When we feel unhappy – perhaps with a frustrating situation at work, or because of certain things we may feel we’re missing out on – we often hear the advice to ‘look on the bright side’. For the most part, it seems sensible not to dwell on the things that are bringing us down, and instead focus on all the good that we have in our lives.

Similarly, if there’s a personality trait we wish to attain (increased confidence or better leadership skills, for example), we’re often told that the key to success is ‘faking it until you make it’ – ie. acting as if you embody that trait already, with the goal being that you you’ll soon find it comes naturally.

But it turns out there is one emotion where faking it could cause damage – and that’s happiness.

According to Susan David, a psychologist at Harvard Medical School and author of the book Emotional Agility, focusing solely on your levels of happiness and ignoring your negative emotions can backfire, and instead make you feel worse.

Instead, David suggests employing a strategy for increasing happiness that involves actively paying attention to the parts of our lives that make us unhappy – if only so that we can learn from this what we might need to change in our lives.

Speaking to Shana Lebowitz of Business Insider UK, David explained: “When we have a particular goal around happiness, what it can lead us to doing is to marking every disappointment, every setback, every concern as being proof that we’re not happy enough or almost proof that we’ve failed in our attempt to be happy. And it’s just not a realistic way of living.”

Psychologist reveals unpleasant side-effect of pretending to be happy at work