“The obsession with being happy all the time makes people feel miserable,” Tal Ben-Shahar 03-12-2019
By: Tal Ben-Shahar,
original article in
EL PAIS
Israeli psychologist Tal Ben-Shahar, 25, a professor at Harvard, believes that the great evil of the 21st century is that there is no time for rest
Tal Ben-Shahar (Ramat Gan, Israel, 1970), a doctor of Psychology and Philosophy from Harvard University, where he was a professor for 25 years, has been studying happiness for as many years. Like many other experts, he believes that the great enemy of well-being is stress: 94% of American university students suffer from it. "It is the new global pandemic," he says in reference to the term used by the World Health Organization. Doctors call it the “silent killer,” he says. But the Israeli psychologist believes that for years one has been looking to the wrong side; one should not study the factors that cause it, but the behaviors that do not cure it. "We have stopped giving importance to rest, to recovery and just sleep is not enough," he says.
Ben-Shahar changed Boston to New York a few years ago and now teaches a seminar on happiness at Columbia University, as well as running the Happiness Studies Academy, an online platform with hundreds of students interested in learning how to manage their emotions. For years the diagnosis has been clear: constant happiness does not exist.
This week he participated in EnlightED, an event on the future of education and its relationship with technology organized in Madrid by South Summit, the Telefónica Foundation, IE University and the Santillana Foundation.
Question. Is there a psychological immune system? Are there people who have a greater tendency to sadness?
Answer. Genetics makes all the difference. For example, I was not born with genetics linked to positive emotions. As a child I felt anxiety, like my parents and grandparents; we have suffered it generation after generation. Being unhappy made me interested in this field: the science of happiness. In the seventies, in the United States, a series of research was done on twins with identical genes. They were separated at birth, raised in different countries, with different economies. Over the years it was observed that there were many similarities in terms of their levels of well-being, their behavior and even their passions. On average, happiness depends on 50% of genetics, 40% of personal choices and 10% of the environment. These percentages can change in extreme situations, such as war.
Q. How can the levels of happiness in the brain be measured?A. There are brain patterns that are associated with happiness, depression, or anger. It is not just one part, but multiple ones working together. An example is the prefrontal cortex: the left part is associated with positive emotions and the right with negative emotions. It is important to know the findings in this field to understand that with our behavior we can improve levels of well-being.
Q. There is a surge, hundreds of best sellers written on the subject. Do we worry more nowadays about trying to be happy?
A. No, it is something ancestral. 2,500 years ago, Aristotle wrote about it. The Bible also deals with that subject. It's always been part of our thinking. The difference is that we now have more free time and that adds up to unreal expectations in life. The result is that we feel unhappy because we do not understand what happiness is.
Q – What is happiness?
A. It is not possible to always be happy. Negative emotions, such as anger, fear, or anxiety, are necessary. Only psychopaths are safe from that. The problem is that, due to lack of emotional education, when we feel them, we reject them, and that makes them intensify and we are dominated by panic. If we block a negative emotion, we also block a positive emotion. We need to feel the fear and be conscious that we are moving forward with it. It is not resignation, but active acceptance. When my son David was born, about a month later I began to be jealous of him. My wife paid more attention to him than to me. Sometimes emotions become polarized, we reach extremes and we are not better or worse people. We are human.
Q. According to a recent study by the European agency Eurofound, stress levels are rising at school and young people's transition to adult life is complicated by their parents' expectations and societal pressures.
A. Expectations play a key role in happiness. The most dangerous is to believe that you can be on the crest of the wave constantly. The obsession with being happy all the time makes people feel miserable. In recent years, social media has had a lot of influence; seeing the smiling faces of others, their idyllic relationships, an exemplary job. When we feel sadness or anxiety those images reinforce our idea that we are doing something wrong. But none of that is real, we all live on an emotional roller coaster. It's inevitable and it's not bad.
Q. 14% of young Europeans between the ages of 15 and 24 are at risk of depression - according to the latest Eurofound report - and the ones that lead the ranking are countries such as Sweden (with a rate of 41%), Estonia (27%) and Malta (22%). In Spain, where the youth unemployment rate is highest, it is below 10%. What's is the issue here?
A. I'll give you another example. Mental health levels are measured in the United States every five years and typically vary by 1% up or down. In the last period, the results have been very different: among adolescents, depression levels have grown by up to 30%. One of the reasons is that face-to-face interactions are decreasing, replaced by the smartphone. Personal relationships are an antidote to depression.
Q. In the 19th century we worked up to 18 hours a day and no law prevented us from working 24 hours if necessary. Today we have a higher quality of life. What is the root of permanent dissatisfaction?
A. The workers' life expectancy was to provide enough food for their family to survive. Today we think about earning more money, in the dream holidays... Today you can do everything; even if you have an interesting job and you like your colleagues, it is not enough. As you can choose and change, you are never satisfied.
Q. How can school prepare us to know what happiness is?
A. We must teach how to cultivate healthy relationships, to identify purposes and meaning in what we do. And most importantly: find time for rest. Research has shown that this is the big problem, that we do not recover from stress. It's not solved by reading self-help best sellers, it takes action. At work, take a 30 minute-break every two hours, or 30 seconds if you work in the Stock Exchange, but disconnect and breathe. Take a day off. Learn that happiness is not a binary code, from ones to zeros, but an up and down wave. It's an unpredictable journey that ends when you die.
