How to be happy: stop trying for the perfect life and embrace negative emotions
Studies show that chasing ultimate fulfilment can leave you very unhappy. A psychoanalyst offers advice on the nature of well-being and how we can benefit from a change of perspective
Psychologist and counsellor Dr Michael Eason sees clients every day who are struggling with life.
They may be clinically depressed or have crippling anxiety about a number of issues: work, home life, love, money. They constantly bounce from one stressful situation to the next, unable to find a consistent sense of fulfilment.
Eason says part of the problem is that modern culture has been set up so that people are destined to fail when they try to be happy.
“There’s too much emphasis on happiness,” he says. “You go into a bookstore and there are all these self-help books and it’s setting up unrealistic expectations. Our culture does this, Hollywood does this, we get this unrealistic idea of what happiness is. This is not accurate. This is not what life is about.”
Eason, of the MindnLife practice in Hong Kong, who has been working in psychotherapy since 2005, says life’s purpose should not be trying to obtain an ultimate state of happiness at all costs. He says mankind’s state of being is incredibly multifaceted and the singular pursuit of one emotion is misguided.
