Perrysburg Pulse Magazine Perrysburg Pulse October | Page 15

D O E S T RY I N G TO B E
HAPPY MAKE US
UNHAPPY?
BY: ADAM GRANT, AUTHOR
A
s 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
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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