Why It's Hard to Choose Real Happiness

There are two types of happiness. Are you choosing the best one?

Photo by Tim Samuel on Pexels

Most people never realize there are two types of happiness.

They strive for a beautiful partner, a perfect home, and a snappy car. When these externals come together, they believe they’ll finally be happy.

But is this the best form of happiness to pin your hopes on?

The Greeks identified two types of happiness: “hedonia” and “eudaemonia.”

• Hedonia means the pursuit of pleasure-driven happiness. At its core is the belief that positive emotional states derive from external pleasures, like the ones mentioned above, and from the avoidance of pain.

• Eudaemonia, in contrast, refers to a more profound sense of well-being and fulfillment that comes from living a meaningful and purposeful life. Aristotle believed eudaemonia was the ultimate goal of a human life. He said it can be achieved through the development of virtues and the cultivation of one’s full potential.

It seems simple, doesn’t it?

But yet we choose hedonic pleasure over eudaemonia time and again, me included.

Why?

The lure of distractions

For example, I want to meditate more.

I know that regular mindfulness practice enhances my mental health and well-being. It calms my nervous system, a potential effect verified by science, and uplifts my spirit. It also strengthens my attention skills, which makes me more focused and productive in day-to-day life.

Through mindfulness meditation, my mind becomes the source of my well-being rather than external pleasures—the very definition of the more lasting form of happiness called eudaemonia.

In contrast, when a hedonic activity stops, for the most part, the happiness derived from it disappears too. Shopping, a delicious meal, blissful sex—none of those activities brings a more profound, more lasting happiness.

Hedonic pleasure can even lead to more suffering. Shopping too much can dig you into credit card debt, a decadent meal can end up in tummy trouble, and blissful sex can leave you with an STD.

Hedonic pleasure can make you crave more and indulge more because it leaves constant gaps in happiness.

Since I’m more likely to establish a more profound and lasting sense of happiness through regular mindfulness meditation than I will from watching “Penny the Talking Cat” videos on YouTube, you’d think I’d already be a mindfulness rockstar.

Hedonic pleasure can make you crave more and indulge more, too, because it leaves constant gaps in happiness.

I do meditate every single day, by the way. I’m not a complete loser.

But I want to meditate more. From my studies and experience, I know it takes substantial time to bring consistent calm and clarity to the mind. If that’s what I want, more time is required.

Yet, I still find it difficult to detach from the allure of hedonic distractions. Even a creative urge can prematurely pull me off the meditation cushion, demanding that I write right now.

That’s not to say hedonic pleasure is automatically hedonistic and all bad. We need the basic comforts of life, like food, clothing, and shelter, to survive. We need medical care and education, and why not some blissful sex, too?

Social connection is also essential to our well-being. A 2018 study found that social isolation can contribute to cognitive decline, depression, and insomnia. Other researchers have found social isolation can significantly increase the chances of death.

But if you think external pleasure is the primary source of happiness, you’ll be disappointed again and again.

For me, it comes down to trauma

Why is it so hard to primarily choose activities that bring lasting happiness? Why do I waste time watching “Penny the Talking Cat” when I could be chalking up my meditation miles?

I’ve discovered it relates to trauma, at least for me. It may not come down to trauma for you. However, our adult choices about happiness often involve dysfunctional patterns set in early childhood.

This is how my aversion to meditation developed.

I worked hard for my spiritual teacher for more than a decade. Eventually, he decided to hire a younger crew, and I was terminated. I had seen this coming, but gruesome can barely describe the experience.

Instead of the gold watch and celebration of my achievements, he denigrated me in front of others during an hour-long termination session. He painstakingly listed all my flaws and didn’t share a single positive quality. My protestations angered him and made him all the more vicious.

He claimed he acted in these harsh ways to destroy our ego-clinging, an obstacle on the spiritual path. But his barbs only tore me apart and reinforced my ego. I cried and cried and cried.

So embroiled in my pain, I didn’t think about what would come next in my life.

But he and one of his brilliant younger ones decided my future for me. He directed me to enter a solitary retreat for three to six months.

I felt shocked someone else would decide my future like this. But I didn’t feel I could disobey my spiritual teacher.

You might think I’d be thrilled at the prospect of a spiritual retreat after working so hard for so long. But I felt just the opposite.

Anxiety and dread permeated my heart. I would be cut off from everyone and everything I had known to date. I would have to be still instead of my usual busy. It wasn’t my choice. I was being forced against my will.

In a recent therapy session, I discovered that experience (along with earlier ones) embedded a degree of trauma within me that manifests as this resistance to more meditation.

Understandably, I choose hedonia over eudaemonia. I have a crippling fear of being forcibly cut off from everyone and everything.

What patterns block your happiness?

If it was easy to choose real happiness, eudaemonia, we all would, wouldn’t we?

But most people choose hedonia because that’s all they know. Thanks to family, society, and marketing campaigns, they’ve been conditioned from early childhood to believe happiness comes from external pleasures.

But even when you’re well aware of the concept of eudaemonia and, in one sense, want it more than anything else, the lure of hedonia can be irresistibly strong.

While other factors may come into play, like willpower and discipline, I believe we often favor hedonia due to survival strategies we adopted as children.

These strategies were meant to protect us emotionally (and sometimes physically). But now, in adulthood, the patterns are so ingrained that they take precedence over activities that bring genuine happiness.

These unconscious and long-held fears and needs direct our lives. When challenged, they can feel raw, primal, and insurmountable.

For example, the need to please others may supersede your desire for eudaemonia because it’s connected to your survival even as an adult. The same can be true with a fear of being alone or needing to drive yourself to succeed.

Take a moment to think about a recurring emotional or mental pattern that leads you into hedonic activities and away from eudaemonia.

It’s not enough to know about eudaemonia.

If you genuinely want to experience eudaemonia, a more profound sense of well-being and fulfillment, you have to address whatever dysfunctional mental and emotional patterns get in its way.

Planting a new happiness seed

By the end of that therapy session, I had relaxed into a meditative state. I didn’t feel an impulse to get up and get busy. Instead, I melted further into calm awareness—no longer feeling forced or that I must meditate.

A new seed has been planted. May it grow and grow! I hope you’ll plant new seeds, too, and in time, achieve the more profound and lasting happiness you deserve.

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