The Quest to Happiness
I have been listening to “The Happiness Lab” by Dr. Laurie Santos for a couple of weeks. For each podcast that I listened, I made small notes for myself. This is post is a compilation of all the notes.
PS: I will be adding more notes as I listen to more episodes.
1. You can change
There is very little genetics involve in the science of happiness. Nobody can be all 10 (on the happiness scale), but we can try to be at 10 for more time. Many small things like walking, meditating, having conversation with your loved once, being grateful, appreciating each other, etc. can help you to be happy.
You can choose to be happy. You have a choice, every second of the day.
2. The Unhappy Millionaire
More money won’t make you happy
Everyone wants more money, they think it will make them happy. But the truth is, after a certain amount of money, your happiness plateaus. You have to learn to be happy with what you have, because there is no limit to our greed, we will never be satisfied.
We suffer the most in our imagination
Our brain always over estimates things in our imagination. We over estimate how happy achieving some thing will make us. We also over estimate how sad losing something will be.
We usually under estimate our brains ability to adapt. No matter the situation, good or bad, our brain will bring us back to the baseline.
Things are much easier and manageable in reality, than in our imagination. So, always do the right thing, no matter how hard it seems in the head.
3. A Silver Lining
Don’t fall prey to wrong references
We are never really objective with our choices about what will make us happy. Almost 50% people will be choose to earn 50K (instead of 100K) if everyone around them is making 25K. People are unemployed and happy if a lot of people around them are also unemployed. No matter whom you ask, “Are you happy with your social life?”; everyone will say NO because they will always find someone who is more social than them. Its all about the reference point we compare ourselves with.
Its much easier to fall prey to false references in this world of social media. Now, you can easily compare yourself to anyone across the world. Our brain is hard wired to always compare ourselves to the extreme person on the other end of the spectrum. Also, wrong references is the reason why rich people are not happy, they will always have someone richer than them in the group.
Never compare yourselves. Remember, life is a journey not a destination. It should be about the GRIND and not the results. It should be about the PROCESS and not the outcome. It should be about DOING YOUR BEST and not being the best.
Gratitude & negative visualization (visualizing the worst-case scenario) can help you to be grounded and be grateful for what you have and what you have managed to achieve.
4. Mistakenly Seeking Solitude
A lot of the technology that makes our lives convenient (like Gmaps, ATM machine, ticket dispensers, etc.) are actually making us unhappy. By taking away human interaction these technology makes use more envious and reduces our ability to understand and adjust to other people.
Bar trains were very crowded and the company was still planning to introduce Quite trains. The inventor of the ATM machine still stands in a line to withdraw his money and his wife has not use an ATM in life.
Human Interaction topped the list of things that would make you happy. This is how we have evolved and this is what we crave for.
Next time you are standing in a Queue, think of it as an opportunity to be happy. Take time to interact with other human beings.
In our office, we can make it mandatory for the mentors to make new connections. Happy people will bring in more people.
5. Caring what you’re sharing
Our urge to share is an instinct, a one that brings in a lot of joy but it can lead us to stray in the modern world. Science shows that sharing experiences is good for our happiness, all the wonderful things in life, yummy food & a warm sunshine. They are even more awesome in the company of another human being. And its a 2-way street, your presence also make others experience better.
Documenting those awesome moment is also good for our happiness. Camera improves your visual memory. You will see things that you normally won’t, also you can cherish the moments latter.
Sharing and photo-taking both make our life richer, but When we put the two urges together, When we start thing about sharing that photo while we are looking at it, we get obsessed with the tiny image in the camera and not the moment.
Case study: Museum of ice-cream (most Instagram-ed place in the world)
6. Don’t think of the white bear
Never suppress your feelings/emotions, its the worst thing that you can do. When you suppress your feelings they rebound with more force. Also, its deteriorating and takes a lot of efforts to shut down your feeling. You are left much exhausted, because most of your mental bandwidth is already being used.
Keeping your feelings locked up is very toxic and its impact is visible on the outside. Your physical health degrades and you make everything worst around you by offloading your stress and anger on your family and friends.
Try journaling whenever you have some overwhelming emotion. Its a great way offloading your feelings. Once you write down your feeling, its much easier to understand and evaluate your situation.
Talk to people about your feelings and fears. This doesn’t make your weak, but instead its makes your real. Often, the things that you run from are the one that haunts you the most.
You cannot control your emotions, even Dalai Lama use to get angry. You can not shut a feeling in-between. So, don’t try to run away or hide them. Its all natural to have bad feelings, you can not change them. But you can change how you react to them. Reaction to his feelings is what made Dalai Lama great!
7. Don’t Accentuate the positive
For decades, the idea of “positive thinking for positive results” have dominated the industry. Books like Power of Positive Thinking, Think and Grow Rich, The Secret and Law of Attraction have been the bestsellers for decades. I personally loved these books. But everything changed for me after hearing Michael Phelps story.
A few seconds into the race, he realized that his goggles are filling up with water. He didn’t panic and instead started counting his strokes. He exactly knew that it will take him 19 strokes. When he finished the race, he rushed towards his coach and started complaining. His coach asked him to relax as they won the gold medal.
When asked in an interview, how did it feel to swim blind in the Olympics? He said, “EXACTLY LIKE I IMAGINED”. This is really powerful insight. His coach always made sure that he also gets enough mental training apart from physical training in the pool and gym. Mental training is as important as physical training, if not more. But very few people actually do it.
During mental training, thinking about the difficult situations and challenges can inspire you to do more, make you work harder, help you to be more disciplined and be more relentless. People who also prepare for the difficult times are more likely to be successful. They tend to handle challenges more objectively as they have already given it a thought. Such people are much more happy because they are aware of the challenges and are better prepared for it.
This is reason why concepts like STOICISIM exists.
8. Choice Overload
Human brains are not good at processing large volumes of data. So, when posed with a lot of choices we tend to be indecisive. We procrastinate things and sometimes we don’t do it at all. Eg: 30% people bought the jam when they had only 6 options to choose from and only 3% people bought the jam when they where given 24 options.
Still if you ask a person, he/she will always prefer to have more options. We human beings are so wrong at predicting what we want. We end up taking paths that withdraws us from our happiness.
Barak Obama always wore a white shirt. He had only few suits and he cycled through them. When asked about it, he said, “I have to make many important decisions through out the day. Wearing the same white shirt makes it one less decision to make”. You will see same the thing with Mark (Facebook CEO). Even Steve Jobs use to wear the same turtle neck everywhere.
Try to reduce the number of decisions you make in a day. Like, have a limited wardrobe, decide a shirt for every day of the week, have a morning and evening ritual. Also, having some core principles in life can ease the process of making decisions.
Decision Fatigue: making decisions can take up a lot of energy. Simply making many decision in a day can drain you of all your energy, resulting in a fatigue. So, avoid making more than 3 or 5 important decisions in a day. Jeff Bezos makes only 3 important decisions in a day.
9. Make ‘Em Laugh
We are affected by other peoples emotions much more than we realize. We unconsciously and automatically catch the grief, the despair, excitement, rage, joy, sadness from all the individuals we encounter. Whether that individual is a close friend, the guy behind you in the coffee shop, someone ranting on reddit or even a voice of some long dead laughing in 1950s (recorded laughter).
We humans are social animals, we need validation for everything, even for what we feel. In this world of social media, anybody across the world can effect your feeling. This is what makes social media a dangerous place if you are not careful about the content in your newsfeed.
Knowledge is empowering. Knowing that this thing exists allows you to do things that can help you avoid catching others emotion. Other empowering thing is that “knowing we CAN change other peoples mood”. We can be the emotional change that we want to see in the world.
As a leader, its really important to be in good mood because everyone looks up to you. They can easily copy your emotion creating a spiral effect, either positive or negative.
There are many studies showcasing how single persons mood can effect everyone in the workspace. A single sad person can make everyone feel sad and people make bad decisions when they are sad.
10. Making the Grade
External rewards (like a grade or a fitbit buzz) might change your performance in the short-run but will cost you, dearly in the long-run. Perceiving success on those terms will rob you of the joy that you get in your studies, hobbies and even career.
You have to find ways to return to your internal rewards. Run because you enjoy the sensation, not to beat some arbitrary number on an app. Take a class to satisfy your intellectual curiosity, not to get an honor’s. Do things for the joy of doing, not for the results.
As an individual and as a society, we need to think of ways to reduce the systems of external rewards that we have surrounded ourselves with. Its the only way to return to our child’s like joy of learning, just for learning sake, just because its fun.
Conclusion
Depression rate is at its highest, there is hardly any social contact, people are jealous and full of envy for others. All these negative emotions are very toxic for our well-being. Happiness is more important than ever.
Knowledge is power. Knowing these insights will not make you happy but they can help you to be sad for a lesser time.