When I meet with someone for therapy for the first time, it is not uncommon for them to say that they just want to be happy. They may be feeling anxious or depressed and they are tired of feeling that way, so they just want to feel happy.

This makes complete sense to me. In our society, we are told repeatedly that we should be happy. We hear it on the TODAY Show, on social media, and from our families and friends. Some of the phrases that we may hear are: “In order to be healthy, you need to be happy,” or “Just do what makes you happy,” or “Happiness is a choice.” The list goes on.

While there is nothing wrong with wanting to be happy or feeling happy, I believe that it is counterproductive to make that the goal of therapy or the goal of life. In order to explain why this is so, I want to first explain the definition of happiness.

Happiness comes from the word happenstance, which means by chance or an occurrence. It is a feeling that comes and goes. In fact, all feelings come and go.

Happiness, just like all emotions, doesn’t stick around forever. While I would agree that happiness is a great feeling, it’s not in its nature to show up and permanently remain.

I would like to encourage you to think about the happiest day of your life. Maybe it’s your wedding day. Or a day at Disney World. Or the day you graduated college. You may have very well been the happiest you have ever been but did the elevated feelings of happiness last the whole entire day without fail and without any other emotions showing up? Maybe the lines were long at Disney. Maybe it rained on your wedding day. Maybe the graduation ceremony dragged on and on. So maybe alongside being happy that day, you were also disappointed or even frustrated for a few moments. Does that mean that there is something wrong with you if you didn’t feel constant happiness the whole day? Absolutely not. It means you are normal. It also doesn’t mean that day was a waste. It was still significant regardless of some of the other emotions that may have arisen throughout the course of the day.

So, why are we constantly chasing a feeling that is fleeting? We are conditioned to do so, but it is futile. I’d like to suggest that if we try harder and harder to attain happiness, it will probably backfire. If we place pressure on ourselves to always feel happy, we are setting ourselves up for an unrealistic, unattainable goal. This is because when we feel happy, we might be highly fearful of losing that feeling or when we’re feeling unhappy, we’re then judgmental toward ourselves for not being happy.

At this point, you might be wondering, then what is the point of therapy? What is a realistic goal? When I am working with a client, I am much more interested in helping them pursue a meaningful life rather than just a happy one. My aim for them is to live in accordance with their values, to follow their passions, and to actively create their version of a meaningful life. If we focus much of our energy on pursuing a rich life, full of meaning, we may not be happy all the time, but we will likely be more fulfilled. This is a more tangible goal than just focusing on feeling happy all the time. It also takes the pressure off. When happiness comes, we can fully enjoy it and be present in it and when it wears off, we can also feel ok because we know this is normal. This gives us the freedom to allow emotions to come and go while we continually strive toward a more purposeful life.

So, if you are a human being reading this, let’s normalize not being happy all the time. A full, meaningful life will come with a full range of emotions.