15 Lies We’ve Been Told About Achieving Happiness

If you could change one thing about your life to be happier, what would it be? More free time? Praise and validation from the people you love? What if we told you that we've all been lied to about the things that will make us happier? Society's beliefs work opposite to human nature. The more we try to chase happiness as a permanent emotion, well, the more compulsive and unproductive we become.

Before we dive into this, one you need to know two things about happiness. First of all, it's transient; it comes and goes no matter what you do. And second, you become unhappier when you achieve the things you've been told will make you happy, only to find it doesn't come with the feeling that you're searching for.

And in this video, we're going to be tackling the lad.

Alright, starting off at number one: you'll be happy when you have more free time. We hear it all too often, right? "I would be so much happier if I had more free time." But would you really? That's not the case. According to a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, we enjoy some free time but not nearly as much as you would think. The study found that well-being does increase as you have more free time, but after just two hours the benefits level off, and then after five hours it actually starts to decline.

You may think you love sitting around and doing nothing, but that's your late crazy brain lying to you. Humans thrive on productivity and accomplishments, no matter how small they are. When you have too much free time, you're not productive anymore, and you feel like you lack purpose and meaning. And how you spend your free time also matters. If you spent those five hours with other people or you felt like you were passing it in a productive or meaningful way, then you're less likely to experience that drop in well-being.

Pursuing a new hobby, learning something different, and even diving into a new documentary series pushes up some productivity levels for participants in the study. But on the other hand, scrolling through social media or using the computer well, that tanked their happiness level.

Number two: the first day where you never have to work again. Retirement is the ultimate dream for so many people, right? That first day when you wake up without your alarm; you make your coffee with no rush and you pull your chair up to stare at the tree in your garden with no responsibilities and no places to be. You've worked your whole life for this, and yet is this it?

Well, in some cases, retirement has actually been found to negatively impact health, especially mental health. It's not necessarily the retirement in and of itself, though; our ideas of retirement are warped. We see it as this time when we finally don't have any responsibilities or commitments. We spend all our time doing absolutely nothing if we want to, but that just goes back to that free time timeline.

We all tell ourselves: simply put, human nature doesn't do that well without having a purpose for our time. If you don't have a goal-oriented, forward-focused plan for your retirement, well, you're most likely going to make poor lifestyle choices, and that will lead to you getting sick more often, feeling more depressed, and finding no reason to move around or be active.

These things typically appear gradually over the course of five or six years into retirement, so you might not even notice until it's too late. You need to have a plan for your retirement, a purpose, no matter how old or young you are. When you retire, it's a new chapter, not the end of a book.

Number three: when your bank balance is too high for you to count. Listen, okay, let's be clear about one thing: being poor does make you miserable. You’ve seen this; you might have experienced this yourself, and the research tells us this. But being extremely rich, and especially getting there quickly, well, that won't bring you as much happiness as you might think.

That's why in the Alux app we focus on the five pillars of a great life. Financial independence is one of them, absolutely! But there's also your emotional and mental health, your physical health, your education and intellect, and your relationships and emotional intelligence. It's your work to focus on all of these things that will help you with that overall feeling of happiness.

But let's take a look at why having all that money doesn't give you that ultimate feeling of happiness. Money buys us more time, freedom, and choices, and those things definitely make us happier. So where is the disconnect here? Well, it's not really about the money; it's the type of people and their rhetoric the money attracts that makes people the most unhappy.

Because you see, trust and community are incredibly important to us. When your friends are friends with you even when you're broke, you know they're there because of the person you are and the emotional and personal value you bring to each other’s lives. But as your bank balance rises, you begin to question and doubt if the people around you are there for you or the monetary value you can bring to them. Your money changes the people around you; even close family members can turn on you.

The combination of their desperation and entitlement turns into greed, and that leaves you feeling vulnerable and unsafe. Researchers even have hammered down a yearly salary number where happiness peaks and then drops, adjusted for inflation; it's about $18,000 per year. Right now, if you can merge that bank balance with having people around you who you trust, you will thrive, my friend.

Number four: a life with no stress. What is stress anyway? It's become such a buzzword that it almost seems to have taken on multiple heads with different meanings. Stress is a state of worry or mental tension caused by a difficult situation; it's a natural human response. It forces us to confront challenges and threats.

The thing is, stress feels awful to us because it seems like it's out of our control. It triggers our fight or flight response, and that causes symptoms like muscle tension, headaches, and an increased heart rate—all very physically uncomfortable things. It also affects your memory, decision-making, and concentration, so suddenly you can't do the most basic normal tasks. So it makes sense that we would think of a life with no stress would be a grand life indeed.

But there are two types of stress, and one of them is actually good for you. Okay, distress is the negative stress, and eustress is the positive stress. They both have the same type of physical feelings with them, and if we see both of them as bad, well, we end up feeling more stressed about being stressed. Stress can actually have some positive effects on you; it can increase your motivation.

Think of how quickly and efficiently you can work when you have a deadline approaching. It also forces you to problem-solve, which builds confidence and essential skills. It promotes bonding, too. Humans bond when we share similar emotions and experiences, and since stress is almost universal, it's an easy connector for us. Social connection is one of the best things for our physical and mental health, and stress gives us a common enemy.

You'll notice it most when you meet someone who doesn't seem stressed or fazed by life at all. They seem carefree at first, but they don't really move anywhere. They don't push themselves forward because they don't have the drive to do it. So before you wish for a life of no stress, just think about the benefits you reap from it first.

Number five: living until you're 200 years old. Now, just a few decades ago, people living until 120 or 200 years old might have seemed like some kind of crazy pipe dream. But in just a few years, that could very well be reality. Multiple companies and institutions are testing out age-reversal pills. Harvard researchers have already seen significant results from it, so has the Institute for Aging at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and this company has seen drastic changes in the lifespan and health span of mice and now dogs.

Humans crave novelty, right? It's what makes us excited and happy. A new restaurant, a new job, a new partner. After a while, the novelty of life will kind of wear off. It could lead to boredom or existential fatigue even when you're in perfect health. As more people live longer, resources like food, water, and space could become more scarce, potentially leading to social unrest and a lower quality of life.

And there's the loss of motivation. If life is extended indefinitely, will the urgency to achieve goals or make meaningful contributions could diminish, reducing the overall sense of purpose and fulfillment among humanity? Things are the way they are for a reason, and we have to understand the reasoning before we chase the achievement.

Number six: reaching your goals. How often have you thought, "If I just get this job that pays more money, I'll finally be happy?" Or, "When I've got a partner and I get married, then I'll be happy?" And you feel happy for a short time, only to feel like something is missing again. You've planned a goal and worked toward it, and yet it's not giving you that ecstatic feeling you expected.

When you pursue a goal, your body releases dopamine to motivate you to keep going. But once you reach that goal, the dopamine system tips in the other direction, and that actually pushes you towards sadness and disappointment instead. Now look, okay, this does not mean you should never set goals, right? Quite the contrary! Pursuing those goals will make you feel good, but know that if you feel low after you accomplish that goal, it's totally natural. You're coming down from a pretty big high; you can't expect that high to last forever.

Number seven: the way people treat you after a glow-up. You feel great after a glow-up, right? Maybe you lost some weight and toned up, hired a stylist, or started taking care of your skin. You look and feel much better; that's supposed to make you happier, right? And it does to a degree, but you are still the same person on the inside. If you lacked confidence and self-love before, well, changing your outside appearance won't transform the inside along with it.

You have to do a different kind of work for the inside. You'll also notice that people treat you a lot differently afterward. It's easy to get into your head about this, where you realize just how much privilege good-looking people have, and that creates this loop of fear and paranoia where you're deathly afraid of picking up the weight or dropping the ball.

You might be living in a state of fear of going back to your old self, and you know sometimes it's almost as if it's better when you don't know any better.

Number eight: escaping your problems in another land. Books like "Eat Pray Love" or "Under the Tuscan Sun" give us this idea that packing your bags, leaving your life behind, and spending your days sipping Negroni and eating pasta will solve all your problems. And they will, right? Like how amazing would that be?

But wait, okay, we digress because the research shows a different story. Initially, the newness and novelty of those experiences will absolutely bring you joy, but as that wears off, the questions you've spent your life asking yourself and the dilemmas that pop up, well, they'll pop up again. This time, you won't have your community around you to support you. It can feel incredibly lonely and isolating, leading to a decrease in overall happiness.

Time, those experiences should be seen as a catalyst for you to understand the temporary nature of happiness rather than be seen as a path that leads directly to it.

Number nine: all the things way beyond your basic needs. The stuff, all the material possessions—how much happiness do they really bring you once you've got your basic needs met? Food, shelter, water, warmth, sleep, everything else is material. We've heard that possessions won't make us happy so many times; there should be some part of us that believes it, and yet we still pursue all of the things.

So we don't fully believe it. Yet we're still bowled over by influencers selling us products. We'll still go for the fast fashion trends even when we know that quality isn't good. There, if we focus too much on thinking that material possessions will make us happy, then we end up damaging our relationships and our self-esteem. Experiences are what actually make us happier, not material possessions.

Buying something in the moment gives you a temporary high, and that high fades. But having a great experience hexer; that memory is with you forever, and you can play it back anytime you want.

Number ten: following old expectations of human progress. Fall in love, get married, find the one, your soulmate, and start a family. Buy a house together and live happily ever after. This life plan can absolutely bring so much joy to many people, but it's not for everyone. And if you've started a family and there are children involved, there's no takesies backies.

Following old expectations of what it means to progress and move forward in life as individuals won't make us happy because we are all different. That journey won't look the same for everyone. One study found that marriage is associated with higher levels of happiness, especially for men, but when it comes to having children, the findings are more nuanced.

It can bring joy, especially overall, but it also can bring lower levels of day-to-day happiness. The married with no children group showed the highest levels of happiness, but there isn't too much difference between those who aren't married and those who don't have children, especially when you consider how much society pushes for this.

Number eleven: chasing big dreams in a bigger city. Look, we're all for chasing dreams, and here at Alux, we do love the thrill, excitement, and potential of a big city, but it's not for everyone. In fact, it's not for most people. It can be a cutthroat, lonely time. You're competing with the best of the best—little fish in a big pond; they're just like you.

They've left the comfort and familiarity of their homes because they were hungry for something more. Realizing that you're a small fish in a big pond can make you feel like you're not making your mark on the world. In smaller towns, where it isn't as cutthroat, you can at least feel like you're making some kind of impact or difference. You can get lost in a big city if you don't have your wits about you, and that constant buzz of excitement you expected, well, it can fade away pretty quickly.

Number twelve: taking the high road. Will taking the high road really make you feel better? It's a piece of advice meant to convince you to let something go so it doesn't continue to negatively affect you. But look, okay; taking the high road only works when the person on the other side shares similar values to you, and when they're also empathetic and would prefer to make peace instead of continuing to fight.

You have to think about the personality and nature of the person you're dealing with. To some people, you taking the high road is a sign they've won, and they use that to continue behaving badly. Some people need to face the consequences for their actions, and you can't remove those consequences by taking the high road. Sometimes, only a lesson is what's going to make them realize they do not have power over you.

Number thirteen: the praise and validation from those you love. Praise and validation go a long way, but not as long as you might think. Our brains are wired to notice negativity and criticism a lot more. So when we get praise and validation, the high from that can fade pretty quickly. It fades even faster when we've been working extremely hard to get that praise.

If you're putting in the extra hours, producing work far beyond your scope of responsibilities, or even knocking everything out of the park at home—all in an effort to get that gold star—you'll find that when you eventually do get it, it seems really hollow. Now that's not to say that praise and validation are bad or not valuable, no, but the expectations we place on how we think they'll make us feel are way too high. It's more like a brush of happiness rather than an injection of it.

Number fourteen: starting over where nobody knows you. Now we're sure some of you have dreamed of changing your identity and starting over completely, especially if you're not very close with your family or don't have a lot of friends. The idea of reinventing yourself and finally being the person you want to be might be a regular daydream, but anonymity doesn't bring that satisfaction and happiness that we might have hoped for.

Humans crave connection and community. We love it when we walk into a place and someone recognizes us and embraces us. At times, it might feel slightly overwhelming, but the warmth and sense of belonging you get trumps all of that.

Number fifteen: only you can make you happy. Happiness comes from within; only you can make yourself happy, nobody else. Ah, but you know what? We've seen otherwise. We're happiest when we're surrounded by our people. We're happiest when we help other people, when we talk to them, laugh with them, and share experiences and stories.

You do need other people to make you happy, at least to some extent, but it has to be good quality people, and you have to understand how it's your relationship with them that brings that happiness. It's not about what they can do for you, okay?

And perhaps that's our biggest mistake as humans. It's about what you can do for them; that's where the joy really lies.

And that's it from us today, Alex. If you haven't already, don't miss out on downloading the Alo app; it's overflowing with value—the kind that actually will lead to you creating more happiness in your life. Alux.com/slapp.

And no bonus from us here today, because instead, we’re hoping that you will give us the bonus. We're very curious to know what is something you thought would make you happy but just didn't, and which of our points do you disagree with the most? Let's have it out in the comment section, my friend. We'll see you there! Until next time, Alexer, take care.