Is Happiness An Achievable Goal?

I’m currently seeing a young University client, who came to his first therapy session with me presenting with one goal:

‘I just want to be happy.’

Now, looking at this goal, how achievable and sustainable do you think this goal is?

Think about it: ‘I just want to be happy.’

In therapy, I call this goal a ‘dead-man’ goal, because it’s only really achievable when we are no longer living; when we have no responsibilities, no everyday worries, no bills to pay.

If you have been battling Moderate to Severe Anxiety and/or Depression for years, this may truly be your only goal: ‘I want to be happy again.’ Your mind would have been focusing on the negatives in life, failing to see the positives.

But imagine being ‘happy’ 100% of the time. What would that mean? Would you be going around with a big smile on your face? Or what would that mean to you? To me, the thought of being happy all the time sounds exhausting.

So is happiness an achievable goal?

Not in this format- it needs further exploration.

Happiness normally means having a meaning, a purpose. We feel ‘happy’ when we feel fulfilled, going in what we feel is the right direction.

First thing we had to do was to figure out what happiness meant to this young client.

He was quiet for a while, deep in thought.

Then he said:

‘I guess I wish I was like my friend Dave.’

Now that’s a good start. My client, using something called ‘modelling on others’, started to see that the goal ‘happiness’ was not a correct goal to work with. It’s usually impossible to imagine we’d ever achieve that or even what that would mean. We needed to break it down into what it really meant for my client, and those would be solid goals to work with.

Often, when we wish to be ‘happy’, we look at other people and wish we had their money, their homes, their other halves, their well-behaved children. They make it seem so easy- like happiness truly is an achievable goal.

Back to my young client:

We started looking at what it was that he admired about his friend. My client listed things like ‘popularity, effortless good grades at school, beautiful girlfriend’.

We then took a look at his own life. How did he see those traits fitting into his own life?

We finally had good goals to work with emerging. My client started to see a hope that his goals were achievable, rather than having this one seemingly impossible goal- ‘happiness’.