Stress less | how to pursuing happiness leaves you stressed

Stress less | how to pursuing happiness leaves you stressed

   

feeling freedom

Everyone has goals in life – form career to fitness to personal life. Hash tags with goals are a hit on Instagram, like, #couple goals, #fitness goals, #life goals… the list is endless. But all these goals have one thing in common. We pursue them in the hope of achieving happiness. 

 HAPPINESS vs PLEASURE

  

The first mistake we make – which leaves us feelings low – is that we of – ten confuse happiness with pleasure our addiction to social media, and its constant affirmations, read ‘’like’’ retweets, compliments, etc., have made us believe that the pleasure derived out of being  compliments  is happiness. So, any deviation form that makes us feel low.

  

We have all read enough to know that happiness cannot be a constant in anyone’s life. While pursing pleasure can be a daily exercise, happiness is long term goal.

  

Now, let’s try and understand this difference from the perspective of our brains. Our brains process these two distinctly different feelings in different ways.

Pursuing pleasure activates the centers of our brain that control the production of dopamine (a chemical directly linked to addiction). For example, getting likes on social media post pumps dopamine through our system. It also activates our “fight or flight “Centre, so adrenaline is coursing through you as well. Sounds great, right? The problem is, to achieve the same high the next time; you will need the higher dose of dopamine.

   

The end result? If you don’t have enough dopamine (read like, shares, retweets), you start feeling low.

   

Happiness, however, is caused by serotonin, not dopamine. Serotonin is regulated by different parts of the brains altogether. Unlike dopamine, serotonin is more constant. You don’t need higher doses of it to feel happy.

ADDICTIONS TRUMPS

   

As far as our brain function goes, serotonin, which gives you a feeling of long-term happiness and contentment, is always overshadowed by dopamine – the hits. More so, these ‘hits’ of pleasure simultaneously reduce our serotonin levels, thereby decreasing our sense of well-being. Basically, the more you seek pleasure, the less happy you eventually become.

   

This is why studies have shown that people who spend lots of time on social media platform are more likely to be clinically depressed as compared to who spend less time on it.

JUST ANOTHER EMOTION

   

In our relentless pursuit of happiness we forget that it’s just like any other emotion – sadness, fear, disgust, anger… just like they cannot be a constant. We deceive ourselves chasing constant happiness. Human bring aren’t designed to be happy all time. And it is normal.

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