A recent research article titled “happiness depletes me,” found that trying to be happy (which is defined as striving to experience as much positive emotion as possible and avoid negative emotions) leads to decreased feelings of happiness, and increased levels of loneliness and low energy.

The basic idea is that trying to deliberately change your thoughts and behaviour to be happy means you tend to overlook small naturally occurring moments of happiness. The effort leaves you drained and more likely to make poor decisions such as overspending or overeating, which in turn make you feel unhappy.

Not a new idea – brought to prominence in a book in 2007 by Russ Harris called “The Happiness Trap”

So if your life isn’t going to be focused on finding happiness what should it be focused on?

Happiness Trap suggests:

1. Accepting that negative thoughts and emotions are natural and part of life, do don’t fight against them

1. Enjoy positive emotions when they do occur, and pay attention to the small things in life

1. Live life by trying to act in accordance with your values. One way of identifying core values for you is to ask yourself how you would like other people to describe you in 3 words. The 3 words you choose probably reflect your values. Use these to guide how you live your life. Happiness will occur at times as a pleasant side-effect but life overall will be more worth living.