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Trying to sleep makes you stay awake; trying hard to be charming might just make you — awkward

19th-century philosopher John Stuart Mill argued happiness shows up when you focus on something else

To achieve the more "messy" goals, improving your habits might work better than focusing on the result itself

Toward the end of a Thai massage, the therapist twisted my back and said, gently, “Relax your shoulders.” I attempted to follow her instruction by consciously releasing every muscle I could sense, but a moment later she asked again. At this point, I whispered back with slight embarrassment, “This is as relaxed as it’s going to get, I’m afraid.” She sounded disappointed. “Oh... if you can’t relax, that’s not good for you,” which, unsurprisingly, did not help me relax any further.

Unfair as it sounds, the harder we chase certain things, the more they slip away. Try to fall asleep and your mind suddenly starts racing. Try too hard to appear charming and you'll just become awkward. Go looking for happiness and you may end up more dissatisfied than when you started.

People who look for friends or new romantic partners often report that they found them the moment they stopped looking. As soon as they stopped "chasing butterflies" and picked up a hobby, dedicated themselves to a project, or simply started going for walks, new connections seemed to have appeared on their own.

Long before “chasing butterflies” became a social media motivational cliché, the idea was articulated by 19th-century philosopher John Stuart Mill. In his autobiography, Mill wrote about what we now call the “paradox of hedonism.” He realized that measuring and pursuing happiness directly might even be the fastest way to become miserable. Happiness, he discovered, appears only as a byproduct of treating something else as your primary goal.

"Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some........

© Psychology Today