Are you happy yet?

 Are You Happy Yet?

 

Really, right now, are you happy?  Well maybe not happy, maybe just ok, just fine.  We seem to have entered into a period of preoccupation with being happy.  We worry that our kids are not happy.  And if they are not happy somehow it is within the power and responsibility of someone else to make them happy.  Along the way we have lost the notion that each of us is in charge of our own happiness.   And while we are there, “happy” is not a permanent state.   It is mostly an elusive moment. 

Most recent research has shown that emotions are highly reactive to the attention that is paid to them.  Yet we have apps on our phone to check in on our happiness, there are articles online of how to check on your happiness, we worry children to find out if they are happy.

All this attention to happiness seems to forget that what we want our children to be in resiient.  Remember the old Timex watch commercials.   “Takes a beating and keeps on ticking.”  That’s what we want for our kids.  Because in truth, into each life a lot of rain will fall.

Evidence shows that the more people value happiness and the more they chase it, the less happy they tend to be.  Asking students to continually reflect on their feelings belies the fact that how they feel right now may not be anything like what they will feel in an hour or maybe even 15 minutes.   Asking kids how they feel tends to amplify the negative feelings and ignore that these feelings may well be fleeting.  

In the past, when a child was complaining about what had gone wrong and her life in general, we would often encourage the child to manage, life will get better.   Today we rush the child off to be evaluated for meds or therapy.  We are in a period where it is hard to find someone who is not in counseling or therapy because they are not “happy” with their lives.  

Psychologists have noted there are people who adopt an “action orientation”, they  are able to focus on the task at hand without getting distracted by their emotional state.  On the other hand, those folks who have a “state orientation” can get so far down the rabbit hole of how they feel, that the task at hand doesn’t get done.

How successful in life will our kids be if their own feelings are always front and center?   How will they manage to complete a day’s work if they are consumed with how they are feeling in the moment?  Teaching kids to overvalue their own emotions sets them up for failure.

So, are you happy yet?  Truthfully, that’s not my job.  Suck it up buttercup.