I have had a love/hate relationship with happiness. There was a point in my life when I believed that anyone could be happy anywhere, if they only adopted the right attitude of mind. This was a recipe for disaster, for whenever I was not happy it was my fault, my failing. I spent a lot of time being unhappy about being unhappy.
Later in life I accepted that sometimes I would be unhappy, but still gave primary responsibility to myself for the level of happiness I achieved. And this was my benchmark of success. Am I happy much of the time? I must have made good choices, have built good things in my life. Am I often sad? Clearly I’m doing something wrong.
In part, I felt this way because our culture puts a high premium on happiness, and puts primary responsibility for generating happiness on the individual. The declaration of independence states we are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We are told by self help books and magazine articles that we should release our inner child, put more joy into our life, maximize our own potential. Advertisers have lots of suggestions for how to make ourselves and others happy -- oddly enough they all involve buying a product…
But our culture’s ideas about how to achieve happiness can easily lead us astray. Our culture narrowly defines happiness as pleasure, or confuses it with other things, like status, wealth, power, a diamond ring, or just the right brand of deodorant. Happiness is serious business, and we’d best not leave its’ definition and development to the geniuses of Madison Avenue. Our individual personal well-being is not their primary motivator.
As many of you know, I am a psychologist. Psychologists are in the business of understanding how people work, and operate under very different motivations than marketers. Psychologists know quite a lot about being miserable. They’ve been studying that for the last 100 years. It is only in the last few years they have begun to really focus on being happy. They call this new trend positive psychology. it has uncovered a lot of interesting things, and proven some age-old ideas true using modern scientific method. Today I will share with you what we’ve learned about happiness, so that you can craft your own answer to the question “how shall I be happy.”
You’ll be pleased I’m sure to know that Happiness is egalitarian -- with a few notable exceptions, it is pretty much equally distributed across all walks of life. Beautiful or ugly, young or old, black or white, male or female, living in Detroit or living in Hawaii. There are no differences in happiness levels across any of these rather significant demographic categories.
Study after study has also shown that wealth is not related to happiness, once the basic necessities have been met. Abject poverty is not fun, nor is extreme political unrest or totalitarian dictatorships. But once you move beyond these extreme circumstances, you find that lower class people are just as happy as the middle and the upper classes; communists as happy as capitalists. The average American says he or she would be much happier if they made just 10% more money than they currently do -- everyone says this, including the people making 10% more. But research shows that people who win millions in the lottery have a short spike in happiness, then return to average levels of happiness within 6 months to a year. So if you’re waiting for a raise or the lottery or a promotion to be happy, think again.
It turns out that even health is not very strongly related to happiness, when measured objectively. Instead, subjective health -- how healthy you think you are -- determines your sense of wellbeing. Quadraplegics or those with chronic diseases are equally happy as the more objectively whole. It is only among those with multiple chronic conditions that happiness declines.
Isn’t that lovely? Happiness does not depend upon a specific set of environmental circumstances or social categories. We are creatures who have adapted to experience happiness under a wide range of circumstances. So why, you may wonder, do we sometimes not seem very good at it?
Like any complex human behavior, there is a skill component to happiness: you can learn to be more happy. I will spend most of my time talking about this, as it is the part of the equation we can do something about. But it is important to recognize that there is also a “talent” component. A large part of your typical level of happiness is genetically determined. The amount of positive emotion you experience is determined by your brain chemistry, which you inherit. Some people simply feel more positive emotions than others. If you’ve ever met someone who always seems so cheerful you want to slap them, they can’t help it. They were just born that way. Each of us has a hard-wired range in which we tend to live. Remember, there is a skill component to happiness. There is much we can do to raise our level of happiness to the top of our own range. However, just as I will never play basketball professionally, I will also never win a positive emotion contest. In fact, my level of happiness is not “all my fault,” as I originally thought, and that is immensely freeing.
So fear not, those of you who, like me, are positive emotion-challenged. happiness is not merely about positive emotion. In fact there is a lot more to happiness that just feeling good.
To see what I mean, consider this. In his book titled Authentic Happiness, Martin Seligman puts to his readers the following hypothetical:
“Suppose you could be hooked up to a hypothetical “experience machine” that, for the rest of your life, would stimulate your brain and give you any positive feelings you desire.”
Would you make such a choice? He goes on to note:
“Most people to whom I offer this imaginary choice refuse the machine. It is not just positive feelings we want, we want to be entitled to our positive feelings. Yet we have invented myriad shortcuts to feeling good; drugs chocolate, shopping, and television are all examples.
The belief that we can rely on shortcuts to happiness… rather than be entitled to these feelings by the exercise of personal strengths and virtues, leads to legions of people who in the middle of great wealth are starving spiritually. Positive emotion alienated from the exercise of character leads to emptiness, to inauthenticity, to depression, and as we age, to the gnawing realization that we are fidgeting until we die.
Seligman uses a number of words that rarely pass the lips of a psychologist -- virtue? Character? In fact, the biggest predictors of happiness are involvement with a religious or social movement larger than yourself, and a rich social network. To adhere to a code of values, to work toward a greater good, to earn the respect of friends -- these are much better predictors of happiness than all others.
To understand why, we must think about happiness with a little more sophistication.
We experience happiness in three different contexts-- past, present, and future.
past -- contentment with your life.,. You look back on life with few regrets, and feel satisifed with where you have been.
future -- hope. You look forward and believe that good things will come.
present -- You experience of sensory pleasures in the here and now, and gratification achieved from accomplishing things of meaning to you.
the three are somewhat independent -- some of us are better in one realm than another. For example, I am a pro at feeling content about the past, and I’m often hopeful about the future, but happiness in the present is hard for me. We all have our weaknesses, but there are also ways to strengthen our abilities. Reflect for a moment, which are you good at? Which are you not good at?
Psychologists have begun to explore how to foster happiness in the past, present and future. I will only be able to scrape the surface today, but I want to at least hint at what is known.
For those who hold regrets about the past, or do not feel content, there are two important remedies: identifying what is positive in your past, and healing old wounds. Consciously practice gratitude -- who in your past has made a difference in your life? What went well? Build those memories firmly into your conception of the past. In addition, forgive, both others and yourself. Forgiving actually has measurable effects on physical and mental health, in addition to increasing happiness. It is good to let go of grudges. Forgiveness can be hard. Think of it not as a one-time act, but an ongoing process. You may have to forgive someone many times over, but each time you do you are reshaping the past.
For those who lack hope, foster optimism. Pessimism is a mental habit that can be broken with practice and effort, and optimism is something you can train yourself to do The first step is noticing your negative predictions about the future: I just had the thought “I’ll never finish this run.”
and the second step is providing good counter-arguments. “Yes I will. I’ve finished this run dozens of times before.” If you have trouble thinking of counter-arguments, think of what you would say to a beloved friend who made the same remark.
the most is written and said about the present. It is, truly, the only moment we have direct access to. And our thoughts and feelings about both the past and future are necessarily seen through the lens of the present.
Positive psychologists identify two main kinds of present happiness:
First, there are the pleasures, sensory feelings. A hot shower, a hot fudge sundae, the warm sun on your face. These just feel good, and we know it right away.
There are also what Seleigman calls “gratifications,” -- not in the sense of “instant gratification. But rather, the feeling of accomplishment or satisfaction we get from doing something difficult or meaningful. For me, writing a particularly good lecture, spending time with my children, or going for a run are gratifying.
Pleasures are all about positive emotion. Gratifications are not necessarily. In fact, you may be intensely absorbed in something you find very gratifying, but not be feeling anything at all, or you may be feeling negative emotion, as I do invariably in the middle of a run.
Which should you cultivate? do this experiment. Do something meaningful then practice your favorite indulgence. Which gives you more bang for the buck?
I suspect you will find that the afterglow of a meaningful task lasts longer than a hot fudge sundae. Why?
A simple universal property of sensory perception known has habituation: we can’t continue to respond to the same stimulus at the same level indefinitely. The first cookie may be heavenly, but by the 10th, are you really getting the same thrill? No, which is exactly what compels you to eat 5 more. This works at the simple level of neurons firing -- they just can’t keep firing. But it holds at more complex levels too. If you redo the living room, the first 10 times you walk in you may experience a thrill, but after a month you hardly even notice it. And suddenly you feel a need to redo the bathroom. Pursuing pleasures can set you up on a hedonic treadmill, where as soon as you have achieved one level of satisfaction, it is no longer enough, and you are craving more…
Don’t get me wrong. Pleasure in the moment is definitely a worthy member of your arsenal of happiness tools. However, because of habituation, it cannot be a constant companion. To maximize pleasures you need to space them out. Try this -- get your favorite food in the world, and take one bite -- then wait 30 seconds. It will feel like forever. But notice how good the second bite tastes.
Gratifications are very different. They come from “the exercise of personal strengths and virtues” and lead to what positive psychologists call “the good life.”
What are these virtues, and where do scientists get off talking about them? A team of psychologists poured over the texts of every major and many minor religions and codes of ethics, from Judaism to native american religions to the samuri warrior’s code. They identified 6 core virtues that are universal.
wisdom: curiosity, critical thinking, ingenuity
courage: bravery, perseverance, honesty
love: kindness, giving and receiving love:
justice: equity, citizenship, leadership
temperance: self control, humility, prudence
transcendence: sense of purpose, appreciation of beauty, humor
Which are you good at? Look at the things that you love to do most, for a clue.
Exercising these virtues does not necessarily feel good at the time. For me, running is an expression of courage. It’s unpleasant for me almost the whole way through, almost every time. But the sense of accomplishment and the physical feeling of well-being I have afterwards are unbeatable. I know that I’m doing something worthy, and that I am using the best part of myself to do it.
This explains why those involved in religious groups, and those who have meaningful relationships are happy. Involvement in these activities requires the exercise of virtues -- love, spirituality, often temperance and courage, wisdom and justice.
It also explains the
paradoxical juxtaposition of joy and suffering that Kalil Gibran
spoke of -- in some sense our capacity for gratification is
determined by the extent of our exertion.
Martin Seligman observes
“these strengths and virtues serve us in times of ill fortune as well as better moments. In fact, hard times are uniquely suited to the display of many strengths… We all contain ancient strengths inside of us that we may not know about until we are truly challenged.”
happiness is a complex thing, and in true UU fashion, there is room enough for each person to find their own version of it. But for me, whether we are looking at the past, present, or future, two clear truths emerge: First, to be happy, we must go beyond ourselves in some way. Happiness is not about self-indulgence, but of self-growth; the individual connecting to the world around them through the exercise of their own unique strengths. Second, happiness is necessarily accompanied by a lack of happiness -- the space between bites of hot fudge sundae; the strenuous effort put into a project, the pain of loss. I now console myself with the knowledge that my unhappiness is not a sign of failure, but rather the opportunity to exercise ancient strengths that are the building blocks of the good life.
Copyright ©2003 by Cynthia Frantz