Should Happiness Be A Top Priority For Our Mental Health?
Walk into any bookstore (one of the few that still exist) or scroll through the books on Amazon and check out how many books there are on self-help. Literally hundreds of thousands—all giving you the best possible formula to finding happiness. That’s what we all want, right? A life full of unending happiness, free from pain and difficulty.
I know you don’t want to admit it. Just considering such a goal seems completely out of touch and impossible. But take a minute and be honest with yourself. Go back, in your mind, to the last time you were unhappy. Even just a little bit. Was your mindset to let the emotions of the moment or season in your life pass over you? Did you allow the circumstance to teach valuable lessons and grow you as a person? Or did you bury it and spend all your energy avoiding it with the attitude of “fake it till you make it?” Or perhaps you focused on removing the pain as quickly as possible and at all costs
Where We Went Wrong
The truth is that we have been bamboozled into believing in the fairy-tale fantasy that we can achieve a constant state of pleasure and satisfaction in life. And you don’t have to look too far—right there on social media—to see the litany of posts showcasing the perfect outing, the ideal vacation, and the perfect mess your adorable children made in the kitchen. Oh, and don’t forget the financial perfection you can achieve while sitting at home.
Don’t believe me? When was the last time you saw a Disney movie that didn’t end happily ever after? What might make for a good story leaves us with unachievable expectations.
We are given the impression that such perfection is the norm, leaving us believing that anything less constitutes absolute failure. Surprise, surprise, this isn’t good for our mental health.
We seem to have forgotten that we are not built to live in a constant state of happiness. We are built for a challenge, survival, emotional ups and downs, and endurance. Our emotional state is in constant flux, changing like the weather—sometimes unpredictably. The key is learning how to navigate the myriad of emotions we can experience throughout our lifetime.
But Isn’t Happiness The Goal?
I am part of the forgotten generation—GenX. Or sometimes called the Latchkey generation. Many of our parents worked, and we came home from school to an empty house, made our own killer grilled cheese, did some laundry, and watched cartoons. I even learned to iron my own clothes. We are sandwiched between the Baby Boomers and the Millennials. Generations at opposite ends of the spectrum. We went from unsupervised children running all over the neighborhood to parents completely controlling their child’s schedule of activities. Many Millennials were raised by helicopter parents, these well-meaning moms and dads hover over their children to ensure their constant happiness. Because happiness is job one. And they are passing it on to their children—GenZ and GenAlpha.
We are raising an entire generation of kids who, whenever they feel sad or angry, their parents promptly respond by calming them down and cheering them up. Many of these kids are growing up believing the feeling of unhappiness is wrong. The end result? An entire generation of students who simply don’t know how to face pain, turmoil, struggle, obstacles, and failure. They haven’t learned that emotions of anger, sadness, frustration, guilt, and disappointment are normal—they should be managed and not avoided.
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Where Our Focus Should Be.
Focus on fulfillment. A full range of emotions properly managed and expressed is, in part, what connects us to the full experience of our humanity. Think of it this way. My kids absolutely love each other. I am fortunate that they love spending as much time together as possible. They are all best friends. But that doesn’t mean our days are free from fights, arguments, screaming, crying, and hurtful words and actions. In fact, it happens all the time. But working through those moments brings them closer together. But those moments of extreme happiness can only be fully realized and appreciated when we also feel great pain. You can’t have one without the other.
Click Here to Learn More About the Full Range of Emotions
I know that sounds hard to swallow, but just think for a moment about the logic. How do you fully understand and appreciate pleasure? By understanding the feeling of pain. The two work together in a sort of balance. We could never fully know what pleasure is without something to compare it to—pain.
What Can We Do?
So you might imagine the problems that ensue when we constantly and exclusively pursue things that produce pleasure and make us happy. The level of happiness we might achieve, in the end, will never be enough. Now, think about this in terms of our students—taught that happiness is the most desirable and the only acceptable outcome in life—how do they achieve it? What often begins as a pursuit of happiness becomes anything to numb or remove the pain. This ambition results in addiction to any number of unhealthy habits—gaming, vaping, sex, drugs, alcohol, self-harm, and social media.
Click Here to Learn More About the Harm of Substance Abuse
Therefore, our students (well, all of us, in fact) need to know two essential truths. First, life is not about finding happiness but about finding meaning and purpose. Despite what we have been led to believe, the two are not the same thing. When we discover what matters in life, what gives us our purpose, it is often met with fear, anxiety, discomfort, shame, and even hurt—along with incredible moments of joy and happiness. Second, we need to teach the rising generations not to avoid pain but to experience it and properly navigate it. Ancient wisdom from nearly every corner of the world taught that enduring pain creates strength and resilience. The pain we suffer has a purpose and is necessary to experience true joy and purpose in life.
This is why the Get Schooled Tour Escape is a critical and necessary program for every school. We help students confront those habits they escaped to in hopes of removing and numbing the pain. But these habits are self-destructive, causing more harm than they might have imagined—resulting in severe mental health issues. But as they confront this dark reality, we point them to hope by offering them the tools they need to successfully face the pain in their life.
