We are usually instructed that setting goals and working to achieve them is probably the best way to tackle life and improve as a person or in a career. When thinking about happiness, a parallelism comes to my mind. While happiness seems to depend on an attention to the present moment and is usually associated more with takers than givers, meaning derives from an harmonic cohesion of past, present and future and usually has an internal locus of control* associated with it.Īlthough they can sometimes overlap and coexist, meaning and happiness are two different concepts, and no one is better than the other per sé. If we take a look at the scientific definitions of happiness and meaning, there is a key difference that can be noticed right away. That seems a very appealing theory to me. Which implies that there is no such thing as one happiness that we should spend our life seeking. But I have come to notice in life that happiness is this kind of temporary experience taking place inside of us because we feel valued in some way, or our work is appreciated at a certain moment in time.Īs Giacomo Leopardi argued, during the course of our life we experience 'many happiness events'. Well, that sounds a bit catastrophic and depression-like.

You feel happy one day, or moment, for some reason or event happened to you, and one moment later you feel again that emptiness and dissatisfaction for your life, as if you were the only one living on earth and suffering. It feels quite normal, that happiness roller coaster. I am using the word 'encounter' because meaning is to be found within us rather than be sought after compulsively. While it is widely believed that happiness is one of the objectives to achieve in life, I would infer that having a meaning is a much more profound and worthwhile goal to encounter in life.

Hedonic treadmill theory