幸福，真的可遇不可求

How do you envisage the pursuit of happiness?

對于追求幸福，你是如何設想的?

For many, it is a relentless journey, and the more you put in, the more you get out.

對于許多人來說，這是一段心狠手辣的旅程，你投入的越多，你就越多。

While this kind of attitude may work for some, the latest scientific research suggests that it can also seriously backfire for many people – leading, for instance, to feelings of stress, loneliness, and personal failure. According to this view, happiness is best seen as kind of timid bird: the harder you strive to catch it, the further it flies away.

雖然這種態(tài)度可能適用于某些人，但最新的科學研究表明，它也可能嚴重挫敗許多人—— 導致人們感到如壓力，孤獨和個人失敗。 根據這樣一種觀點，幸福應該被看作一種膽小的鳥：你越努力抓住它，它就會飛得越遠。

Iris Mauss, now at the University of California, Berkeley, was one of the first psychologists to explore the idea scientifically.

來自加州大學伯克利分校的Iris Mauss是第一批科學探索這一理念的心理學家之一。

She says she was inspired by the sheer volume of self-help books that have been published in the US in last couple of decades, many of which presented happiness as the sine qua non of existence. “Wherever you look, you see books about how happiness is good for you, and how you basically shouldmake yourself happier, almost as a duty,” she says.

她說她受到過去幾十年在美國出版的大量自助書籍的啟發(fā)，其中許多書將幸福視為生存的必要條件。 她說：“無論你在哪里，你都會看到講述幸福如何對你有益的書，這些書告訴你你需要如何讓自己更快樂，這幾乎就是一種責任。”

“People might set very high standards for their own happiness as a function of this – they may think they should be happy all the time, or extremely happy, and that can set people up to feel disappointed with themselves, that they fall short – and that could have these self-defeating effects.”

“為此，人們可能會為自己的幸福設定很高的標準 —— 他們可能會認為他們應該一直都很快樂，或者極度幸福，而這會讓人對自己感到失望，為自己沒法獲得幸福而失望—— 而這可能會造成自我打擊。”

Mauss points out that a lot of research has found that people who take a more “accepting” attitude to negative feelings – rather than constantly trying to fight them as the enemy of our wellbeing – actually end up more satisfied with their life over the long-term.

Mauss指出，許多研究發(fā)現那些對負面情緒采取更“接受”態(tài)度的人——而不是不斷地把它當作我們幸福的敵人來對抗作的人——從長遠來看，實際上會對他們的生活感到更滿意。