How to Be Happy
One guy said to me, "Luke! You're,
like, the happiest person I know! How come you're so happy all the
time?"
It was probably a rhetorical question, but I had a
very long answer to give. See, I was unhappy for most of my life,1 and
even considered suicide a few times. Then I spent two years studying the
science of happiness. Now, happiness is my natural state. I can't remember the
last time I felt unhappy for longer than 20 minutes.That kind of change won't happen for everyone, or
even most people (beware of other-optimizing), but it's worth a
shot!
We all want to be happy, and happiness is useful for other things, too. For example, happiness improves physical health, improves creativity, and even enables you to make better decisions.
(It's harder to be rational when you're unhappy.) So, as part of a series on how to win at life with science and rationality, let's review the science of happiness.
The correlates of
happiness
Earlier, I noted that there is an abundance
of research on factors that correlate with subjective well-being (individuals'
own assessments of their happiness and life satisfaction).
Factors that don't correlate much
with happiness include: age, gender, parenthood, intelligence, physical
attractiveness, and money (as long as
you're above the poverty line). Factors that correlate moderately with
happiness include: health, social activity, and
religiosity. Factors that correlate strongly with
happiness include: genetics, love and relationship
satisfaction,and work satisfaction.
But correlation is not enough. We want to know what
causes happiness. And that is a trickier thing to measure. But we
do know a few things.
Happiness, personality,
and skills
Genes account for about 50% of the variance in
happiness.19 Even lottery winners and newly-made quadriplegics do
not see as much of a change in happiness as you would expect.20 Presumably,
genes shape your happiness by shaping your personality, which is known to be
quite heritable.21
So which personality traits tend to correlate most
with happiness? Extroversion is among the best predictors of happiness,22
as are conscientiousness, agreeableness, self-esteem, and optimism.23
What if you don't have those traits? The first
thing to say is that you might be capable of them without knowing it.
Introversion, for example, can be exacerbated by a lack of social skills.
If you decide to learn and practice
social skills, you might find that you are more extroverted than you thought!
(That's what happened to me.) The same goes for conscientiousness,
agreeableness,
self-esteem, and optimism - these are only partly linked to
personality. They are to some extent learnable skills, and learning these
skills (or even "acting as if") can increase happiness.24
The second thing to say is that lacking some of
these traits does not, of course, doom you to unhappiness.
Happiness is subjective and
relative
Happiness is not determined by objective factors,
but by how you feel about them.
Happiness is also relative: you'll
probably be happier making $25,000/yr in Costa Rica (where your neighbors are
making $13,000/yr) than you will be making $80,000/yr in Beverly Hills (where
your neighbors are making $130,000/yr).
Happiness is relative in another sense, too: it is
relative to your expectations. We are quite poor at
predicting the strength of our emotional reactions to future events. We
overestimate the misery we will experience after a romantic breakup, failure to
get a promotion, or even contracting an illness. We also overestimate the pleasure
we will get from buying a nice car, getting a promotion, or moving to a lovely
coastal city. So: lower your expectations about the pleasure you'll get from
such expenditures.
Flow and mindfulness
You may have heard of the famous studies
showing that people are happiest when they are in a state of "flow." Flow is the state you're in when you
are fully engaged in a task that is interesting, challenging, and intrinsically
rewarding to you. This is the experience of "losing yourself in the moment"
or, as sports players say, "being in the zone."
Finding flow has largely to do with performing
tasks that match your skill level. When a task is far beyond your skill level,
you will feel defeated. When a task is too easy, you'll be bored. Only when a
task is challenging but achievable will you feel good about doing it. I'm
reminded of the state troopers in Super
Troopers, who devised strange games and challenges to make their
boring jobs passable. Myrtle Young made her boring job at a potato chip
factory more interesting and challenging by looking for potato chips that
resembled celebrities, and pulling them off the conveyor belts for her
collection.
If you're struggling with negative thoughts,
achieving flow is probably the best medicine. Contrary to popular wisdom,
forced positive thinking often makes things worse. Trying to not
think about Upsetting Thought X has the same effect as trying to not
think about pink elephants: you can't help but think about pink elephants.While being "lost in the moment" may
provide some of your happiest moments, research has also shown that when you're
not in flow, taking a step outside the moment and practicing
"mindfulness" - that is, paying attention to your situation, your
actions, and your feelings - can reduce chronic pain and depression,
reduce stress and anxiety, and produce a wide range of other
positive effects.
How to be happier
Happiness, then, is an enormously complex thing.
Worse, we must remember the difference between experienced happiness and remembered happiness. I
can only scratch the surface of happiness research in this tiny post. In short,
there is no simple fix for unhappiness; no straight path to bliss.
Moreover, happiness will be achieved differently
for different people. A person suffering from depression due to chemical imbalance
may get more help from a pill than from learning better social skills. A
healthy, extroverted, agreeable, conscientious woman can still be unhappy if
she is trapped in a bad marriage. Some people were raised by parents whose
parenting style did not encourage the development of healthy self-esteem,
and they will need to devote significant energy to overcome this deficit. For
some, the road to happiness is long. For others, it is short.
Below, I review a variety of methods for becoming
happier. Some of them I discussed above; many, I did not.These methods are ranked roughly in descending
order of importance and effect, based on my own reading of the literature. You
will need to think about who you are, what makes you happy, what makes you
unhappy, and what you can achieve in order to determine which of the below
methods should be attempted first. Also, engaging any of these methods may
require that you first gain some mastery over procrastination.
Here, then, are some methods for becoming happier:
- If you suffer from serious illness, depression, anxiety, paranoia,
schizophrenia, or other serious problems, seek professional help first.
Here's how.
- Even if you don't need professional help, you may benefit from some
self-exploration and initial guidance from a reductionistic,
naturalistic counselor
- Develop the skills and habits associated with extroversion.
First, get some decent clothes and learn how to wear them properly. If
you're a guy, read these
books. If you're a girl, ask your girlfriends
or try these books. Next, learn basic social skills, including body language. If you're really introverted,
practice on Chatroulette or Omegle
first. Next, spend more time with other people, making small talk. Go to meetups
and CouchSurfing
group activities. Practice your skills until they become more natural, and
you find y
- Improve your self-esteem and optimism. This is
tricky. First, too much self-esteem can lead to harmful narcissism.
Second, it's not clear that a rationalist can endorse several standard
methods for improving one's self esteem (self-serving bias, basking in
reflected glory, self-handicapping) because they toy with
self-deception and anti-epistemology. But there are a few safe
ways to increase your self-esteem and optimism. Make use of success
spirals, vicarious victory, and mental contrasting, as described here.
- Improve your agreeableness. In simpler terms, this basically
means: increase your empathy. Unfortunately, little is currently known
(scientifically) about how to increase one's empathy. The
usual advice about trying to see things from another's perspective, and
thinking more about people less fortunate than oneself, will have to do
for now. The organization Roots of Empathy may have some good advice, too.
- Improve your conscientiousness. Conscientiousness involves a
variety of tendencies: useful organization, strong work ethic,
reliability, planning ahead, etc. Each of these individual skills can be
learned. The techniques for overcoming procrastination are useful, here.
Some people report that books like Getting Things Done have helped
them become more organized and reliable.
- Develop the habit of gratitude. Savor the good moments
throughout each day. Spend time thinking about happy
memories. And at the end of each day, write down 5 things you
are grateful for: the roof over your head, your good fortune at being born
in a wealthy country, the existence of Less Wrong, the taste of
chocolate, the feel of orgasm... whatever. It sounds childish, but it
works.
- Find your purpose and live it. One benefit of religion may be
that it gives people a sense of meaning and purpose. Without a magical
deity to give you purpose, though, you'll have to find out for yourself
what drives you. It may take a while to find it though, and you may have to
dip your hands and mind into many fields. But once you find a path that
strongly motivates you and fulfills you, take it. (Of course, you might
not find one purpose but many.) Having a strong sense of meaning and
purpose has a wide range of positive effects. The 'find a
purpose' recommendation also offers an illustration of how methods may
differ in importance for people. 'Find a purpose' is not always emphasized
in happiness literature, but for my own brain chemistry I suspect that
finding motivating purposes has made more difference in my life than
anything else on this list.
- Find a more fulfilling job. Few people do what they love for a
living. Getting to that point can be difficult and complicated. You may
find that doing 10 other things on this list first is needed
for you to have a good chance at getting a more fulfilling job. To
figure out which career might be full of tasks that you love to do, a RIASEC
personality test might help. In the USA, O*NET
can help you find jobs that are in-demand and fit your personality.
- Improve your relationship with your romantic partner, or find a
different one. As with finding a more fulfilling job, this one is
complicated, but can have major impact. If you know your relationship
isn't going anywhere, you may want to drop it so you can spend more time
developing yourself, which will improve future relationships. If you're
pretty serious about your partner, there are many things you can do to
improve the relationship. Despite being touted widely, "active
listening" doesn't predict relationship success. Tested
advice for improving the chances of relationship success and satisfaction
include: (1) do novel and exciting things with your partner often,
(2) say positive things to and about your partner at least 5 times more
often than you say negative things, (3) spend each week
writing about why your relationship is better than some others you know
about, (4) qualify every criticism of your partner with a
review of one or two of their positive qualities, and (5)
stare into each other's eyes more often.
- Go outside and move your body. This will improve your attention and well-being.
- Spend more time in flow. Drop impossible tasks in favor of
tasks that are at the outer limits of your skillset. Make easy and boring
tasks more engaging by turning them into games or adding challenges for
yourself.
- Practice mindfulness
regularly. When not in flow, step outside yourself and pay attention to
how you are behaving, how your emotions are functioning, and how your
current actions work toward your goals. Meditation
may help.
- Avoid consumerism. The things you own do come to own you, in a sense. Consumerism leads to unhappiness. Unfortunately, you've probably been programmed from birth to see through the lens of consumerism. One way to start deprogramming is by watching this documentary about the deliberate invention of consumerism by Edward Bernays. After that, you may want to sell or give away many of your possessions and, more importantly, drastically change your purchasing patterns.
Note that seeking happiness as an end might
be counterproductive. Many people report that constantly checking to see if
they are happy actually decreases their happiness - a report that fits with the
research on "flow." It may be better to seek some of the above goals
as ends, and happiness will be a side-effect.
Remember: Happiness will not come from reading
articles on the internet. Happiness will come when you do the
things research recommends.
Good luck!
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Happy Quotes idea !
Learn to enjoy every minute of your life.
Be happy now.
Don't wait for something outside of
yourself to make you happy in the future.
Think how really precious is the time you
have to spend, whether it's at work or with your family. Every minute should be
enjoyed and savored.
Earl Nightingale
Believe in yourself! Have faith in your
abilities!
Without a humble but reasonable confidence
in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.
Norman Vincent Peale
I am determined to be cheerful and happy in
whatever situation I may find myself.
For I have learned that the greater part of
our misery or unhappiness is determined not by our circumstance but by our
disposition.
Martha Washington
I, not events, have the power to make me
happy or unhappy today.
I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday
is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet.
I have just one day, today, and I'm going
to be happy in it.
Groucho Marx
Whoever is happy will make others happy
too.
Anne Frank
Money has never made man happy, nor will
it, there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more of it one has
the more one wants.
Benjamin Franklin
Be happy with what you have and are, be
generous with both, and you won't have to hunt for happiness.
William E. Gladstone
Finally have a good life ! for all ...
...
