We all want to be happy in life.

And when it comes to the pursuit of happiness, most people assume the same formula: The more you fixate on your happiness or force yourself to be happy, the happier you’ll be.

The only problem is that a decade of research in the field of positive psychology has proven that this formula is wrong.

In fact, explicitly trying to feel happier and paying attention to how happy you feel have both been linked to feeling worse.

So, if you shouldn’t pursue happiness, what should you do?

An Effective Approach to Happiness

In one recent study, researchers from the University of California and the University of North Carolina asked 233 people the extent to which they sought out positive emotional experiences when making decisions about how to organize their day-to-day life.

The participants indicated their agreement or disagreement on a 9-point scale to seven prioritising positivity items created by the research team, in addition to other questionnaires.

The findings suggested that people who regularly seek out positivity as they arrange their everyday life are happier.

In other words, scheduling activities that bring you pleasure is the best approach to happiness.

This is known as “prioritising positivity”.

“Prioritising positivity reflects the extent to which you seek out positivity by virtue of how you make decisions about how to organize your day-to-day life”, explains Lahnna I. Catalino, who co-authored the study. “People high in prioritising positivity may be at an advantage with respect to greater resources, such as self-compassion and ego-resilience, and these links are explained by their more frequent experiences of positive emotions”.

Let’s discuss how we can prioritise happiness in our own day-to-day lives.

How to Prioritise Positivity

Studies have found that pursuing happiness can backfire because we often make mistakes when trying to predict what will make us happy.

Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert explains,

We insist on steering our boats because we think we have a pretty good idea of where we should go, but the truth is that much of our steering is in vain—not because the boat won’t respond, and not because we can’t find our destination, but because the future is fundamentally different than it appears through the prospectiscope. [2]

So, with that in mind, it’s important to prioritise activities that we know, from past experiences, will bring us pleasure.

This means different things to different people. For some people, prioritising positivity means reserving Saturday afternoons for watching college football or taking their family to a local park; for others it’s starting their weekend running or drinking tea while reading their favourite newspaper.

One way you can prioritise positivity, is to write down a list of activities that immediately bring you happiness – for instance, calling a friend, practicing gratitude, reading a book, etc. – and scheduling them.

Happiness is not something you should pursue; it’s something you should prioritise.

Footnotes [1] Catalino, Lahnna I.; Algoe, Sara B.; Fredrickson, Barbara L. (2014) ‘Prioritizing positivity: An effective approach to pursuing happiness?’, Emotion, 14(6), pp. 1155-1161. [2] Gilbert, D. (2005) Stumbling on Happiness, New York: Random House.

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