Why Happiness is Overrated (And What You Should Seek Instead)
Here are some study based activities which can take you to center point.
Happiness is overrated. Most of the time the word “Happiness“ is meant to point something else. Happiness exists based on some condition. There is sadness which is in opposite direction of this, which happens when condition is not met. You cannot stay in that state always.Neither happiness nor sadness. If you observe clearly, with the feeling of happiness there will be sometimes the fear of loosing it. That can be an indicator that it is temporary. You might have seen waveform [Refer the image below]. There will always be upper side, which we can call happiness and corresponding lower side, sadness, in any context.
But there is a zero point where there is balance. That point can be called as state of contentment. In that state, there is a good feeling, but no fear of loosing anything. An unconditional wholeness [1].
"Happiness is a temporary thing, which you may end up losing. Contentment is an ingrained asset that is with you wherever you are."
Given our day to day situational distractions, it is difficult to be in this state. However, there is a possibility of increasing the tendencies of being in this state for longer duration by adapting the following activities (with study based evidences) mentioned below.
Gratitude Practices [Source*] - This is the #1 point I have seen in different papers and articles, and also experience personally as well. Mind’s attitude is usually to look for problems, failures. It may be because of childhood trauma, the surrounding environment or any reason. It makes mood always low. Gratitude writing pushes your mind to practice seeing good things in day to day life which are already there. This increases your chances of being in content state. In another way to say, Gratitude stops the mind from drifting into the "lower side" of the waveform.
Physical Exercise [Source*] - The physical workout does its job at physical level to boost your mood up and release all required hormones to keep you in content state. There are a lot of science based evidences showing hormones of good feeling generated after exercising.
Reading [Source*] - Reading gives you lot of benefits which in turn will improve your mental state, adding to contentment.
Reducing Social Media and starting some hobby [Source1* Source2] - The addiction to social media can be big threat to your contentment. As it consumes lot of your energy, after a continuous scrolling and watching for half an hour, though it looks entertaining, you end up feeling low sometimes. A feeling of incompleteness. That is because it is cheap dopamine. The real dopamine release is when you do some activity by yourself and see some satisfaction while doing it. Hobby gives a framework to you for the completeness feeling.
* At many places in reference source, there are mentioning of happiness. It can be considered as contentment state if it is a feeling of unconditional wholeness.
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