What’s the key to living a happy, fulfilling life?
Easy - just lower your expectations!
Hey guys, Tara here for Dnews - and despite all of the scientific advancements we’ve
made over the past few centuries - we still haven’t figured out the formula for living
a happy life.
Common sense says that if we’re unhappy with our current situation, then we should
change it - we can change our careers, change our partners, change our friends.
But maybe we’re looking in the wrong place.
Maybe, the problem isn’t our surroundings - it’s us.
And that’s exactly what a new study says is true.
A team of researchers at University College London have created a formula to predict happiness
levels, and according to them - being happy in life isn’t about how things are “going”
for us, it’s about whether or not they’re going “better than expected.”
Which means if we’re not happy, all we need to do is change our expectations.
Specifically, we should lower them.
For their study, they invited 26 people to play a gambling game, where they could choose
to either receive 40p for each game, or take a gamble - and receive either 90p or nothing
at all.
During the experiment, they were repeatedly asked to answer the question 'how happy are
you right now?'
while undergoing fMRI, to see if self-reported happiness was related to rewards and expectations.
Researchers developed a model based on that data, and used it to create a smartphone app
- where they repeated the experiment on over 18,000 participants.
What they found, is that accumulating wealth didn’t make people happier, but the expectation
of wealth, did - and especially if people weren’t expecting to win big.
It makes sense that this would be true, since lower expectations make it more likely that
a given outcome will exceed those expectations.
But what’s interesting, is that positive expectations can also influence happiness
before we’re even aware of the outcome.
The example they give, is meeting up with a friend at a restaurant.
If it’s a restaurant you happen to know and like, then the simple act of making those
plans could increase your happiness.
But they can also make you more unhappy down the line - because your expectations are so
high, that it really wouldn’t take much for you to be disappointed.
Granted, this is all relative - but it’s a good reminder that we should keep our expectations
in check.
Assuming it’ll make you happier in the long run, then what have you got to lose?
I think MadTV may have been onto something….
What do you guys think?
Is lowering your expectations as easy as they make it seem?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below - and as always, thank you guys for
watching!