Old and young, rich and poor, happiness is something we all strive for. It’s much more
enjoyable to be happy than to be miserable. But what exactly is happiness? Are there psychological
approaches we can use to become happier? Textbooks define happiness as an emotional
state characterized by feelings like joy, contentment, and satisfaction. But that’s a very
broad definition. Psychologists instead define and measure happiness as “subjective well-being,”
or how you personally feel. To measure someone’s happiness, psychologists simply ask them about it.
This subjective well-being has both an affective or emotional component and a cognitive component.
The affective component measures how someone feels. A psychologist might ask something like:
Taking everything together, how would you say things are these days, would you say
you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy? The cognitive component looks at things
more objectively, perhaps asking: How satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?
But how can we improve our happiness? Unfortunately,
this can be a difficult task. We seem to have a happiness ‘set-point.’ Our happiness tends
to fall in a genetically-determined and highly heritable range. Happy people seem to stay happy,
a stability that is evident across the lifespan. To make matters even more complicated, if we try
too hard to be happy, we risk falling into the so-called “Happiness Paradox”. It turns out that
trying to be happy can actually make you unhappy. Okay, so happiness is pretty stable over your
lifetime, but there have to be things that make us happier, right? One thing people frequently
turn to in an effort to increase happiness is money. And it’s true that more money will
make you happier, but only to a certain point. As families get richer, there is a smaller reduction
in negative emotions per increase in household income. Basically, once you have enough income
to stop worrying about money, getting pay raises won’t do as much for your happiness.
So money won’t necessarily make us happier. But what about life events? Take a second and think:
what’s the worst thing that could happen to you right now? How much would it change your
happiness? What about the best thing? It turns out that these life events, like breaking up
with a partner or winning the lottery, may have short-term impact on our happiness,
but the effects disappear quickly. Life events don’t matter as much to our happiness as we think
they will. This is because we tend to have very strong psychological immune systems, so to speak.
We adapt to good and bad events with efficiency, quickly returning to our happiness set-point.
So what are we to do? Is it possible to get happier at all, or are we just stuck at our
initial happiness level? Luckily, psychologists have found a few easy and relatively cheap things
that can actually increase our happiness. First, be around people. Being around others
and having a good support group is crucial in improving our subjective well-being.
We should also strive to be in the moment. It turns out that the thing we’re actually
doing only accounts for a small amount of our happiness. Instead, happiness is derived from
being in the moment, being present with what we’re doing accounts for more than
the activity itself. When your mind is wandering during an activity, you tend to be less happy.
Next, use your money to purchase experiences over things. Material goods are easy to compare with
other material goods. Maybe you just bought a new phone. But when you’re walking down the street,
you could see someone with a different and potentially better phone, making you regret
your purchase. As you may have experienced, it’s easier to think of what you could have bought
than to focus on the thing you actually bought. Experiences, on the other hand, usually involve
other people. We can also share these experiences verbally with others and relive the pleasure.
Another strategy to improve happiness is to find a purpose or meaning in your life. For many people,
this is religion. Religious people are, on average, slightly happier than non-religious
people. Part of this happiness is likely due to the social support found in religions,
but religious people also tend to report a greater purpose for their lives, whether this is illusory
or not. Purpose certainly need not be religiously derived, one can just as well focus on career,
relationships, service, artistic expression, or any number of other things. But finding
something that gives your life meaning will tend to make you a happier person.
Finally, one can show gratitude. One study found that when college students kept a
gratitude journal and wrote down five things they were grateful for every week, they were
happier. By simply taking a few minutes to write and recognize the things you are grateful for,
you can improve your overall happiness. Now it should be made clear that while
all of these strategies can certainly improve one’s well-being, for some it’s not necessarily
so simple to be happy. There are a number of factors to take into consideration which may
pose as barriers to even attempting some of these techniques. For example, someone who is clinically
depressed may not have the motivation or energy to start a gratitude journal. They may withdraw and
have no desire to be part of social gatherings. Mindfulness may be very difficult to attempt when
one is depressed. In addition it’s important to note the biochemical component of depression,
and acknowledge that in certain cases medication may be necessary. The techniques discussed in
this tutorial may help some tremendously, while for others they may seem trite and meaningless.
Nevertheless, it is possible to work towards becoming happier through some pretty simple steps.
We must simply keep in mind that happiness is a journey, not a destination. Focusing on building
a life that brings fulfillment and satisfaction usually prompts happiness to follow close behind.