Dr Itai Ivtzan

Why is it that happiness is fleeting? How could it be that you feel great in the morning yet that contentedness fades away by the evening? If I would ask you about your happiest time during the last month your mind will probably wander to an event or a period of time where you felt good, experienced great pleasure and were filled with positive emotions. Gain Sustainable Happiness can lead to a more sustainable lifestyle and greater life satisfaction—and sometimes it’s right at your fingertips. The association of happiness with joy is a natural one, and yet happiness consists of much more than these positive feelings. To understand this greater depth of happiness we need to explore positive psychology theory and research where a distinction is made between hedonic and eudaimonic happiness. Such a difference would also make it easier to understand why we experience happiness as a fluctuating emotion. The first dimension of happiness is hedonistic. It feels great, and you are glowing inside – it’s a fabulous feeling of joy and pleasure. This aspect of happiness is easy to understand as it is based upon a very simple rule: a maximum of positive emotions and a minimum of negative emotions. In other words, to experience it you need to feel as much joy as possible but sadness or frustration cannot be part of the equation. You might be thinking, “Well, of course they can’t be part of the equation, it’s happiness we’re talking about here”. To better understand this intricacy let’s move on to eudaimonic happiness. If hedonic happiness is the celebrating, carefree brother, eudaimonic happiness would be its purposeful, aware and deeply contented twin. Eudaimonic happiness asks “Who are you?” followed by “What do you do?” The relationship between the answers determines your experience of eudaimonic happiness. This is the kind of happiness that is based upon the question of meaning in life. However, as you might imagine, this journey of eudaimonic happiness is not an easy one. You go through an agonising period of time where you feel that “who you are” and “what you do” are mismatched. You then begin a personal journey of realising what is meaningful to you – and how to achieve it. It might be that you need to take further studies at university, or move down the job ladder into a new position. This process in the short-term is challenging and may instil feelings of frustration, sadness and even pain, as part of this self-actualising experience. And yet it is a natural part of eudaimonic happiness. Going through this development might be challenging but it would probably fill you with a highly satisfying and deep feeling of meaning as you proceed with it. You are investing in your long-term happiness. The question “why is happiness fleeting?” might be easier to understand now. Hedonic happiness, in its essence, is a brief experience of joy and pleasure which quickly fades away. Even the gratification of winning an unexpected amount of money fades away much more quickly than we would have thought. As we equate happiness and pleasure, Eudaimonic happiness offers an instable experience of positive emotions. Eudaimonic happiness, as we have seen, is filled with challenges, making it difficult for us to experience consistent joy. And there it is – happiness which we much prefer to feel as never-ending bliss, becomes a fluctuating, fleeting experience. Once you begin to draw on these Gain Sustainable Happiness choices, you’ll likely discover that there are many new choices that you can make—and they’re already within your reach. Check out Dr Itai Ivtzan’s mindfulness meditation certification which allows you to become a mindfulness coach. This is a comprehensive meditation certification training