Pillars of Happiness: Dreams & Desire

Each Tuesday, I'm reflecting on how aspects of our lives and society relate to happiness and how we can increase our happiness. This week, I'm looking at the third pillar of my framework Pillars of Happiness - dreams & desire. This pillars explores why dreams and desire are essential for our happiness and how we can approach them so that they cause that happiness instead of frustration, disappointment and supressed energy.

Self-development guru James Clear once said happiness is the absence of desire. I don’t agree. Dreams and desires are natural (hello, Dopamine!) and can actually propel happiness forward when we embrace them mindfully. Yes, they can lead to frustration or disappointment, but ignoring them leaves us flat. The trick is to work with them.

The Physical Side of Desire

Let me build on my Body pillar and recall the so-called happiness hormone, Dopamine. Dopamine is triggered by anticipation and motivates us to reach for more. The hormone focuses on the future, there to assist us in ensuring a better future. This is based on the assumption that it is all about survival – our own survival and the survival of our genes. To ensure this survival, Dopamine will look for everything ensuring our nutrition and mating opportunities. Of course, Dopamine has no clue that sugary treats have no nutritional benefit in this world of abundant sugar. It also doesn’t understand that hardly anyone benefits from gambling – all it sees is that you could potentially have more money. It doesn’t understand that a bigger house doesn’t mean better survival or mating opportunities. It’s pretty naive, if you want.

It’s not only naive, but it’s also insatiable. There’s only Dopamine in anticipation and not when we ‘reach’ the dream or desire. Do you sometimes feel empty when you get something you fought for? There we go – no Dopamine on ‘arrival’. Just a new desire. And we get used to whatever we achieved. Do you remember the first excitement about the new house, job, whatever? It’s gone, isn’t it? Either there’s no excitement or there’s actually contempt because of all the cost and cleaning (house), or the colleagues who don’t support your ideas or long work hours (job) or… whatever. Sounds familiar?

Studies show that life-changing events like winning the lotto or being paralysed from the neck down cause happiness or unhappiness for a few months. After about a year, people have found their so-called happiness set point or normality again. It’s called Hedonistic Adaptation. It also means that changing our life circumstances doesn’t increase happiness per se. We get used to it all.

Savouring

The good news is that we have more hormones and mechanisms to counteract the everlasting desire. In the book Molecule of More, the authors call the other so-called happy hormones (Oxytocin, Serotonin and Endorphins) here-and-now hormones. These hormones are not future-oriented. Oxytocin is triggered in relationships and through connection. Serotonin provides confidence, and endorphins are natural painkillers. They let us connect with what we have and what we are proud of. Sharing and celebrating our achievements with others, but also working out how to overcome challenges to fulfil dreams together, are absolute happiness makers.

Building on my Mind pillar, we need to balance between our future orientation and being in the now. The mindful celebration of what we have and where we are helps us to feel safe & secure and tap into the rest-and-digest state, which is so much connected to happiness. The state in which our horizon broadens and we see opportunity and abundance, can share and connect easily, tap into our creativity and engage in play and fun. That again is a great state to pursue dreams from, because we can see opportunity and connect easily with those who can help us in our pursuit. So, physically it is best to relax into dreaming and desiring – being ok with wanting more while also being ok with what we already have.

Flow, Service to Society and Purpose

Ok, so when you can embrace your dreams & desires and pursue them from a mindset of relaxation and abundance instead of scarcity and stress, I believe you have found your energy flow. This is important because everything is energy (yes, this is physics). So, if everything is energy, we are energy. Flowing energy feels good, stuck energy does not feel good. The so-called Flow state (being in the zone) coined by the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, describes a happiness state in which we are focused and can apply our skills while also being challenged. This state is associated with happiness. On the other hand, we even say we’re stuck in situations where our energy doesn’t flow. It doesn’t feel good.

Service to society

I believe that intentional dreaming and desiring show us how to use our skills and where to invest our resources (aka where our energy naturally flows). While all of us dream of ensuring our survival by securing nutrition and mating opportunities, this looks different for everyone. Some people might dream of fast cars, showing their status and improving their mating opportunities. Others want to express themselves as artists without stretching themselves thin across several jobs.

Have a happy week!

Anja