"Both clinical wisdom and empirical research agree that the more we fixate on happiness, the more elusive it becomes. In essence, if a mind continually measures its own joy, it will, slowly but surely, begin to lose sight of it. The worst part is that our cultural atmosphere makes disengagement almost impossible. We're optimizing our habits, logging our moods, tracking our sleep and consuming endless advice on how to be "better." The pursuit of happiness has become an industry and, in the process, a burden."
"Against this backdrop, psychologist Ole Höffken's recent work, published in the Journal of Happiness Studies, offers us an unexpected remedy. Höffken posits in his paper that happiness is not an end-state to be captured, but an evolved process to be understood. From an evolutionary perspective, happiness is actually considered a delicate equilibrium between emotional states, each with its own function."
Clinical wisdom and empirical research indicate that excessive fixation on happiness makes it more elusive because constant self-measurement undermines natural joy. Cultural trends toward optimization, mood logging, and endless self-improvement turn happiness into an industrialized burden. Recent psychological work reframes happiness as an evolved adaptive process: a delicate, dynamic balance between different positive and negative affects, each serving functional roles. Optimal well-being emerges when emotional states maintain specific ratios, allowing meaning-rich experiences like grief to coexist with happiness. The happiest state is a functioning inner emotional ecology, not perpetual pleasure.
Read at Psychology Today
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