With a year into the pandemic, it’s timely to reflect on how our experience of COVID-19 has changed us on a personal level. Coronavirus fundamentally altered the shape of life for so many of us, there is no denying. All of a sudden, we started living in a different world that required us to change the way we work, the way we rest, the way we socialize. All the changes coronavirus brought into our lives made it a tough year for all of us, and for some of us it was a tougher year both psychologically and circumstantially.

With our worlds narrowed down to the size of our apartments, we also needed to shift our coping strategies. We were no longer able to use the coping mechanisms that we regularly used in the pre-pandemic world to deal with the stressful situations that we faced in the lockdown world. Shifting realities of coronavirus forced us to adapt our coping strategies. Stress levels were high for all of us. Since stress hormones such as cortisol are known to weaken the activity of the immune system, we needed to find a way to minimize our stress both for our physical and psychological health.

Should we live in order to be happy?

At the beginning of pandemic, I thought that the optimum way to cope with stress for better immune function would be to find ways to stay happy during the lockdown. What I mean by happiness is how I feel at the moment, in the here and now. Positive emotions in general indicate to us that life is going well—so, we feel good. But happiness does not only feel good; it appears to have lots of benefits for us. Although more research is needed to establish a causal direction between happiness and various beneficial outcomes, the existing research findings are very impressive. According to various studies, happy individuals have greater coping and self-regulatory skills (Fredrickson & Joiner, 2002); they have higher income and achieve superior work outcomes (e.g., George, 1995; Staw, Sutton, & Pelled, 1995); they have more friends (Lyubomirsky, King & Diener, 2005); they have superior mental health (Koivumaa-Honkanen et al., 2004); they have better physical health (Dillon, Minchoff, & Baker, 1985; Stone et al., 1994). They even live longer (Danner, Snowdon, & Friesen, 2001). Hence, it is definitely worth the effort to find different ways to make us feel happy.

In the same spirit, our culture endorses the view that “we should live in order to be happy.” Yet, with COVID-19 I soon realized that setting high happiness expectations during times of high stress can itself create additional stress. In addition, when happiness becomes an imperative, I figured, some of us can feel like we are failing every time we feel unhappy. In fact, there is nothing about us that is failing if we don’t feel happy. Truth of the matter is, no one can be happy all the time. If we deny this fact and obsess with being happy all the time in a rather neurotic way, our preoccupation with happiness will put us into tunnel vision and make us feel inadequate.

Paradoxical effects of valuing happiness

Indeed, numerous studies show that highly valuing happiness can be associated with lower well-being, decreased happiness and increased depressive symptoms (Mauss et al., 2012; Mauss, Tamir, Anderson, & Savino, 2011; Schooler, Ariely, & Loewenstein, 2003; Tamir & Ford, 2012). What research suggests is if we try to force ourselves to feel happy and fail at it (as if it is possible to achieve anything long-lasting by forcing), we can end up feeling worse. So, if you consider happiness as the one and only objective of your life, it might be wise to revise your happiness expectations in light of these research findings. Inflexibly striving for happiness (as with anything else) is highly likely to be not good for your well-being.

During the pandemic, it became evident to me at a non-conceptual level that we cannot equate a fulfilling life with a specific emotional state, such as happiness. Life involves plenty of unpleasant moments that we don’t enjoy, and negative life events unavoidably reduce happiness. In times of crisis, happiness is a luxury that is not well suited to the reality of the moment. That being said, sinking into depression when we face difficulties is obviously not good for our well-being either. Basically, we should accept our difficult emotions but not be swamped by them. This is not an easy task. I thus wondered how can I get forward momentum in challenging times without denying the reality of the situation? In times of crisis we need to find a way to replenish our resources in order to light our way out of darkness; but how is it possible to do this? When happiness is out of reach, what should we aim at—in order to have a life we still look forward to living amidst the difficulties we face? These questions lingered in my mind.

Can meaning trump happiness?

The answer I finally found for myself revolved around the notion of “meaning.” I am not referring to cosmic meaning of life, here. I set myself a more modest goal. I focused on how I personally create meaning in my life. I came to the view that happiness trumps meaning in good times, and meaning trumps happiness in difficult times. Life is not only about feeling good in the moment. When going gets tough, encouraging people to focus on happiness or pleasurable experiences does not ring true to home. It just does not feel authentic. Certain circumstances limit the extent to which we can be happy without being in denial or delusional. In those times, having a sense of meaning can tremendously motivate us to muscle through difficulties. Indeed, based on eudaimonic conceptions of well-being, which can be traced to Aristotle, meaning is an important component of a good life.

Meaning lends structure to our lives. It is the “why” behind what we do. The sense of meaning we create in life is as personal as our dreams. People who have meaning in their lives choose goals that are a reflection of their true values. They perform activities that express themselves, that allow them to use their strengths and serve something that they consider larger than the self. The pursuits that make our lives meaningful involve challenging activities that go beyond the self, and these activities often require effort and sacrifice. People whose lives have high levels of meaning, accordingly, worry more and have higher levels of stress (Baumeister et al., 2013). However, this does not mean that a meaningful life lacks positive emotions altogether. It just means that from the lens of a meaningful life, what is most important is not that we feel happy all the time, but that we feel that our life is worthwhile.

Overall, during the last year, I realized that happiness is not the only and perhaps not the most important ingredient to a fulfilling life. Apart from happiness, there are other things to look forward to in life, meaning being an important one. Happiness fades fast. In contrast, meaning is relatively stable. It might not be always easy to find meaning in our struggles. But when we find it, life opens us new possibilities.

The pandemic is changing; but we are not quite out of the woods yet. If happiness currently eludes you for reasons that are out of your control, I encourage you to do a bit of soul searching to find out what matters most to you and why. Explore how you can find ways to practice your values and strengths more regularly in your life. Ask yourself, when am I at my most energized? Reflect on the kind of person you want to be and your life goals. Find ways to strengthen the connection between your daily activities and your long-term goals. Of course, we never know for sure what our future self will desire. But if our compass is meaning, I believe, we are less likely to be disillusioned with the long-term goals we set for ourselves, once we accomplish them.

Personally, sharing knowledge with the aim of being helpful to others provides me a great sense of meaning. This is one of the main reasons why I accepted to become the new editor of MAPP Magazine. As an editorial team, with associate editors Felix Yerace (C’20) and Karen Deppa (C’15) and Communications Chair Kellie Cummings (C’19), our purpose in the upcoming issues will be to let you know of the latest happenings in the Positive Psychology community. I hope we can succeed in making the MAPP Magazine a place you visit regularly to find inspiration and to make positive change in your lives.

P.S. If you want to keep in touch, you can follow my Instagram account @thegoodlifekit.

References

Baumeister, R. F., Vohs, K. D., Aaker, J. L., & Garbinsky, E. N. (2013). Some key differences between a happy life and a meaningful life. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 8(6), 505-516.

Danner, D. D., Snowdon, D. A., & Friesen, W. V. (2001). Positive emotions in early life and longevity: Findings from the nun study. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80(5), 804.

Dillon, K., Minchoff, B., & Baker, K. H. (1985-1986). Positive emotional states and enhancement of immune system. International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine, 15, 13-18.

Fredrickson, B. L., & Joiner, T. (2002). Positive emotions trigger upward spirals toward emotional well-being. Psychological Science, 13(2), 172-175.

George, J. M. (1995). Leader positive mood and group performance: The case of customer service. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 25, 778–794.

Koivumaa-Honkanen, H., Kaprio, J., Honkanen, R., Viinamäki, H., & Koskenvuo, M. (2004). Life satisfaction and depression in a 15-year follow-up of healthy adults. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 39(12), 994-999

Lyubomirsky, S., King, L., & Diener, E. (2005). The benefits of frequent positive affect: Does happiness lead to success? Psychological Bulletin, 131(6), 803.

Mauss, I. B., Savino, N. S., Anderson, C. L., Weisbuch, M., Tamir, M., & Laudenslager, M. L. (2012). The pursuit of happiness can be lonely. Emotion, 12(5), 908.

Mauss, I. B., Tamir, M., Anderson, C. L., & Savino, N. S. (2011). Can seeking happiness make people unhappy? Paradoxical effects of valuing happiness. Emotion, 11(4), 807.

Schooler, J. W., Ariely, D., & Loewenstein, G. (2003). The pursuit of happiness can be self-defeating. The psychology of economic decisions. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Staw, B. M., Sutton, R. I., & Pelled, L. H. (1994). Employee positive emotion and favorable outcomes at the workplace. Organization Science, 5(1), 51-71.

Stone, W. J. (2004). Physical activity and health: Becoming mainstream. Complementary Health Practice Review, 9(2), 118-128.

Tamir, M., & Ford, B. Q. (2012). When feeling bad is expected to be good: Emotion regulation and outcome expectancies in social conflicts. Emotion, 12(4), 807.