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Freeter happiness5/8/2023 ![]() ![]() To test whether people are happier if they proactively seek out pleasant experiences as part of the framework for their everyday lives, I developed a prioritizing positivity scale to measure this tendency. In stark contrast, people who strive to feel good every possible moment, as if it were possible to will oneself to be happy, appear to be following a recipe for unhappiness. That is, the people who pursue happiness by seeking out pleasant experiences as part of their everyday lives are happier. This way of pursuing happiness means proactively putting yourself in contexts that spontaneously trigger positive emotions.įor years I’ve studied prioritizing positivity, and through scientific research, I’ve found that it goes hand-in-hand with optimal mental health. Prioritizing positivity also involves heavily weighing the positive emotional consequences of major life decisions, like taking a new job, which have implications for the daily situations in which you will regularly find yourself. This way of pursuing happiness involves carving out time in your daily routine to do things that you genuinely love, whether it be writing, gardening, or connecting with loved ones. Another approach involves what I call “prioritizing positivity”: deliberately organizing your day-to-day life so that it contains situations that naturally give rise to positive emotions. Research suggests that people who strive to feel happy all of the time may suffer disappointment, and people who pursue happiness as if it were the only thing that matters may, ironically, chase happiness away.īut these are not the only ways you can go about pursuing happiness. The difference between effectively and ineffectively pursuing happiness may all be in how we go about it. From the GGSC to your bookshelf: 30 science-backed tools for well-being. ![]()
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