Learning Happiness

Each Tuesday, I'm reflecting on how aspects of our lives and society relate to happiness and how we can increase our happiness. This week, I'm looking at the happiness equation and how our set point, life circumstances and intentional activity influence our happiness.

I keep saying happiness is a learnable skill. And it is. Some people are born happy with personality traits (e.g. arousability, extraversion and negative affect) that support happiness. But if you are not born happy, you still can be happy. It's learnable. But how and where can we learn happiness?

Some basics

Jonathan Haidt explains in his book The Happiness Hypothesis that the happiness equation is Happiness = Set Point (we are born with) + Life Circumstances (health, finances, relationships) + Voluntary Action. So: H = S + C + V. Happiness researchers Lyubomirski, Sheldon and Schkade add that S is about 50%, C 10% and V 40%.

Phew. That was a lot of maths. Let's take that apart. So, the Happiness Formula describes that our happiness depends partly on the personal traits we are born with, and that counts for 50% of our happiness. Researchers tested that in long-term studies and in twin studies. Even if they are separated by birth, identical twins who are naturally joyful and optimistic develop those personal traits independently of who they grow up with. It's fascinating and also a bit frustrating if you are not born with those traits.

Life circumstances also influence our happiness, but only 10%. That has to do with humans getting used to new life circumstances, independent of them being good or bad. It's called Hedonistic Adaptation. It's the reason why money doesn't make you happy, per se, and bad health doesn't need to make you unhappy. Indeed, there are studies about lottery winners and people who lost all mobility from the neck down. After a few months of excitement/stress, they found a new normality (so they bounced back to their set point).

Intentional Happiness

And there we are - at the last part of the equation, which counts for 40%. Lyubormirski et al. call this part intentional activity. Haidt calls it voluntary activities. In any case, that's where we can learn to do things which increase and stabilise our happiness levels, even if we are born grumpy and gloomy. Yay. And come on, it's worth 40% according to the researchers. Pretty good! (I seem to have an optimistic personal trait ;-)

Cool, so what are those voluntary or intentional activities? Meditation? Journaling? Argh!

Yes and no.

Have a happy week!

Anja