Health & Wellness Magazine Community Of Caring - Summer 2019 | Page 17

TO BE HAPPY
D O E S T RY I N G TO B E
HAPPY MAKE US
UNHAPPY?
BY:ADAM GRANT, AUTHOR
AS WE muddle through our days,
the quest for happiness looms large.
In the U.S., citizens are granted three
inalienable rights: life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. In the kingdom
of Bhutan, there’s a national index
to measure happiness. But what if
searching for happiness actually
prevents us from finding it? There’s
reason to believe that the quest for
happiness might be a recipe for misery.
In a series of new studies led by the
psychologist Iris Mauss, the more
value people placed on happiness,
the less happy they became. I saw it
happen to Tom, a savant who speaks
half a dozen languages, from Chinese
to Welsh. In college, Tom declared a
major in computer science, but found it
dissatisfying. He became obsessed with
happiness, longing for a career and a
culture that would provide the perfect
match for his interests and values.
Within two years of graduating from
college, he had bounced from working
at the United Nations to an Internet
startup in New York, applied for jobs
as a supermarket manager, consultant
and venture capitalist, and considered
moving to Puerto Rico, Trinidad,
Colombia, or Canada.
These careers and countries didn’t
fulfill him. After another year, he was
doing standup comedy, contemplating a
move to London to pursue an advanced
degree in education, philosophy of
science, management, or psychology.
But none of these paths made him
happy. Dissatisfied with his own lack of
progress toward happiness, he created
an online tool to help people develop
more productive habits. That wasn’t
satisfying either, so he moved to Beijing.
He lasted two years there, but didn’t
find the right cultural fit, so he moved
to Germany and considered starting a
college dorm for adults and a bar for
nerds. In the next two years, he was off
to Montreal and Pittsburgh, then back
to Germany working on a website to
help couples spend more quality time
together. Still not happy, he abandoned
that plan and returned to Beijing to sell
office furniture. One year and two more
moves across two continents later, he
admitted to his friends, “I’m harder to
find than Carmen Sandiego.”
Tom made four mistakes that are all
too common on the road to happiness.
The first blunder was in trying to figure
out if he was happy. When we pursue
happiness, our goal is to experience
more joy and contentment. To find
out if we’re making progress, we need
to compare our past happiness to
our current happiness. This creates
a problem: the moment we make
that comparison, we shift from an
experiencing mode to an evaluating
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