Guides on this issue fill entire meters of shelves: How can I become happy? Feature writer and author Oliver Berkman believes that the pursuit of happiness is overrated and even counterproductive. Happiness is with Realists is the title of his book, for which he interviewed various, often self-proclaimed experts and traveled to, among other places, Mexico and the extremely poor slums near Nairobi. However, as you should know, the analysis is aimed at American experts and fashionistas.

Berkman writes that our civilization, so focused on the pursuit of happiness, seems woefully incompetent. “One of the best-known general findings of the ‘happiness studies’ is that the myriad benefits of modern life have done little to improve our collective mood.”

Big house means more room to mope.

Higher economic growth does not necessarily lead to a happier society, “just as higher personal income above a certain baseline does not make people happier.” First of all, big, nice apartments give you more room to mope, and studies show that self-help books are rarely helpful either. In any case, the messages of such works are usually banal.

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First of all, there is a problem with the corresponding focus: “Even if you assume that happiness is a worthy goal, there is a nasty pitfall because pursuing happiness obviously reduces the chances of ever achieving it.” Philosopher John Stuart Mill once observed, “Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you will cease to be happy.”

Are we chasing happiness?

Maybe: “How can we be happy?” is simply the wrong question, and it would be better to focus on something more productive instead. Berkman explains that subjects who learned about an unfortunate event but were instructed to try not to feel sad about it ended up feeling worse than people who learned about the event but were not instructed about their feelings. Other studies have shown that trying to think positively can worsen the mood of people with rather negative self-esteem.

It explains what Stoicism is, a school of philosophy that originated in Athens and dominated the Western understanding of happiness for nearly five centuries. “Tranquility should not be achieved by desperately seeking pleasant experiences, but by cultivating a kind of calm indifference to one’s own life circumstances,” it says.

Constantly being optimistic about the future only adds to the shock when things go wrong. People with limited positive thinking find themselves less prepared and more desperate when faced with things that simply aren’t good – “and these things happen.” This is the problem underlying all approaches to happiness that place too much emphasis on optimism.

In fact, we have everything, but it always seems to us that something is missing.

Berkman deals with the enthusiasm for Buddhist meditation in America and Europe and its associated associations. The modern view of meditation is a complex form of positive thinking, which is largely contrary to the truth. “In fact, meditation has nothing to do with achieving any desired state of mind, be it bliss or serenity.” Rather, the core of Buddhism is detachment.

Elsewhere it is described how Ulrich Tolle became Eckhart Tolle and how he in turn became the best-selling living spiritual writer in the world, “with the possible exception of the Dalai Lama.” Tolle visited Burkeman, as did other spiritual teachers and happiness experts. To look beyond the horizon at those who find themselves in relatively comfortable living conditions, he also visited the Kibera slum in Nairobi, one of the largest urban slums in Africa. What if the unavoidable basic everyday experience is uncertainty?

For a man like him, the living conditions of the inhabitants of Kibera seemed unimaginably harsh. “The slums have no running water, and the only electricity available is what residents “borrow” by connecting cables to power lines that supply power to the best parts of Nairobi.” Sexual violence is common, as are car thefts and robberies. Slum dwellers dispose of human waste mainly in plastic bags, which they throw away as far as possible from their own homes. 20 percent of the population is infected with HIV.

Let everything be as it is – instead of falling into actionism

But in conversations there, it became clear to him: “To be honest, the Cyberans don’t seem as unhappy or depressed as one might expect.” Rather than a place of despair, Kibera appears to be a hotbed of entrepreneurship. “This disturbing finding that people living in highly unstable conditions function surprisingly well and are not depressed is, of course, not unique to Kibera. It is so well known that it has become a cliché, especially in relation to southern African countries. Sugars.”

“A feeling of security and a truly lived life are in some ways opposite.”

Oliver Berkman

International studies on happiness have repeatedly shown that some of the world’s poorest countries are among the happiest. “So this is the deeper truth about uncertainty: it is another word for life,” Berkman writes. “This does not mean that it would be unwise to protect yourself as much as possible from certain dangers. But it means that feeling safe and having a truly lived life are in some ways antithetical.”

“Optimism is a wonderful thing; goals can sometimes be very useful; positive thinking and positive visualization also have certain benefits,” the book concludes. “The problem is that when we think about happiness, we tend to chronically overestimate positivity and “doing” opportunities, while we chronically overestimate negativity and “getting away” opportunities (such as resting in uncertainty and accepting failure). underrated.”

Even though Berkeman’s book is a US-centric explanation with self-proclaimed gurus giving their opinions, there are some things that make you think. It might be worth a read, especially for people who still haven’t found happiness after purchasing the fifth happiness guide. (Annette Stein, dpa/af)

Used sources

  • Oliver Burkeman: “Luck favors realists. Why positive thinking is overrated”, Piper Verlag, Munich, 2023.


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