Increasing Happiness
11/17/10: The past 10 years of science has shown us a lot about the keys to happiness. Fortunately it turns out that happiness isn't all about money and physical health, but about what we do and how we perceive the world. The following is an overview about the latest work on sustainable happiness change.
What is Happiness?
In most scientific literature, and in this article, when the word "happiness" is used, it means an overall satisfaction with life. This is different from the emotion of "joy," which is also described with the word 'happiness' in our culture. Because of this confusion, many people have a misperception about what life should be like, and believe that truly 'happy people' are in a constant state of mild joy, which is definitely false. In the United States there is also a cultural myth that everyone should 'be happy all the time' or else something is 'wrong' with the person. Again, that is false. In fact, many cultural, religious, philosophical, and psychological traditions describe the natural state of being human as longing, suffering, or imperfection.
What Determines Happiness?
Satisfaction with life (happiness) has been studied from many angles, and an integrative model by Sonja Lyubomirsky (Cal-Riverside) shows us what counts and what doesn't. First the surprising news: 50% of your happiness is determined by your genes. That means people have a "biological setpoint" that determines a baseline happiness (or possibly a range), which is essentially unchangeable.
Another part that may be surprising is that the next 15% is determined by life circumstances. This means the country you live in, your health, you income level, etc only make up a small percentage of your overall happiness. This may be surprising since in American culture we see a lot of ads and messages about how new products, certain possessions, and levels of income will ensure us greater happiness.
Interestingly, those things do make a short term impact on happiness, but the effect diminishes over time due to 'habituation,' a basic principle of human psychology that means we pretty much get used to everything. When applied to material possessions, this is called the "hedonic treadmill." The only caveat is that making enough income to move yourself from being unable to feed or shelter yourself to a position where you can, has a dramatic lasting impact. Everything else is a drop in the happiness ocean.
The good news is that the rest of your happiness (35%) is due to intentional practices and your approach to life. In these areas there is great potential for long term happiness change, and the following section will illustrate some things that you can start doing or believing today that will make you happier.
Beliefs & Practices
The first section of stuff is in things we can do to be happier. If you build some of these into your life, research shows that there to be a legitimate sustainable change to your happiness. These include:
Creativity: being artistically expressive or regularly using your creative mind has an impact on lots of things, including happiness
Kindness: believe it not, being kind to others doesn't just lift the other person, intentional kindness to others produces a positive effect on the kind person too
Generosity: just like kindness, being generous to others with your time or resources has great benefits for the generous person too
Flow: sometimes there may be an activity that completely envelopes you, where you engage with it so deeply that you lose connection to time (think rock climbers, jazz musicians, surfers, painters, etc). Reconnecting with this is very important, and if you don't have one of these, finding one can change your life.
Meditation: even though a lot of meditation practitioners actually don't strive for happiness, the impact of bringing your mind to stillness, and connecting with "being" has that effect anyway.
The next section is in our approach to life, and beliefs. Essentially, these are cognitive and emotional techniques to also make a practice of using. For some of them, even if you are not able to "emotionally believe" them, just take the moment to cognitive use them can help. Furthermore, this is more than just "positive thinking" or some gimmick that tries to avoid the negative side of life, but instead can be used as a more flexible pattern of engaging life.
Reframing: when there is something negative happening, it can help to take a moment to try and describe it in a way that is less judgmental, hopeless, or catastrophic.
Optimism: most people have a general bias to thinking optimistically or pessimistically. If you are more on the pessimistic side, take a moment and try to at least consider the possibility of a more positive outcome. Doing this regularly predicts changes in happiness, no matter what actually happens.
Set Goals: when we clearly set some goals for ourselves and take action toward them, we are happier even if we never meet them.
Mindfulness: this is a set of practices and approaches that is based on acceptance of what is, and engaging in the present moment. Read more here.
Gratitude: being thankful for what you have can make a major impact on your happiness. One thing to try is keeping a gratitude journal, where you write three things you are thankful for right before you go to bed. Believe it or not, studies have shown a noticeable change when people do this.
Compassion: being compassionate to yourself and others is another approach to living that increases happiness. Read my article on that here.
Why Happiness?
Some people have also proposed that what might actually be better for people is if we stopped striving for happiness altogether, and instead devoted our time toward being kind to others, productive, and deeply engaged in life. So if you are someone that doesn't have much success with the above, there are still options for you too. Either way, counseling can be helpful in developing a personal happiness plan if you are interested in looking at this process closer.
What is Happiness?
In most scientific literature, and in this article, when the word "happiness" is used, it means an overall satisfaction with life. This is different from the emotion of "joy," which is also described with the word 'happiness' in our culture. Because of this confusion, many people have a misperception about what life should be like, and believe that truly 'happy people' are in a constant state of mild joy, which is definitely false. In the United States there is also a cultural myth that everyone should 'be happy all the time' or else something is 'wrong' with the person. Again, that is false. In fact, many cultural, religious, philosophical, and psychological traditions describe the natural state of being human as longing, suffering, or imperfection.
What Determines Happiness?
Satisfaction with life (happiness) has been studied from many angles, and an integrative model by Sonja Lyubomirsky (Cal-Riverside) shows us what counts and what doesn't. First the surprising news: 50% of your happiness is determined by your genes. That means people have a "biological setpoint" that determines a baseline happiness (or possibly a range), which is essentially unchangeable.
Another part that may be surprising is that the next 15% is determined by life circumstances. This means the country you live in, your health, you income level, etc only make up a small percentage of your overall happiness. This may be surprising since in American culture we see a lot of ads and messages about how new products, certain possessions, and levels of income will ensure us greater happiness.
Interestingly, those things do make a short term impact on happiness, but the effect diminishes over time due to 'habituation,' a basic principle of human psychology that means we pretty much get used to everything. When applied to material possessions, this is called the "hedonic treadmill." The only caveat is that making enough income to move yourself from being unable to feed or shelter yourself to a position where you can, has a dramatic lasting impact. Everything else is a drop in the happiness ocean.
The good news is that the rest of your happiness (35%) is due to intentional practices and your approach to life. In these areas there is great potential for long term happiness change, and the following section will illustrate some things that you can start doing or believing today that will make you happier.
Beliefs & Practices
The first section of stuff is in things we can do to be happier. If you build some of these into your life, research shows that there to be a legitimate sustainable change to your happiness. These include:
Creativity: being artistically expressive or regularly using your creative mind has an impact on lots of things, including happiness
Kindness: believe it not, being kind to others doesn't just lift the other person, intentional kindness to others produces a positive effect on the kind person too
Generosity: just like kindness, being generous to others with your time or resources has great benefits for the generous person too
Flow: sometimes there may be an activity that completely envelopes you, where you engage with it so deeply that you lose connection to time (think rock climbers, jazz musicians, surfers, painters, etc). Reconnecting with this is very important, and if you don't have one of these, finding one can change your life.
Meditation: even though a lot of meditation practitioners actually don't strive for happiness, the impact of bringing your mind to stillness, and connecting with "being" has that effect anyway.
The next section is in our approach to life, and beliefs. Essentially, these are cognitive and emotional techniques to also make a practice of using. For some of them, even if you are not able to "emotionally believe" them, just take the moment to cognitive use them can help. Furthermore, this is more than just "positive thinking" or some gimmick that tries to avoid the negative side of life, but instead can be used as a more flexible pattern of engaging life.
Reframing: when there is something negative happening, it can help to take a moment to try and describe it in a way that is less judgmental, hopeless, or catastrophic.
Optimism: most people have a general bias to thinking optimistically or pessimistically. If you are more on the pessimistic side, take a moment and try to at least consider the possibility of a more positive outcome. Doing this regularly predicts changes in happiness, no matter what actually happens.
Set Goals: when we clearly set some goals for ourselves and take action toward them, we are happier even if we never meet them.
Mindfulness: this is a set of practices and approaches that is based on acceptance of what is, and engaging in the present moment. Read more here.
Gratitude: being thankful for what you have can make a major impact on your happiness. One thing to try is keeping a gratitude journal, where you write three things you are thankful for right before you go to bed. Believe it or not, studies have shown a noticeable change when people do this.
Compassion: being compassionate to yourself and others is another approach to living that increases happiness. Read my article on that here.
Why Happiness?
Some people have also proposed that what might actually be better for people is if we stopped striving for happiness altogether, and instead devoted our time toward being kind to others, productive, and deeply engaged in life. So if you are someone that doesn't have much success with the above, there are still options for you too. Either way, counseling can be helpful in developing a personal happiness plan if you are interested in looking at this process closer.
