Pushing Happiness: How Being Too Positive Is Unhealthy
Are you fed up with being told to “be positive” or even,“stop complaining” by online business mentors and gurus and generally every Internet marketing or online business product owner? Have you had enough of them trying to make you feel inferior just because you don’t walk around with a huge fake smile on your face 24/7, or kiss the their highnesses feet? You’re not alone. And, I have some great news. You don’t have to feel bad anymore about not feeling good enough, according to recent discoveries outlined in the February 8, 2008 issue of Newsweek’s article by Sharon Begley, “Happiness: Enough Already”.
Discoveries in science about the brain, around the early 1990’s, seem to have catapulted this happiness nonsense. First, there was the insight about the brain’s activity in certain areas underlying the sense of well-being in people. Then there came the emergence of “positive psychology”, who’s proponents urged fellow researchers to study happiness as seriously as they did pathological states such as clinical depression. (Not the kind of unhappiness that most people confuse with actual depression, the real disorder) And, “when the science of happiness collided with pop culture and the marketplace, it morphed into something even its creators hardly recognized”, an industry designed to drug you or help you suppress or remove your natural emotions.
This happiness industry, according to Newsweek, “sends the insistent message that moderate levels of well-being aren’t enough: not only can we all be happier, but we practically have a duty to be so.”
Thankfully the same science that started this mess has finally had the time to make further discoveries that poke huge holes in this happiness movement and bring some sanity back to the issue.
So, what is the latest discovery? Humans need to feel the full range of human emotions. Duh. I’ve been saying that ever since the first anti-depressants began being pushed on television. It’s just common sense.
Ed Diener and his colleagues write in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science, in their experiments on happiness, on a scale from 1 to 10 with 10 being the happiest, 8s were more successful than 9s and 10s, getting more education and earning more. In fact they state that, “once a moderate level of happiness is achieved, further increases can sometimes be detrimental” to income.
This suggests what I’ve been saying all along… that some level of discontent (not enough as to paralyze you of course, such as clinical depression) is beneficial as it makes a person strive to better themselves and the world around them. Another thing I’ve always said is that these pushers of the happiness industry are intentionally confusing people about what real depression is, giving them the notion that if they’re not completely blissed out all the time then they must be depressed. Even some doctors have been fooled into prescribing anti-depressants for just about anyone who asks for them.
Everyone has probably noticed by now the way that drug companies push their ineffective anti-depression drugs on people, at the same time admitting that, over 75% or so of, people who try them still have “some symptoms of depression” and, then they’ll say, “Here’s another pill to fix that…”.
We’ve all seen the ads. They’re hard to avoid. But, what, I think, is more difficult to avoid is the truth that isn’t being told about this “happiness industry”. The truth is that they’ve taken what would normally be a perfectly normal emotion, reactions to things that are upsetting or just not right in the world… and instead of telling anyone to take responsibility for themselves and step up to the plate and make a difference in the world by working to change whatever is making you unhappy (the old fashioned way), they say, “Here, take this pill and stop thinking about it.” Just let us run the world and you go “be happy”.
It seems to me that they’re drugging the population so they won’t notice how screwed up the world has become and try to fix it! They’re also giving people what they want, a “get out of responsibility free” card. And, it’s just not right, in my book. I’ve had enough.
These self-help authors and webmasters who preach that everyone should walk around with huge fake smiles and pretend to be happier, or more “positive”, are just as guilty. These people are doing the exact same thing to everyone, just without pushing the drugs.
The truth is that people are not supposed to be that happy all the time. It’s not natural. Emotions were meant to be felt not suppressed or blocked by some pill or even released too early. They’re meant to be felt. They’re meant to be useful. And, the honest truth is that very few people are naturally blissed out on cloud nine all the time and those people that are probably have some imbalance in brain chemistry themselves.
What’s wrong with feeling a moderate sense of well-being like most people? What is wrong with a person pointing out the obvious flaws in some aspect of their lives or the world, or just some product they just bought? What’s wrong with being upset when somebody gives you a bad deal? Nothing. Absolutely Nothing. In fact being a well adjusted person must include the full range of human emotions and the ups and downs that accompany them.
The worst part about this enormous lie put out by these profit hungry pushers of happiness, that everyone should act positive and happy all the time, is that these pushers themselves can then turn around and use this notion as another way to avoid their main responsibility; the responsibility of listening and responding to their customers, whatever their customers’ attitude.
I recently read an article where one of these Internet business gurus actually likened his run-in with an upset customer to that customer “pooping on his floor” if you can imagine that. Ugh! What is wrong with someone that is so afraid of the normal range of human emotions that they can’t even engage in active conversation with someone who doesn’t fit their notion of being positive enough? Couldn’t the inability to talk with anyone that doesn’t fit your notion of “being positive”, be diagnosed as a disorder itself?
I think the real problem is that these people just don’t want to hear anything that might upset their own often too fragile mindset. In my humble opinion, these sorts are some of the weakest and most irrational people on the planet and people like that have no business running a business that has anything to do with customers. They certainly have no right o preach or give advice to others… bad advice at that.
So, if you’ve been worried that you’re just not “positive” enough to make it in Internet business, you can relax. Being successful in business doesn’t require you to be blissed out, and true success turns out to be much more than just being happy all the time. (Unless maybe you’re trying to sell a self-help idea that you can show people how to be happy all of the time.)
Sure, you still don’t want to wallow in negativity either. And, if you’re about to hang yourself or drive off a cliff, you should probably seek professional help and some sort of drugs that might keep you from offing yourself.
But, the majority of us seem to have been duped into thinking that life is supposed to be all rainbows and sunshine and if we don’t feel that way then something must be wrong with us. And, that’s just not true. That’s a lie that has been crammed down our throats to do nothing more than to sell pharmaceuticals and self-help programs.
So, relax. You don’t have to act fake or take some pill to get rid of your emotions. Most of us don’t need any of that. What we need is a more realistic and balanced view of what success really is… and how you can be just as big a success as you want to be without chasing some illusion that you should be happy all of the time.
After all, without sadness or just the regular “feelin’ alright”, how would anyone know what true happiness is when it comes? And, without people pointing out flaws or things they don’t like about the world… how in the world is anything ever supposed to get better?
Don’t ask the gurus or drug companies. They have a vested interest in your notion that you’re not happy enough as you are and instead of fixing anything for real, you should just take a pill or subscribe to their crazy ideas. I’ve even begun to wonder if there’s not some government conspiracy with the pharmaceutical industry to keep everyone drugged so they can run the country any way they please without anyone “complaining” too loudly… and where they’re running our country seems to be… into the ground, judging by the current state of affairs.
