Iris Mauss

He and colleagues have shown that when people are in a state of flow,

they report later on being incredibly happy.

So it's a state of deep happiness.

But what's important is that it's also characterized by being completely unaware of the self.

So it means that the self almost feels like it's dissolved during these states of flow.

And in fact, it's interrupted and destroyed

when you check in with yourself and ask, how am I feeling now?

Yeah, so those ideas have been around for a long time.

John Stuart Mill thought about hedonic experiences, of course, a lot.

And there's another quote that I really like and that gets to the heart of another problem with striving too much to be happy.

And he said, "'Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness.'"

on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end.

Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way.

And I really like that quote because it gets at another problem with overvaluing happiness or valuing it in the wrong way.

And that's the idea that if we strive for our own happiness at the expense of what's going on around us, that's when things can go wrong and backfire.

I think that's really right.

Dan Gilbert and others have found that humans are actually pretty lousy at knowing what will make them happy.

And one of the things that makes people most happy is spending time with others and being connected and close to other people.

And sort of this overly intense pursuit of one's own happiness, that can come at the expense of connecting with other people.

We did a study that gets at that question, asking whether if we don't pursue happiness in a way that sacrifices connection with other people, maybe we can get around the paradoxical effects of overvaluing happiness.