THE festive fun is over, pockets are empty, the relentless daily grind has begun again and days are grey, short and cold – Blue Monday is here.

Regarded as the gloomiest day of the year, January 16 is said to be the time when spirits are at their lowest and the outlook almost universally glum.

But fret not – there is a simple way out of the despondency.

A North-East psychologist argues that people might actually be happier if they concerned themselves less with pursuing happiness and embraced other human emotions a little more.

Dr Helen Driscoll, senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Sunderland, argues her case in her blog, The Evol Doctor.

“Many of us spend our lives chasing the house, the job, the holiday, the partner, the self-help book, the lifestyle, that will make us happy,” she says.

But she adds: “Despite all of this effort, happiness can be difficult to obtain, and even more difficult to sustain.”

Dr Driscoll goes on: “The key obstacle is that sustaining very high levels of happiness over long periods of time is unlikely to have adaptive value.

“Imagine a world in which all of us were completely and blissfully happy all of the time. What would happen? Would we be driven to develop, to achieve, to seek out new partners, to have children? If we were completely happy, why would we do these things?”

She says that as a result the human condition has evolved to find happiness an elusive quality.

“We have it sometimes, we know what it feels like, and we know how good it is. When we don’t have it, we want it. When we have it, we want to hang on to it, yet somehow it seems to slip away again.

“From an evolutionary perspective, happiness has far more adaptive value when it is always just a little out of reach, driving us to seek it out and keep it, yet always pulling away from us. This is why we quickly readjust to gains and revert to the level of happiness we had previously.”

For more visit https://theevoldoctor.wordpress.com/