The ObservatoryWhy 'feeling good' is the wrong thing to aim for
The harder you chase happiness, the more it tends to slip away. Research points toward something less glamorous, and more lasting.
There is a paradoxical finding in happiness research: people who value happiness most are often less happy. In studies where participants read texts emphasizing how important it is to be happy, they felt worse afterward, not better. The explanation is thought to be that once happiness becomes a goal to reach, we start measuring ourselves against it, and every moment that isn't happy feels like a failure.
The problem starts at the measuring point itself. 'Feeling good' is a feeling, and feelings are by nature fleeting and partly outside your control. To make a fleeting feeling the yardstick of your life is to build the house on water. You can't decide to feel happy, any more than you can decide not to be hungry.
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Why does it work?
Mauss et al. (2011, Emotion) found that people who value happiness more highly tend to feel worse, probably because happiness then becomes a goal you measure every moment against. The distinction between hedonic and eudaimonic well-being is established research (among others Ryan & Deci, Ryff). That eudaimonic striving often brings hedonic happiness as a side effect is a recurring finding, but one that is harder to establish causally.
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