Why being happy all the time is bad
Rachel Hosie
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THE INDEPENDENT
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It Can Leave Us Emotionally Stunted: Expert
In recent years, wealth is no longer seen as the ultimate marker of success in soceity , but rather happiness. Inspirational Instagrammers tell us to “banish negative thoughts“, self-help books claim to provide the secrets to perpetual positivity , and we think we must never feel anything less than awesome.But, a Danish psychology professor has said that our obsession with happiness could have a serio us dark side. Svend Brinkmann from Aalborg University said forcing ourselves to be happy all the time could leave us emotionally stunted. Moreover, happiness isn't the appropriate response for all situations in life.
“Our thoughts and emotions should mirror the world. When something bad happens, we should be allowed to have negative thoughts and feelings about it because that's how we understand the world,“ said Brinkmann. According to Brinkmann, we won't be able to cope by desperately trying to be happy all the time when something bad does happen. “Life is wonderful from time to time, but it's also tragic. People die in our lives, we lose them, if we have only been accustomed to being allowed to have positive thoughts, then these realities can strike us even more intensely when they happen.“
Brinkmann acknowledged that there were people who seemed naturally to have more cheery outlooks on life. But he said there was a danger in happiness becoming a necessity and warned of the perils of companies insisting on employees being perpetually upbeat. “When you engage with people and you work in teams, then these personality traits become much more important. That's why we put much more emphasis on them, because we want to exploit humans and their emotional lives,“ he said.
“I think this is a dark side of positivity. Our feelings tend to become commodities and that means we're very easily alienated from our feelings.“ He also feared that society was getting to a point where people don't even feel they could discuss their worries with their friends because they thought they needed to pretend everything was rosy all the time. He said without the bad things in life you'd never appreciate the good, and it was fine to feel sad, angry , ashamed and happy too.
Source: Times of India, 10-03-2017
“Our thoughts and emotions should mirror the world. When something bad happens, we should be allowed to have negative thoughts and feelings about it because that's how we understand the world,“ said Brinkmann. According to Brinkmann, we won't be able to cope by desperately trying to be happy all the time when something bad does happen. “Life is wonderful from time to time, but it's also tragic. People die in our lives, we lose them, if we have only been accustomed to being allowed to have positive thoughts, then these realities can strike us even more intensely when they happen.“
Brinkmann acknowledged that there were people who seemed naturally to have more cheery outlooks on life. But he said there was a danger in happiness becoming a necessity and warned of the perils of companies insisting on employees being perpetually upbeat. “When you engage with people and you work in teams, then these personality traits become much more important. That's why we put much more emphasis on them, because we want to exploit humans and their emotional lives,“ he said.
“I think this is a dark side of positivity. Our feelings tend to become commodities and that means we're very easily alienated from our feelings.“ He also feared that society was getting to a point where people don't even feel they could discuss their worries with their friends because they thought they needed to pretend everything was rosy all the time. He said without the bad things in life you'd never appreciate the good, and it was fine to feel sad, angry , ashamed and happy too.
Source: Times of India, 10-03-2017
