there an amount happiness that’s ‘just right’?
There is even confusion amongst those that study the science of happiness. For example, the words happiness and wellbeing are often used synonymously, even though they mean different things. Happiness is an emotional state, that could be characterised by feelings of joy and satisfaction, and can change from moment to moment. Wellbeing on the other hand, refers to how satisfied you feel with the quality of your life and tends to be more stable through time. Happiness is a component that is important for wellbeing, but there are also a number of other key components (e.g. the quality of your relationships, your health or the level of purpose you gain from life).
Which of these should we care more about?
Research suggests that chasing happiness can actually make people less happy. A study in 2011 showed that the greater value people placed towards happiness, the less happy they became. Some of this may be due to how each of us define happiness, since some people may have aspirations for happiness that are unattainable. Social media can play a role in distorting our expectations, thereby decreasing our self-esteem. Those people that place a greater value on happiness may expect to be happy almost all of the time, or they may end up being disappointed about how they feel when certain life events occur due to their lofty expectations. This suggests that setting happiness alone as the target is not helpful. When we set happiness as the goal, we have the potential to fall into the trap of becoming self-focussed, which can undermine our happiness. Research also suggests that happiness is the frequency, and not the intensity, to which we feel positive emotions relative to negative emotions. We often chase a bigger and bigger highs and this is another way that we can set expectations that are hard to meet.
My view is that achieving a high level of wellbeing should be our ultimate aim, but again, we shouldn’t stress about it. Instead we should focus on what contributes towards our wellbeing. One of the arguments against chasing happiness is that we end up spending too much time evaluating and far little time experiencing. Whilst I agree that, for the most part, we should look to live in the moment, enjoy experiences and avoid over-evaluating, there is value in checking-in with how we’re doing every now and again. Research suggests that self-reflection has significant benefits for our mental health. This has been shown for self-reflection in a number of forms (e.g. from expressive writing to gratitude journaling), across various life stages and as an effective treatment for those with diagnosed mental illnesses.
You will have to find a frequency of reflecting that works for you, as it will be different for different people. Allowing yourself time at regular intervals to evaluate how your personal relationships have been going, whether your daily activities feel purposeful and how you have been feeling within yourself, can be incredibly helpful. Through this time of reflection you may want to set yourself goals that you could then evaluate in the future. In doing so, avoid setting yourself unattainable targets, break them down into bite-sized, manageable chunks. You also don’t need to set yourself goals to impress others. Setting yourself a goal of working less can still be an aspirational target if it will help support your wellbeing.
To wrap up, happiness is a part of wellbeing and chasing it could make you less happy. Achieving a high level of wellbeing should be our ultimate goal, but we shouldn’t spend too much time evaluating whether we’ve achieved it. The target is always moving anyway, one good week doesn’t equal a happy life, just like one bad week doesn’t either. We should spend most of our time creating experiences that will help us to reach a high level of wellbeing and it helps to check-in every now and again to see how we’re doing at achieving this.
