Why Are We Happy?
First of all, let us delve into the definition of happiness. Happiness is thought of as the good life, flourishing, well-being, joy, prosperity, pleasure and freedom from suffering. The pursuit of happiness is deemed as a fundamental right in almost all societies. But what do we actually know about happiness? Are we born with it? Can we study it? Why are we happy and how can we be happier? What makes us happy? What makes us unhappy?
We want to be happy, and we can say whether we are or not, but can happiness actually be defined, studied and measured? Psychologists say yes as an answer to this question. Positive psychology is “the scientific study of the strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive.” These researchers’ work includes studying strengths, positive emotions, resilience, and happiness. According to these researchers, only studying psychological disorders gives us just part of the picture of mental health. We will learn more about well-being by studying our strengths and what makes us happy. The hope is that by better understanding human strengths, we can learn new ways to recover from or prevent disorders, and may even learn to become happier.
Since happiness is so subjective, can it really be measured and studied scientifically? Researchers say yes. They believe that we can reliably and honestly self-report our state of happiness and increases and decreases in happiness. After all, isn’t our own perception of happiness what matters? And if we can report it, scientists can measure it. Psychologist Daniel Gilbert compares this to optometry: “Optometry is another one of those sciences that is built entirely on people's reports of subjective experience. The one and only way for an optometrist to know what your visual experience is like is to ask you, ‘Does it look clearer like this or (changing the view) like this?’
Why are we happy?
Happier people are more likely to live longer and tend to be healthier, more successful, and more socially engaged than people who describe themselves as less happy. But what are the causes for happiness? And can we directly alter how happy we are?
Researchers have explored three basic sources of happiness: genetics, including temperament and personality; life circumstances, such as wealth and health; and our own choices. We tend to overestimate the importance of life circumstances in how happy we are. We think if only we had more money, or a better job, or fell in love, that we would be happier. And we sometimes underestimate how much control we have over our own happiness. Psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky, in her book The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want, analyzed studies and reports that 50% of our happiness is set by our genes, 10% by life circumstances beyond our control, and 40% by our own actions.
Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson has done research demonstrating the positive effects of experiencing emotions that cause us to be happier on a regular basis. Fredrickson demonstrated that positive emotions “undo” some of the physical effects of stress, such as increased heart rate. Study subjects who experienced a positive emotion returned to a normal resting heart rate more quickly after experiencing stress than subjects who had not experienced a positive emotion.
The broaden-and-build theory describes how positive emotions broaden our outlook on life and help us build skills for stressful times. Fredrickson points out that, negative emotions—anger and fear, for instance—evolved to narrow our focus and help us get out of a threatening situation safely. Positive emotions, on the other hand—like kindness, amusement, interest, and gratitude—put us in a frame of mind to explore the world around us and build a larger repertoire of actions that we can draw on in stressful times. Fredrickson sees a parallel in the animal kingdom. Think, for instance, of how a cat playing with a toy is “practicing” to catch prey. People playing and laughing over a game of softball may be strengthening social ties, increasing their physical health, sharpening reflexes, and increasing their confidence.
Positive emotions are the “fuel” for resilience. They help people find meaning in ordinary and difficult events. Finding meaning in life events leads to more positive emotion, which in turn leads to a greater ability to find meaning and purpose. Fredrickson calls this an “upward spiral” of greater well-being.
Fredrickson and her colleagues have analyzed people’s ratio of positive to negative emotions in various situations, including individuals, marriages and work teams, and found that a ratio of three to one positive emotions to negative emotions is the point at which people tend to flourish and thrive. So while there are strong influences on our happiness—genetics and temperament and, to some extent, life circumstances—there are actions and choices we can make with the other 40% to cultivate positive emotions daily and greater happiness over our lifetime.
Why are we ‘not’ happy?
Most of us have a mental list of what would make us happier. Our culture celebrates the pursuit of money, fame, good looks, material possessions, health, love and power. Yet we’re often disappointed—even when we do get what we want. Research confirms that some of the things we think will make us happy don’t, and researchers are learning more and more about why that is.
Having enough income to meet basic needs and live above the poverty level is very important to happiness. Beyond that, however, research suggests that more wealth does not translate to greater happiness. Why is this? Research suggests that we’re good at adapting; we’re bad at predicting; our brains are wired for negative emotions; and we’re looking in the wrong places. As Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert says:
“We should have preferences that lead us into one future over another. But when those preferences drive us too hard and too fast because we have overrated the difference between these futures, we are at risk. When our ambition is bounded, it leads us to work joyfully. When our ambition is unbounded, it leads us to lie, to cheat, to steal, to hurt others, to sacrifice things of real value. When our fears are bounded, we're prudent; we're cautious; we're thoughtful. When our fears are unchecked and overblown, we're reckless, and we're cowardly. The lesson I want to leave you with from these data is that our longings and our worries are both to some degree overblown, because we have within us the capacity to manufacture the very commodity we are constantly chasing when we choose experience.”
‘Natural’ or ‘synthetic’ happiness?
What are these terms? Natural happiness is what we get when we get what we wanted, and synthetic happiness is what we make when we don't get what we wanted. And in our society, we have a strong belief that synthetic happiness is of an inferior kind. Why do we have that belief? Well, it's very simple. What kind of economic engine would keep churning if we believed that not getting what we want could make us just as happy as getting it?
According to Gilbert, happiness can be synthesized and synthetic happiness is every bit as real and enduring as the kind of happiness you get when you get exactly what you were aiming for. Synthetic happiness acts like our psychological immune system. It works to keep us happy. It’s a system of cognitive processes, largely non-conscious cognitive processes, that help them change our views of the world so we can feel better about the worlds we find ourselves in. It works best when we’re totally stuck, when we are trapped. This is the difference between dating and marriage. In dating, you look to get what you want, in marriage, you find a way to like what you've got.
(In his TED2004 talk, Dan Gilbert, author of "Stumbling on Happiness," explains his idea that we’ll be miserable if we don’t get what we want and our "psychological immune system" lets us feel truly happy even when things don’t go as planned.)
Psychologist Ed Diener has a finding and he says, “The frequency of your positive experiences is a much better predictor of your happiness than is the intensity of your positive experiences.” When we think about what would make us happy, we tend to think of intense events—going on a date with a movie star, winning a Pulitzer, buying a yacht. But Diener and his colleagues have shown that how good your experiences are doesn't matter nearly as much as how many good experiences you have. Somebody who has a dozen mildly nice things happen each day is likely to be happier than somebody who has a single truly amazing thing happen. So wear comfortable shoes, give your wife a big kiss, sneak a french fry. It sounds like small stuff, and it is. But the small stuff matters. It helps explain why it’s so hard for us to forecast our effective states. We imagine that one or two big things will have a profound effect. But it looks like happiness is the sum of hundreds of small things.
The happiest person in the world
Let’s meet Matthieu Ricard, the happiest person in the world. He is a Buddhist monk, an author, translator, and photographer. He has lived, studied, and worked in the Himalayan region for over forty years. Matthieu Ricard was a volunteer subject in a study performed at the University of Wisconsin–Madison's on happiness, scoring significantly beyond the average obtained after testing hundreds of other volunteers.
According to Ricard, “Happiness can’t be reduced to a few agreeable sensations. Rather, it is a way of being and of experiencing the world—a profound fulfillment that suffuses every moment and endures despite inevitable setbacks. The paths we take in search of happiness often lead us to frustration and suffering instead. We try to create outer conditions that we believe will make us happy. But it is the mind itself that translates outer conditions into happiness or suffering. This is why we can be deeply unhappy even though we “have it all”—wealth, power, health, a good family, etc.—and, conversely, we can remain strong and serene in the face of hardship.”
(What is happiness, and how can we all get some? Biochemist turned Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard says we can train our minds in habits of well-being, to generate a true sense of serenity and fulfillment in his talk in TED2004)
When people experience “moments of grace”, or “magical moments” in daily life, while walking in the snow under the stars or spending a beautiful moment with dear friends by the seaside, what is really happening? All of a sudden, they have left their burden of inner conflicts behind. They feel in harmony with others, with themselves, with the world. It is wonderful to fully enjoy such magical moments, but it is also revealing to understand why they feel so good: pacification of inner conflicts; a better sense of interdependence with everything rather than fragmenting reality; and a respite from the mental toxins of aggression and obsession. All these qualities can be cultivated through developing wisdom and inner freedom. This will lead not just to a few moments of grace but to a lasting state of well-being that we may call genuine happiness.
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