We humans adapt quickly to new circumstances. Take the lottery for example- do you think you would become permanently happier if you won it today? Studies have found that recent lottery winners are in fact temporarily happier, but soon after, they adjust and are no happier than others. If we are constantly adapting to positive change in our lives, then how can we sustain an increased level of happiness over the long-term? To answer this question, we must first understand what determines our happiness.

There are three major determinants of happiness

1)       Your genetic baseline / range of potential happiness

2)       Your current circumstances (e.g. health, income, region where you live)

3)       Your current intentional activities (e.g. exercising regularly, writing a book, attending college)

Pessimists might read this list and argue that you can never raise your genetic baseline level of happiness. They might say that even with circumstance or activity changes, you will always revert to a genetically-determined level of happiness. This is a fair argument, especially considering the lottery example, but one study completed by Kennon Sheldon and Sonja Lyubomirsky has come to very a different conclusion.

You can sustain happiness above your genetic baseline level

According to the study, activity changes lead to sustainable increased levels of happiness, above your genetic baseline level. Circumstantial changes, by contrast, do not lead to sustainable increased levels of happiness. What does this mean? Winning the lottery or securing a raise (circumstantial changes) will increase your happiness temporarily. Starting to exercise or initiating a new goal (activity changes), will increase your happiness permanently.

This means that as long as you continue introducing intentional positive activity changes into your life, you can sustain higher levels of happiness. To use this knowledge effectively, you must be aware that activity-based changes are those that involve continual effort and engagement in some intentional process. Circumstance-based changes are one-time changes that tend to occur independently of effort and engagement.

Three habits you can start today to become happier and sustain it

1)       Stop falsely believing that changes in your current circumstances will lead to sustained increased happiness

2)       Start introducing positive activity changes into your life

3)       Practice virtues of gratitude, thankfulness, and thoughtful self-reflection

photo credit: tassiesim

Be miserable or motivate yourself. Be helpless or in control. Blame someone or take responsibility. These are examples of two ways you can see your life. One way leads to happiness, the other to dissatisfaction.

I’m working through this weekend with my project team to complete an approaching deadline. At one point in time, I would have seen working the weekend as “This isn’t fair, my free time is being used to benefit the company I work for.” Now, I take responsibility and see it as “This is a rewarding opportunity to push my limits, learn and grow.” I chose my career knowing that it would involve lots of travel and the potential for long hours and weekend work. There is no reason to cope in your career (or anything else)- either change your mindset about it, or change it.

Optimism versus Pessimism

What this really comes down to is optimism versus pessimism. When you see your life pessimistically, this leads to helplessness. When you see your life optimistically, this leads to control. Optimism can be learned, but it isn’t an easy path for those accustomed to a pessimistic mindset. The easy path is to quit at the first sign of failure or negative feedback. The less-traveled path is to see negative events as temporary setbacks, or learning experiences. You will gain much more from life taking the optimist’s path versus quitting at the first sign of failure or coping.

It’s Your Choice

All you have is the now. You can spoil it by being miserable and feeling helpless- or enjoy it by motivating yourself and taking control. It’s your choice.

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When we imagine the future, we often do so in the blind spot of our mind’s eye.

-Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness

As a kid, you were probably asked the common question adults ask all kids, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”. You used your imagination and came up with an answer. It is highly likely that you did not become what you said you wanted to be as a child. But your imagination as a child predicted that you would be happy in that occupation. What do you think about your predictions now?

For me, as a child, first I wanted to be paleontologist, then Batman, and later, a magician. I did not become any of those, and I don’t know if I would be happy with as any of them (well, maybe as Batman!). So why was my imagination such a bad predictor of what occupation I would be happy with in the future?

The book Stumbling on Happiness describes three errors we make when trying to imagine our future happiness:

Three Errors We Make When Predicting Happiness

Error #1: Realism- We are often fooled by our own imaginations.

Example: When you recall a memory from the past, the brain actually re-writes that memory. The more you don’t remember, the more the brain will embellish when re-writing the memory.

Error #2: Presentism- Applying our current emotional state and ideals onto thoughts of our past or future.

Example: When you are depressed, you vaguely remember being happy in your past, and you don’t think anything in your future would make you happy.

Error #3: Rationalization- We often misjudge how we will feel about the future when we finally get there.

Example: When imagining about a future positive event, such as winning the lottery, you often overestimate your level of happiness.

If our imagination is so bad at predicting our future, how can we predict our future happiness?

Tips for Predicting Future Happiness

1) Never trust your gut

Instead of simply contemplating how your future would be, and making opinions based on that, question yourself.

Example: If you think you would be happier in a different field of work, question yourself. Are you simply having a bad day? Or have you felt like this for some time? Ask others if they think you would enjoy a different field of work.

2) Take action

You will learn a lot more by taking action than you would ever learn by contemplating.

Example: If you think you would be happy in a different career, go job shadow for a day. You will learn a lot more about the job in that day than you ever would have using your imagination.

3) Talk to someone who has already done what you want to do

Because we don’t realize how similar we all are, humans often refuse to use others as surrogates. Taking to someone who has already done what you want to do is an effective way to predict your future emotions. As shown by presentism, realism, and rationalization, relying solely on your imagination is flawed in many ways.

Example: If you think you would be happy in a different career, talk to someone who has already been in that career field. You will get a more realistic perspective than you would have using your imagination.

photo credit: ellhoisa

Doing what you love is the cornerstone of having abundance in your life.

-Wayne Dyer

Doing what you love

When I was younger, I loved videogames. I read all the latest videogame magazines, spent all my money on new videogames and game systems, and was obsessed about new games that were coming out soon. Yep- I was a videogame nerd… So when I learned how easy (and free) it was for me to start my own videogame magazine online, and share my love of videogames with others, I jumped at the opportunity.

I started the videogame website, and my passion for videogames soon paid off- I was receiving free games in the mail from game companies to review, had a staff of 10 content writers from around the world working for free (they received free games to review), and was making good money from advertising (as much as $2k/month). This was every videogame nerd’s dream… And I was only 13 at the time- this truly shows how powerful doing what you love can be.

Doing what you think will make you money

On the flip side, in college, I came up with an idea for making money. I launched a dating website specific to my college, hoping to be successful and later expand to other schools. I didn’t love this idea- I was doing it to make money. This lack of love was noticeable in the final product- there was nothing really special about the dating site other than its catering to students from my college. The site ended up being a financial failure, and was a good lesson for me- when you aren’t doing what you love, you are setting yourself up for mediocre results.

If I had loved the dating site idea, versus using it only as a means to make money, would I have been successful? I don’t know. But I do know that I would’ve been more passionate and not so focused on making money. This would’ve increased my chances of success tenfold.

The Power of Doing What You Love

Whether or not our subjective experience of work is of freedom depends on whether we choose to be slaves to material wealth or to emotional prosperity. Slaves to others’ expectations or to our passions.

Tal Ben-Shahar, Happier

When you’re doing what you love, you are in a more passionate state of mind, and always doing your best because you enjoy what you do. You’ll often find yourself in “the flow”, a state where you lose track of time as your focus is solely on your passion. You’ll be better able to handle obstacles that come into your path because you enjoy the day-to-day activity of doing what you love (versus doing something solely as a means to make money).

A study done by the University of Rochester’s Human Motivation Research Group found that people whose motivation was “self-authored” (doing what they love) exhibited more interest, excitement, and confidence, as well as greater persistence, creativity and performance than a control group who were motivated by external demands and rewards (doing what they thought would make them money).

Your Challenge

I now challenge you- in some way, start spending more of your time doing what you love. I’m not saying you should do anything drastic like quitting your job… I am simply asking you to reflect upon what you are most passionate about, and begin spending more time on that area of your life. You may begin to notice (as I did with my videogame site) that abundance will begin to expand in your life when you are doing what you love:

If you follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the life that you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors for you. Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be. Life is too short to do only what we have to do; it is barely long enough to do what we want to do.

-William H. Murray

Economists and psychologists have spent decades studying the relation between wealth and happiness, and they have generally concluded that wealth increases human happiness when it lifts people out of abject poverty and into the middle class but that it does little to increase happiness thereafter.

-Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness

The difference in happiness between Americans who earn $50,000 and those that earn $10,000 per year is significant. But the difference in happiness between Americans making $100,000 per year and $5 million per year is not significant. This has been proven in countless scientific studies.

So why do those making a decent income believe that more money will make them significantly happier? They have a super-replicating false belief:

Super-Replicating Belief: A Belief that has some property which facilitates its own transmission, which makes it be held by an increasing number of minds.

The production of wealth does not necessarily make individuals happy, but it does serve the needs of an economy, which serves the needs of a stable society. Society serves as a network for propagating this false belief because a healthy economy means the survival of the current system:

Economies thrive when individuals strive, but because individuals will only strive for their own happiness, it is essential that they mistakenly believe that producing and consuming are routes to personal well-being.

-Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness

If money doesn’t make us happier, what does? Here are three tips for living a happier life:

Tips for Being Happier

1) Create meaningful goals

Identify what you’d like to achieve in your life. Set a time frame. Write it down.

Example- I’d like to write a book on Dog Training. I will complete my first draft by writing five pages per day for the next two months.

2) Enjoy the day to day process of realizing these goals

Don’t fall into the trap of believing that “I’ll be happy once I achieve my goals”- all you have is now, the present moment. Find meaning in your day-to-day activities, working towards your goals. If you aren’t enjoying your day-to-day activities, maybe you have the wrong goals.

3) Appreciate your life

Appreciate your life- don’t take it for granted. An easy way to instill the habit of gratefulness is to keep a daily log of five things you are grateful for. You may find yourself repeating the same things in your list from day to day, but that’s okay. The objective is to create a positive habit of focusing on what you are grateful for.