The happiness industry wants you to believe you can attain a steady state of happiness and that satisfying your needs will take you there. But happiness is ephemeral and transient, which means you can’t be happy all the time no matter what you do. And if you elect to chase happiness, you might find yourself running faster and faster on the hedonic treadmill.
In addition, humans are demonstrably poor at being able to predict how we’ll feel and what will make us happy in the future (affective forecasting). Thus the phrase it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Certainly happiness feels better than sadness, anger, or unhappiness. But feeling better isn’t the point of getting happy. Happiness is supposed to be good for you, leading, for example, to better health and a longer life. That puts it in the same category with other things you “should” be doing, such as eating more fruits and vegetables, stopping smoking, and getting regular exercise—which sucks all the pleasure out of being happy.
But there’s no indication happiness will increase your lifespan and some indication the opposite is true. In fact, research reveals that the bodies of happy people are preparing them for bacterial threats by activating the pro-inflammatory response.
And per BBC Future:
Good moods come with substantial risks—sapping your drive, dimming attention to detail and making you simultaneously gullible and selfish. Positivity is also known to encourage binge drinking, overeating and unsafe sex.
A Hierarchy of Pseudo-Needs
Satisfying your needs is not guaranteed to make you happy—or at least consistently happy. And it’s definitely a less direct path to feeling good than simply pursuing what you want. At first glance, though, it seems more legitimate and less self-centered. You’ve heard the question and maybe even asked it yourself—of yourself: Do you really need it or do you just want it?
I place a lot of the blame on Abraham Maslow, whose hierarchy of needs has wormed its way into nearly all aspects of modern Western culture even though there’s surprisingly little validation of it. He didn’t have access to the information we have available now about how the brain works—but then neither did William James, who was born 66 years earlier and got far more right than he got wrong.
With the help of Maslow’s hierarchy—and perhaps out Puritan heritage—we have turned all kinds of desirable states and situations (wants) into needs. Just like turning happiness into something we should have because it’s good for us, turning what we want into something we need sucks the joy out of it.
System 1, the unconscious part of the brain, treats needs a little differently from the way it treats wants. Its primary goal is survival—and you do need certain things in order to survive, such as food, water, shelter, and social/interpersonal connection. But like the rest of us, you’ve probably convinced your brain you have a host of other needs that also must be satisfied.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Since System 1 isn’t good at making distinctions, it treats both actual needs and pseudo-needs as if they are essential to your survival. As an example, here’s what happens if you convince your brain you need respect.
- If you don’t have respect, you’re not OK. (If you become dehydrated, your brain and your body are not OK. They are in distress. It wouldn’t bode well for your survival if you weren’t sufficiently distressed to turn your attention to seeking water. If your brain perceives respect as a need, you experience distress when you don’t get it.)
- It’s the job of the people around you to give you respect—and they’re wrong if they don’t.
- Your brain will be on red alert looking for any evidence of disrespect because it represents a threat to your survival. It won’t just notice instances of disrespect; it will divert attentional resources to seeking out such instances. And it generally finds what it seeks.
If, however, you recognize that respect is something you want:
- If you don’t have respect, you are still OK (not in distress).
- You’re likely to take appropriate action to generate respect, activating both wanting and liking chemicals in your brain. But whether or not you succeed in getting it, you’re still OK, and you’re much less likely to make others wrong if they don’t give it to you.
- Since your brain isn’t looking for evidence of disrespect, it won’t be overly reactive to it, and you will have more attentional resources available.
How Do You Want to Proceed?
Your brain is an insatiable wanting machine.
If you identify what you really want, you can activate your brain’s reward network to help you get it. Unless you’re a horrible human being, that’s a win situation for everyone—you and the people you are close to or interact with.
Your brain is also an excellent threat detection device.
If you are focused on getting your needs met—both your actual needs and the wants you have turned into needs—your brain will be on the lookout for anything it identifies as a lack. That’s a lose situation for you and the people around you.
While it may seem as if satisfying your needs is less self-centered or narcissistic than pursuing what you want, it isn’t. It’s more underhanded, and it keeps your attention focused on you.
Do you want to keep your brain’s threat detector set at red alert or do you want to harness the power of your brain’s reward system?
The answer seems like a (sorry!) no-brainer to me.
