What if the secret to a happier life wasn’t constant joy, but something far more balanced?

Psychiatrist Robert Waldinger, MD, psychologist Tal Ben-Shahar, PhD, and author-entrepreneur Peter Baumann share what 85 years of research and lived experience reveal about happiness. They explain why chasing it directly often backfires—and how strong relationships, mindfulness, and embracing every emotion can build a baseline of positivity that actually lasts. 

We created this video for Brain Briefs, a Big Think interview series created in partnership with Unlikely Collaborators. As a creative non-profit organization, they’re on a mission to help people challenge their perceptions and expand their thinking. Often that growth can start with just a single unlikely question that makes you rethink your convictions and adjust your vantage point. Visit Perception Box to see more in this series.

TAL BEN-SHAHAR: There is a false understanding that a happy life means being happy all the time. No, it's not. Learning to accept and even embrace painful emotions is an important part of a happy life.

There is a paradox when it comes to pursuing happiness. On the one hand, we know that happiness is a good thing. At the same time, we also know from research that people who say to themselves, happiness is important for me, I want to pursue it.

Those individuals actually end up being less happy. Pursuing happiness directly can cause more harm than good, but breaking it down into its elements can lead us to enjoy the indirect pursuit of happiness and by extension, to raise our overall levels of happiness.

ROBERT WALDINGER: The Harvard Study of Adult Development is the longest study of adult life that's ever been done. It started in 1938, and it has followed the same people throughout their entire lives to understand what makes people thrive as they grow and develop. Well, it turns out the people in our 85 year study who stayed the happiest and the healthiest were the people who had the warmest connections with others. Our connections with other people help us weather the hard times of life and hard times are there in every life.

PETER BAUMANN: There is a positive and a negative wave that goes through our lives, but the baseline is positive in itself. In Greek, they have two different words for happiness. One is hedonic, and that's the typical pleasure. The joyful, ah, this is wonderful and great.

And then they have a word called eudaimonia, and that is that positive baseline that does not waiver. There is so much happening in our lives that we pay attention to, and quite frankly, the little devices that we carry around don't help very much. But the problem is that our attention is so much absorbed in that, that we rarely, if ever, pay attention to just being present.

When the mind quiets and you actually are at home in your body, you actually get in touch with that underlying happiness that the Greeks call eudaimonia. 

ROBERT WALDINGER: The good life involves a practice of ongoing care for each other, for our relationships, care for ourselves, and it's a process of continual change.

TAL BEN-SHAHAR: It's a lifelong journey. So happiness is much more than pleasure. Happiness is whole being.