Are you happy?
Let me rephrase that. Have you ever been happy?
And I’m not talking about the the short-lived rush after a good grade or a perfect selfie, but the kind of happiness that lingers. The kind that doesn’t need you to announce that you truly are happy.
Think about all the new habits you’ve tried. The morning routines. The strict diets. The journal prompts.
Did any of them really make you feel better long-term?
In this article, we’ll explore why chasing happiness is often what pushes it further away, and why learning to value what you already have might be the only thing that leads to something real.
Introduction
We live in a time where self help ideas and suggestions appear everywhere in life.
Even if this sounds beneficial and a plus for the human race, truly it is not. Everyday we are bombarded with tens of hundreds of different options, especially on social media. One creator swears by veganism, one by being a carnivore. One swears by cold showers, one by hot.
Scientists call this “The Paradox Of Choice”. In essence, the more choices you have, the harder it is to choose.
When choosing a road to follow, often with the amount of choices that we have, we end up doubting our choices and contemplating whether we’ve chosen the right path to cross.
This leads to us losing belief and faith in our new routines, thus leading us to slowly stop.
And the killer sentence that can be seen afterwards is: “Most people don’t get happier, in fact, they often end up worse”.
But, how can you stop this and actually improve by utilizing self-help?
This article will discuss these few things:
- The Self-Help Overload Paradox
- Happiness As A Byproduct
- False Expectations
- How To Benefit From Self-Help
The Self Help Overload Paradox
It sounds amazing at first, instead of brain diffusing short videos, informational, motivating videos are finally starting to take over!
But it’s not.
You wake up and scroll through your feed. One post tells you to try intermittent fasting. Another swears by the 5 AM Club. A podcast suggests journaling, while a YouTube video insists cold showers are life-changing.
By the end of the day, you’ve absorbed 12 “life hacks” and applied, well, zero.
But this isn’t your fault.
With the amount of choices that linger in every part of our current world and ecosystem it’s much easier to get lost in the maze.
Let’s say you become vegan for your health, thinking it’s the healthiest lifestyle out there. Then suddenly 2 months later you come across a video talking about how a carnivore life with 5 steaks and 10 eggs a day is healthier, of course you start to doubt your choice to become vegan.
Slowly, you start shifting towards being a carnivore, until finally you start dedicating yourself to the lifestyle.
That is until a few weeks later when you find a new “life-changing” diet to follow.
This is called “Habit-Hopping”, and is the pinnacle of the modern self-help world.
Switching habits and lifestyles aren’t restricted to just diets, they can appear everywhere, like the perfect time to sleep, how to study more efficiently, etc.
But habit-hopping is nowhere near what we should be doing.
To put it short; there is no perfect solution.
Think of habits like muscles. Without the enough time to properly train and exercise it, none of it would have an influence on your life.
If you work out your arms for a week, then your legs for a week, then your chest for a week, simply nothing would happen.
The truth is every habit can be equally as beneficial if done right.
Happiness As A Byproduct
But no matter what routine you do, even if you’re disciplined and stick to it, if you’re focusing specifically on being happy, you’ll never truly be happy.
Most people treat happiness like it’s a treasure chest at the end of a scavenger hunt.
“If I just find the right job, the right diet, the right partner, then I’ll finally be happy.”
But that’s not how real happiness works.
Psychologists like Viktor Frankl and Martin Seligman argue that happiness isn’t something you chase directly. It emerges naturally when you’re living with purpose, when you’re committed to something bigger than your moment-to-moment feelings.
Happiness comes in different flavors, sometimes it’s chocolate and sometimes its vanilla.
Jokes aside, sometimes you don’t have to know that you’re happy to be happy.
Like at a family gathering, when you’re playing cards with your niece and nephews, you don’t exclaim that you’re happy, in fact most of the time you don’t even think about being happy; you just are.
Long lasting happiness works in a similar way.
Happiness shouldn’t be the end goal; it should be being proud of the work you’ve done. True satisfaction comes not from chasing good feelings, but from looking back and knowing you built something meaningful, even when it was hard.
If you’re constantly stressed and thinking about being happy, you’ll never actually feel fulfilled.
It’s similar to where if you think too much about not crashing into the pole in front of you whilst riding a bike, you end up crashing into it.
False Expectations
But even if you focus on just improving instead of being happy, there is still a way you can fail.
Setting unrealistic goals is something that I’m sure we’re all guilty of. Whether it be buying that mansion in 2 years, or meeting the love of your life in a few months, setting unrealistic goals can suck.
I’ve talked about this before in a previous article, but I would like to give a short and concise summary here.
Setting big goals can be beneficial, it gives us the drive to push on for it, but sometimes it messes things up. If you do end up achieving said goal, you feel on top of the world. But when you don’t, you feel disappointed, like you’ve failed everyone in your life.
But that feeling is avoidable.
Instead of setting hard to reach, unrealistic goals, try setting smaller, more achieve able goals.
Rather than working to buy that Lamborghini, focus more on reaching your first $10k, on consistently making a sustainable amount of money each month.
In a world where reaching your goals can seem hard, you need to collect and achieve smaller wins first.
Super Mario Bros, as an example. You don’t immediately face Bowser, first you have to face lesser bosses, with the amount of difficulty slowly increasing, alongside your skill.
Maybe life isn’t about reaching the castle all at once.
Maybe life is just one long game of Super Mario Bros.
How To Actually Benefit From Self-Help
Even if I’ve made it seem like it throughout this article, self-help isn’t the enemy.
In fact, if done right, it can change your life.
The real problem is how most people approach it.
First, you don’t need to consume every trick or method you come across before you start improving your life, you just need to start.
Instead of collecting and gathering advice like trophies, you should focus on trying and testing.
Without action, all the knowledge in the world is useless.
It’s like sitting in a car filled to the brim with gas, no matter how much fuel you have, if you don’t press the pedal, you’ll never move.
Second, not every trick is a one-size-fits-all solution.
Sure, most self-help techniques offer real value.
But sometimes, you need to stretch them a little to fit your life.
Take the classic example of waking up at 5 AM.
Everyone has different routines, different bodies, different energy patterns.
Waking up early is beneficial, no doubt. But for some people, 5 AM might be completely unrealistic. And that’s okay.
It doesn’t make you a failure.Maybe for you, waking up at 6 AM, consistently, is the real victory.
Self-help should be flexible, not rigid.
It’s not about blindly copying someone else’s formula; it’s about adapting the ideas until they actually work for you.
At the end of the day, self-help should make your life lighter, not heavier.
Last but not least, consistency.
You don’t need to be doing the best possible routine to start improving.
Truly the key is consistency.
No matter if it takes a month, 5 months, maybe even a year for results to start showing up, keep pushing.
Success isn’t made by giant leaps; it’s made by small, often invisible steps taken over and over again.
It’s like planting a tree.
You don’t see anything after the first few days of watering it. Maybe not even after a month.
But underground, the roots are growing stronger, getting ready for something bigger.
Your life works the same way.
If you show up every day, even just a little, you’re building something far more powerful than quick success.
You’re building momentum.
And eventually, that momentum will carry you further than you ever thought possible.
Conclusion
So as a closing statement; chasing happiness will only leave you feeling emptier.
Instead of focusing on happiness, you should focus on building a life you’re proud of, one step at a time. The same goes with using self-help for happiness. It’s not about finding the perfect method, rather, it’s about finding what works for you and sticking with it.
Remember, happiness has and will never be the end goal, it’s simply a byproduct of consistency.
