Finding happiness in being unhappy

Deccan Herald:

Recent research suggests that happiness may not be bliss; people who strive for happiness may end up being worse off.

Says June Gruber of Yale University, who published the research findings on Perspectives on Psychological Science: “Doing things with the expectation that these ought to make you happy can lead to disappointment and decreased happiness.” Conversely, being unhappy shouldn’t be thought of as a universally bad thing.Should such research gain wide credence, happiness therapists and reams of literature on ‘being happy’ would become redundant. So it should, given the fact that not only is search for happiness a problem, too high a degree of happiness can be bad as well. It has been found that people who feel extreme amounts of happiness are not only less creative than their counterparts but tend to take more risks.In reality, however, staying happy has been considered an unwritten obligation for humans. So much social pressure there is for people to remain happy that most pretend to be happy even when they are not. Those who respond otherwise are often ashamed or uneasy.

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