Why Your Brain Isn't Designed for Happiness

If our brain is supposedly designed to help us build the life we want, why does it so often feel like it’s working against us? Why do we think, feel, and struggle the way we do? And on the flip side, what’s happening when we actually succeed? My own journey to understand how our minds work started with that simple question: I had no idea it would lead to such profound insights about who we are.

Most of us think about our lives as a finite journey. We’re born, we live for 80 or 90 years if we’re lucky, and then we’re gone. Along the way, we experience a mix of joy and sorrow, success and disappointment. I used to believe that who we become is simply the sum of all those experiences. A good upbringing, the right connections, and a little luck meant a great life. A tough start, a failing school system, or just bad timing meant you were destined for a rough ride.

But what if that’s not the whole story? What if forces were shaping us long before we even took our first breath? I’m not talking about karma, but something far more fundamental: evolution.

My research led me to an idea from Oxford evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins that changed everything: “Evolution only cares about one thing: survival of the species.” That single sentence holds the key to understanding why we are the way we are. Nearly every part of us exists because it helped our ancestors survive millions of years ago. Our bodies—from the length of our arms to the way our organs function—are byproducts of this process. Every physical trait served a purpose that was passed down through generations.

What’s becoming clearer now, thanks to evolutionary psychology, is that evolution didn’t just shape our bodies; it profoundly shaped our minds. And that’s where I started to find the real answers to .

Discovering Our Built-in Bias

Years ago, I did a values assessment and ranked "peace of mind" as my number one goal. I didn't realize it at the time, but I had chosen one of the most elusive values a person can have. It’s not that peace of mind is impossible, but rather that our brains were never designed to find it.

Evolution’s only goal was to keep us alive long enough to have kids and continue the species. That's it. It wasn’t concerned with our happiness, satisfaction, or sense of accomplishment. The only thing that mattered was staying safe. As Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman puts it, “we don't have to work for the negative; we are wired by evolution to find it.” Our brain’s circuits are built to automatically spot danger.

This means our minds evolved to be constantly vigilant, wary of threats, and avoidant of risk. These traits kept our ancestors alive. Happiness was a nice bonus, but not essential for survival. So if we want to find joy, satisfaction, or peace, we have to actively work around our brain's default settings.

The Three Brains Evolution Built

To understand how evolution shaped our minds, I turned to the work of neuroscientist Dr. Paul MacLean. He developed a straightforward model called the "triune brain," which describes how our brain evolved in three main phases. Each phase added a new layer that was critical for survival at that point in time. He described them as the survivor brain, the communicator brain, and finally, the solver/critical brain.

Your Survivor Brain

Every sight, sound, and sensation from the outside world enters our brain through the brain stem. This area, and the parts immediately connected to it, make up our survivor brain. Neuroscientists believe this is the oldest part of our brain, with roots tracing back over 500 million years. Its development is a major reason our species is still here today.

So, what does it do? Stanford neuroscientist Karl Pribram once joked that it’s primarily concerned with the four Fs of survival: Fight, Flight, Food, and... well, the one that ensures the next generation. These four drives were all that mattered 5 million years ago. As author Ernessa T. Carter said, “No matter how evolved humans think they are, we still have the same fight‐or‐flight instincts of our caveman ancestors.”

Think about the evolution of your cell phone. My first one in the 90s was a Motorola brick that weighed two pounds and could only make calls (poorly). Compare that to the supercomputer in my pocket today. That leap happened in just 30 years. Now, imagine what 500 million years of evolution has done to refine the power of your survivor brain.

This oldest part of you is also home to our first and most fundamental form of intelligence: . For a long time, researchers thought our fight-or-flight response was triggered only by external events, like seeing a lion. But in the 1950s, Harvard’s Dr. David McClelland wondered why two people could face the same challenge and react completely differently. He theorized that our thoughts and beliefs must be the real drivers. It took another 60 years for technology to prove him right. MQ is our ability to manage negative thinking and limiting beliefs. It’s the filter that determines whether we see something as a threat (flight) or an opportunity (fight). Every action we take is ultimately driven by our MQ.

Understanding motivational intelligence is incredibly important because nothing correlates more directly with employee performance. We see its influence every day in our top performers and feel its absence in those who struggle. A team member's MQ will dictate their success whether they are in a massive corporation or a growing . Developing MQ across a team is key to improving retention, engagement, and innovation.

Your Communicator Brain

After our survivor brain, the next phase to develop was the communicator brain, which began evolving around 250 million years ago. It sits right on top of the survivor brain, and if you make a fist, it’s about the same size and shape.

Why do we have it? Because evolution figured out that while we were vulnerable alone, we were much stronger in groups. A pack could protect each other and find food more effectively. But for a group to work together, it needed to communicate. Long before language, we evolved our first form of communication: emotions. We learned to read feelings on each other's faces to signal danger or safety.

In the 1870s, Charles Darwin first theorized that emotions were universal. A century later, psychologist Paul Ekman proved it, identifying six root emotions shared by every human on the planet: Fear, Anger, Sadness, Disgust, Surprise, and Happiness.

Notice anything about that list? Four of the six are negative. Surprise can go either way, leaving only one purely positive emotion. Why the imbalance? Because back then, negative things were far more likely to kill our ancestors. We developed more negative emotions to express threats and keep each other alive. These emotions act like a volume dial, releasing chemicals like dopamine or serotonin to either heighten our alertness or calm us down.

The intelligence of this brain is what we now call . After our survivor brain filters an experience as a threat or opportunity, our communicator brain assigns an emotion to it. People with higher EQ are more aware of their feelings and can redirect negative emotions before they turn into destructive behaviors. Those with lower EQ tend to be more reactionary, leading to mood swings and actions they might later regret. Through my own journey, I realized that much of my past trauma created a hair-trigger response of anger whenever I felt rejected or threatened. It wasn’t until I understood this wiring that I could start to break the cycle and put generations of psychological baggage away for good.

EQ is fundamental to building relationships and communicating effectively. It's the foundation of empathy and active listening. Strong EQ is non-negotiable for anyone who depends on building trust, from a manager leading a team to an entrepreneur building a from scratch.

Your Solver/Critical Brain

The final phase in MacLean's model is the solver/critical brain. This part is a relative newcomer, estimated to be only 4 to 5 million years old. Once we could survive and communicate, our brain started focusing on higher-level problems: making tools, building shelter, and eventually, developing language.

This part of the brain, a half-inch-thick layer wrapping around the other two, is where logic, strategy, and planning live. It’s also where that little voice in your head resides—the one that critiques, judges, and second-guesses everything. Because it’s so new from an evolutionary standpoint, it’s like a toddler running the show, often creating anxiety and dissatisfaction. That inner narrator is constantly guiding us to play it safe, avoid risks, and seek immediate pleasure—a default process that often leads us down what my mentor called the "hard path in the end."

The intelligence of this brain is our . This is our ability to reason and think logically, and it’s where that inner voice operates. Most of us don't realize how much this narrator influences our lives, and often not for the better.

It's important to remember that IQ plays a much smaller role in success than most people think. Research shows that once you’re past the upper-average range (105-115), you can do almost any job. What truly matters more are MQ and EQ. People in technical fields often lean heavily on their IQ, which can hinder them in leadership roles. This doesn't mean they can't be great leaders, but during the crucial phases of a , for example, they must consciously work to develop their emotional intelligence and understand how to foster the motivational intelligence of their people. Success in a is rarely about having the highest IQ in the room.

Running Ancient Software in a Modern World

The reality is that we are less a product of our current environment and more a product of the world our ancestors inhabited millions of years ago. The problem is, that world is gone. The threats that shaped our brains—predators, starvation, the elements—are no longer our primary concerns.

Modern society has changed dramatically in just the last 12,000 years, a mere blip in our evolutionary timeline. Evolution hasn’t had time to catch up and design a brain for the world we live in now, with its relentless pace, information overload, and social media pressures. We are navigating a complex digital world with a brain that was hardwired for survival on the savanna.

Understanding this mismatch is the first step. It explains so much of our daily anxiety and dissatisfaction. It’s not that you’re broken; it’s that you’re running on perfectly good, but ancient, software. The good news is, you can overcome that hardwiring. Recognizing the influence of your evolutionary past is the key to rebooting your brain and shaping a better life, not just for a but for your entire well-being.