With the Pandemic showing no signs of wane it is clear to a certain extend that ours lives are set to change for perpetuity. Millions have lost their lives directly or indirectly due to the Corona virus and on the other side millions continue to lose their jobs world-wide everyday. With no signs of vaccine at least for a while , our state of happiness is decaying like never before.
The Anatomy of Happiness
The Cerdo of happiness as stated by MARCUS AURELIUS is to Never to get worked up on the things you can't control.
We all try to attain happiness from things that are not completely in our control for instance , We want to be loved by someone that doesn't love us or asking for a salary hike of our choice or asking for a promotion at job .These are instances that are not fully in our control. Although it may seem a possible task for few, it's not the case with everyone.
We as humans constantly tie our happiness to the next fancy thing we aspire to have Be it a car , a new relationship ,or a new phone . We constantly jump from one thing to another thinking it will make us happy and in this process we fail to realize it's a never ending cycle. In short you will never be fully satisfied at any given point. This form of happiness is called materialistic happiness . To understand the anatomy of happiness we must first look at happiness from a biological perspective .
Materialistic happiness is innate
Scientists has worked out various studies that shows happiness can be traced back to it's inception . We all agree here that humans are a product of years of evolution . The Philosophy of Evolution is Survival . Evolution has built humans into a species that greatly thrives than any other species today . One of the reasons for achieving this feat is a response system that's built into us .
For example We as humans are able to sense immediate danger much before it happens without even voluntarily thinking about it. In the same way humans have a reward system that's triggered when we do things that increases our chances of survival . The end product of this reward-response system is happiness. This biological aspect of being rewarded has been there with us for so long that now it's natural .
Concurrently on the other side technology has grown so fast in the last two decades. It has take human convenience to a different league. Efforts to reward ourselves with things are much easier than ever. Today we can sit almost anywhere on the planet and order Food , Clothes literally anything over the internet without moving an inch. This has caused imbalance in the reward-response ratio as created by the evolution. Since anything created by evolution is innate the only way to fix this ratio or rather balance it is with our self awareness .
You see , whenever you decide to buy something fancy your brain release neuro transmitters like dopamine which makes you feel happy about it. Too much of dopamine leads to an unconscious addiction to it. I emphasized on Unconscious here
because even you are not aware of it in your normal state . It's only when you become self aware about your mind and surrounding you are able to recognize this pattern. Dangers of excess dopamine disrupts the balance , resulting in you craving for more dopamine levels over time . Failure to deliver levels dopamine result in you being unhappy. Have you ever experienced extreme Bi polar behaviour ? ! It stems from these dopamine addiction .
Solution: A Dopamine detox ?
The idea here is prevent unhealthy cheap dopamine into your system . And the only way to achieve this is to Identity Analyse and Act . Identify certain activities you perform that gives you pleasure but is in no way any good in the long run. Analyse the pros and cons of performing it and Act accordingly .
Also one thing I learnt is to try deviate from happiness as a destination , to focusing on happiness as an entire journey. One should focus on the smaller delights that life offers withing the journey . For instance having a clear nose or having a job are things we take for granted but you only realize how important it is when you have your nose blocked , or when you don't have a job. The reason this happens with most of us is because when we are healthy and have a job we elevate our frame of mind to an extend that we don't end up seeing such things as a blessing .
I hope you gained some insight through this post.
Feel free to interact with me in the comment section .
Thank you for reading .
P:S The above are my original work .