Why Desire for Happiness Is the Biggest Brain Trick You Need to Survive

Millions of people all over the world think every day about what happiness is and whether it is the meaning of human life. However, far fewer people think about where the feeling of happiness comes from in the human brain – isn't this the greatest illusion?

What if happiness is like a feeling – Is this the biggest brain trick ever? What if people confuse the expectation and desire for happiness with the feeling itself? What if the desire for happiness can be created artificially and controlled from the outside?

Scientists have been pondering these questions for a long time. And today in this article, we invite readers to also come to their own conclusions.

Where does the desire for happiness come from

Back in 1953, young Canadian scientists James Olds and Peter Milner, while conducting experiments on rats in search of the brain area responsible for the feeling of fear, found something more interesting. They called the found area the center of pleasure. However, as is often the case with ingenious discoveries, the discoverers made erroneous conclusions (Columbus, we recall, also believed that he discovered India, not suspecting that America, discovered by him, would become the most influential world state in the future).

As neuroscientists later found out, scientists discovered the so-called brain reinforcement system, which worked not only in rodents, but also in humans. The motivational brain structure appeared in the process of evolution in order to push living beings to active actions, otherwise it was impossible to survive in a cruel world.

To put it quite simply, in the process of irritation of the motivational center of the brain, a desire arises to repeat these disturbing sensations. After all, stimulation of the "pleasure center" leads to very short-term delight, but never leaves satisfaction for a long time. In other words, when a person experiences a state of courage and happy euphoria, he is practically no different from an obsessed guinea pig who is ready to perform any action for the sake of a new portion of the "drug".

This is where dopamine comes into play – special neurotransmitter (a substance released by brain cells during a signal from one neuron to another). The cunning mother nature in the process of evolution created dopamine specifically for those cases when it is necessary to spur a person to more active actions. In principle, for most people, active actions in the name of achieving various goals – this is all life. On a dopamine needle, mind you, and unconsciously. 

Dopamine gives that same feeling of anticipation of pleasure or a desired reward, which is sung in songs and films:

• When you are in love and excited to the brim, excited and ready to do everything for the reciprocal feelings of the object of your passion, anticipating at night during sweet insomnia your happy life together – this is dopamine madness.
• When you dream of going to Paris and seeing the Eiffel Tower and for this you take on any part-time job and refuse all possible expenses in order to save up for a ticket, and before going to bed you imagine yourself against the backdrop of Parisian beauties – this is also dopamine.
• When you dream so much about your own car that you are ready to go into debt for it, and you already know exactly what color the seat covers will be in the cabin, and what kind of music will flow from the car radio when you cut through the night freeway &ndash ; you already guess what the reason for this is called.

The release of dopamine in the body does not cause happiness, but it also excites all the nerve centers. Concentration, cheerfulness, energy, burst of energy – a person who looks forward to the very possibility of pleasure is ready to move mountains in order to achieve it.

But the most interesting thing is that if you think about it, many people will answer that they were happiest in the process of achieving the goal, and not when the goal was already achieved. At the moment of achievement, a void appears rather (the object of desire after six months of a relationship can turn out to be stupid, quarrelsome and hysterical, a trip to a resort after a couple of months becomes just a pleasant memory, and the car turns out to be expensive to maintain and not the most convenient to use), which is most often filled with the following tasks and expectations. After all, this is the greatest deception of the brain.

That is, the bulk of humanity is not even able to share the desire for happiness and happiness itself. The feeling of happiness is so short-lived that it is simply smeared in the mind, being replaced by the next anticipation. Live from pleasure to pleasure in the endless pursuit of happiness – Evolution has played a joke on mankind!

Whenever you see a beautiful coat with a 50% discount in a shop window, smile at a handsome stranger (stranger), smell the aroma of freshly baked – and that’s it, write wasted: a powerful release of dopamine enters the body, and you immediately begin to imagine how beautiful you will be in a new coat, how you will name children from that very stranger, or how tasty and delicate the muffin will taste. You think that once you reach your goal, you will be happy. But here is the paradox – for some reason don't become…  Because the expectation of happiness – this is not the same as happiness itself, but the deception of the brain is for our own good – to keep us "hunting" and survive.

Who is to blame – understandable, but what to do

Since you can't argue against the evolutionary mechanisms of nature, it is unlikely that anyone from mere mortals will be able to radically change the situation and revolutionize the consumer society. However, finding a way out of your personal "Matrix" within the power of every non-lazy and thinking person.

Ask yourself: what causes the release of dopamine in you? Pleasure – an individual phenomenon: someone can go crazy with shopping, someone cannot live without social networks, someone – an eternal fan of gambling, and someone is afraid to be left without sweets, eating himself as a "lifeline"; extra pounds.

Understanding the mechanism of what is happening, of course, will not relieve you of all desires at once, but it will give you a real opportunity to try to consciously abandon painful passions over and over again, realizing that we can look deeper. It is easier to resist the temptation if you know how to lay out the temptation on the shelves of logic.

For example, when you go shopping or see an advertisement, try to find and recognize all the marketing tricks that are trying to trap you on a dopamine needle. This will become a habit very quickly, and the tricks of salesmen and advertisers will begin to seem more ridiculous than exciting.

Do you think that buying the latest phone, losing 10 kilos, or getting married to a wealthy person will make you happy? Okay, where is the guarantee of happiness? And it doesn't exist – so is it worth wearing yourself out all your life?

If people are not able to distinguish the expectation of happiness from the happiness itself, which they are always looking for, then is it even worth wasting time on the illusions of a deceived brain? Isn't it easier to live here and now?

Is the dopamine trick of the brain so bad

There are people with anhedonic disease who lose the ability to anticipate pleasure. Life with anhedonia is very lethargic – it's just a set of habits and everyday routine, in which there are no holidays, as there is no anticipation and expectation. The motivation to do something, of course, also disappears. Why leave the apartment at all if nothing makes you happy anyway.

And many Parkinson's patients, whose brains are almost incapable of producing dopamine, are depressed. Although, logically, they should experience peace and practically immersion in nirvana.

Neuroscientists explain this by hypothesizing that poor performance of the brain's reward system (and, as a result, a drop in dopamine production) is actually a biological basis for the onset of depression. In depressed patients, this brain center does not function even under the influence of all the factors of individual pleasure. A barely noticeable burst of brain activity is not enough to make you want to try to achieve some goal. Lack of motivation = depression.

So, as you can see, dopamine – it is a medal with two sides. The dark side and deception of the brain can push people to inappropriate actions, but without the bright side of this neurotransmitter, people are definitely unhappy. And the desire for happiness (even with a short-term effect of happiness in the finale) – still better than no desire at all.

If you want to have control over yourself and your life, you need to learn to distinguish between moments of real happiness, which give life true meaning, from the pursuit of illusions that society artificially imposes on us, giving rise to addictions. It is very difficult, but we hope that this article will give readers some understanding of the processes occurring in the brain, and will facilitate the task of self-control.