When people say that happiness can only be achieved by being fully in the moment, what this essentially means is making

Very often it can happen that what we thought was our genuine self-projection (i.e. the product of our genuine and true desires) is nothing but the plot society has built for us. As discussed at the beginning: movies, social media, the people we frequent etc. all contribute dramatically to building people’s egos, goals, self-projections. And unfortunately many times as a result we project an image that doesn’t really belong to us and when we reach such image we feel empty, lost and in turn unhappy — just the opposite of what we thought would have happened.

When we are in our late teens/early twenties and start to develop our self-projection, we see a long time ahead of us in order to achieve that image. We live by the bias that ‘we are going to make it one day’. And as we set our mind to achieve goals we anticipate them, we are rewarded with a vicarious pleasure from imagining what it would be like to be that person we see in our mind. After all, us human beings are a naturally optimistic bunch…

How is it possible that when we finally match the image that for so long we thought was the link to our long-dreamt happiness we feel a sense of hopelessness and disappointment instead?

It is the constant comparison of our real, current life status to our self-projection that determines our happiness level; the closer I feel to that image, the happier I will feel, and the opposite. But it is only when I finally reach my goals, image, self-projection that I can really assess and confirm (or disconfirm) if that image really led to happiness: was that self-projection genuinely mine? If yes, then I will experience a state of happiness and satisfaction (usually only temporary..); if not, I will experience an identity crisis, until, through the process of rationalization, I will build a new self-projection and start chasing it again.

Point 4: Our happiness level is positively impacted by anticipating fulfilling the self-projection we have in our mind until reality hits and at that point there’s no more room for anticipation. Most of the time we rationalize, reshuffle our self-projection and start chasing it again.

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fifty people, for me, means house cleaning the day before. I scrub the shower while I rehearse my speech in my head. The insights that trickle out of my brain while scrubbing the mold off the shower is something I should get scientists to study.

Situation A: we feel happy as that self-projection was a genuine one, i.e. matching that image that we had set for our self is really what makes us happy. Congrats! You have hit the jackpot! But unfortunately for most people this is not going to last. As you celebrate your happiness your mind is starting already to build a new self-projection and you will soon start chasing it again.

When people talk about ‘losing their identity’, or having an ‘identity crisis’, effectively they are talking about losing their self-projection. They don’t know what to aim for as what they had thought was going to make them happy turned out not to be so.

In other words, as time passes, the distance between the idealized version of our self and reality diminishes until there is very little room for anticipation. At one point, reality hits and we are forced to adjust our self-projection. Assuming that we possess full rationality, there comes a time when we realize that we are not going to become that self-projection. There is no more room to anticipate. That’s it, the reality we are in is what that self-projection has actually turned out to be.

As it turns out, the mind can’t distinguish between imagination and reality. When you have a thought, it triggers the same cascade of neurochemicals, regardless of whether you are thinking about the past, present, or future. In other words, your brain is stimulated the same way whether you are physically performing an action or simply visualizing it happen.

If my self-projection incorporates, among other things, that of someone in a romantic relationship, the moment I meet and start dating someone who has all the characteristics I have always imagined in my ideal partner, I feel happy, and vice versa.

Ouch! This hurts. You probably spent many years fighting and hoping to finally be that perfect image you had envisioned for so long in your head only to finally realize it is just not going to happen. Maybe you were not lucky enough. Or maybe you just set an overly optimistic self-projection. In fact, human beings are most of the time inherently unhappy not because of what happens to them, but because of their tendency to project oftentimes unrealistic and excessively optimistic images of themselves in the future.

If my self-projection incorporates, among other things, that of a rich professional working in the United States, the moment I get admitted to that top business school in the US makes me happy, as it puts me closer to achieving that self-projection. The opposite is also true: if I get rejected from the school I would feel unhappy as I’m farther from that self-projection.

If my self-projection incorporates, among other things, that of an athlete finishing top 10 in a marathon, the moment I set a personal record during my training I feel happy because it puts me closer to achieving that self-projection of someone finishing the marathon within a certain time limit. If, however, I keep training and my time keeps getting worse, this will cause a state of unhappiness as I will start to think that I won’t achieve that time I had set for myself and in turn my self-projection.

In any case, being rational human beings we can’t allow our mind to just live with the fact that we failed at achieving that so cherished image. We need to rationalize and we need to move forward. It is just human nature. We therefore reshuffle our self-projection in order to rationalise. It looks something like this: