24 Jul Do you take happiness too seriously?
Studying and teaching happiness for decades has been wonderful. Learning more about how I can create and enjoy a happy life, and more so, how I can help others create and enjoy more positive emotions like happiness has been fantastic and satisfying in so many ways.
But one of the side-effects has been taking happiness very seriously! It’s like I think about it all the time, and too intensely.
If it were just me, and just a consequence of my work, I probably wouldn’t be writing this today. But I know from discussions and questions I’m often asked that this is quite a common problem.
We receive so many messages in our world and there’s so much pressure from so many sources about being happy, being happy all the time, and getting it right!
But what if we lightened up a bit? What if we approached happiness with a greater sense of curiosity and playfulness, as something less serious and more fun?
In simple terms, this is about trying to take the pressure of achieving something which in all honesty, we won’t ever achieve all the time. And that’s OK! Adjusting our expectations might be just what we need to have more fun in our efforts to create more joy!