What Makes Us Happy

“We create life plans that lead us away from happiness. We don’t know what makes us happy, but we don’t know that we don’t know that”.

Laurie Santos

Achieving lasting happiness is a major goal for many people in life. The question is, what makes you happy? Most people think that achieving some benchmark in life will make them happy. Having a 4.0 GPA, a six-figure salary, the “perfect” family, winning an award, driving an expensive car, or venturing on expensive trips around the world. Everyone has something that they are striving for that they think will make them happy.

However, once you get to that goal or item, it doesn’t actually make you happy. It may bring a temporary burst of happiness, but then you go right back to your normal state of happiness – whatever that may be. The predominant reason for this is the hedonic treadmill, which is the phenomenon that people return to their baseline level of happiness, regardless of changing circumstances.

Can this baseline level of happiness be raised? Luckily, the answer is yes.

“The Science of Well-being” Yale course taught by Laurie Santos explores how to develop a better practice of being happy. It has become one of the most popular courses offered at Yale and we are fortunate enough that it is available for all of us for free online!

What Makes Us Happy

1. Kindness

The course recommends seeking more opportunities to be kind. If you stop and look around, you will be amazed at how many opportunities there are each day to be kind. Holding the door for someone, a friendly greeting to co-workers, covering the coffee of the person behind you, saying more thank yous, and just generally being more pleasant are forms of kindness.

The great thing about kindness is that people often respond in kind to yourself and others, thereby becoming a self-feeding cycle of positivity and kindness. It can feel uncomfortable if you aren’t used to incorporating these habits on a daily basis, but your actions don’t have to be grandiose. Small little gestures each day can generate a consistent source of happiness.

Strategy to cultivate kindness: Do five Acts of Kindness in one day and document how you feel at the end of the day. Studies show that doing one mega-day of kindness promotes more well-being beyond that of a single act done over many days. Pick one day each week and make it your new mega-kindness day!

2. Social Connection

Santos explores research from Nicholas Epley, a behavioral science professor at the Chicago Booth school. In his studies, Epleyfound that just being around people makes us happier. In one study, group A taste-tested chocolate alone, while group B tasted chocolate with fellow test subjects separated by a curtain. When the chocolate was eaten around other subjects, even when separated by a curtain, there was a higher response rate of the chocolate tasting better.

Being with people makes lived experiences fuller and more enjoyable. Looking at our evolution, humans have been in tribes for 200,000 years. It makes sense that we tend to be happier with other people in a community – even with activities as simple as enjoying a chocolate bar.

Strategy to cultivate social connection: Spend more time with the people closest to you. Ready to step outside of your comfort zone? Try talking to strangers a little more. Always be safe and smart about it; consider having a friendly chat with a fellow passenger on the subway on your way to work or schedule a virtual coffee chat with a coworker you rarely speak to personally. It may start a little awkward but try forming a real connection! People want to be engaged and will open up as you learn more about each other.

3. Time affluence

Time affluence is the concept of having and feeling like you have the time to do what you want. This could be the feeling like you have time to paint once a week, read each night, spend more time with the kids, or however you want to spend your time. Try to schedule in time each day where you are doing what you want, not just what you need to be doing to sustain the busy lifestyles you lead. Even if it is just ten minutes, use those ten minutes! That adds up to over an hour a week and provides something to look forward to each day!

Strategy to cultivate time affluence: Besides blocking off time each day, prioritize your time over money. When offered the chance to work overtime for an extra hour pay, approximately 69% of people will work. However, the remaining 31% that take that time back actually report being happier. Not just on that day – but overall for the whole week. We overestimate how happy we think money will make us and underestimate how much joy our free time can bring. 

4. Being Present

The course calls this “mind control”, in effect, controlling our mind. The mind has a tendency to wander, described in the course as “a shift in the contents of thought away from an ongoing task and/or from events in the external environment to self-generated thoughts and feelings”.

The mind wanders an astonishing 46.9% of our waking hours! Taking us out of the here and now can cause it to feel like we are watching our lives as a movie, or not enjoying the things we should be enjoying – like time to work on our art or time with the kids. We work so hard to build in these moments of happiness. Yet, the next thing we know our mind wanders to what we need to purchase from the grocery store rather than cherishing the small moments with our family and friends.

Heaven forbid we miss the corgi in a stroller because we’re too busy rushing off to work!

Strategy to cultivate mindfulness: Meditate. Building in a practice of meditation establishes a conscious discipline where we train ourselves to be present in everyday moments, even outside of the meditation practice. Here are 7 practices you can try over the course of this week!

5. Exercise and Sleep

Exercising just three times a week for thirty minutes boost overall happiness levels and provides an overall sense of well-being. It also encourages other healthier habits like eating better and staying hydrated which feedback into the happiness that exercise can generate.

Sleeping at least seven to eight hours a day tends to make people happier and improves cognitive function. When well-rested and on a regular sleep schedule, the brain can learn 3x more quickly than a sleep-deprived brain. We are doing all this work to better ourselves – we might as well let our brain absorb this important information while we sleep!

Strategy to cultivate exercise and sleep: Exercise each day, even if it is just a ten-minute walk and some light stretches. Getting exercise can boost self-esteem, improve overall health, and leads to a happier state of being overall. At night, set a fixed bedtime and a time to wake up – stick to your plan consistently for a week. Shut off all temptations such as electronics at least ten minutes before bed. You’ll be sure to notice a difference in your mood and in your ability to stay present and in the moment!

Main Take-Aways:

• We are bad at guessing what will make us happy because we just end up chasing the next thing instead of practicing the things, we know will make us genuinely happy.
• It’s the little things that can be built into each day that truly make us happy. Choose to be kind, develop a connection with a stranger, and exercise – these small choices can make us happier than saving money for years to buy one lavish item.
• Building in time to be present in our day-to-day lives can make every experience richer. On a walk recently, I did my best to be extremely present and noticed a chipmunk stuff its cheeks full of nuts. It was a small, but a very cute moment, that I would have otherwise missed had I not been present on my walk.

Action item

Which of these five practices will you try to implement in your day to day life for the next month? Besides the recommended strategies, what else can you do to ensure you will stick with the new practice?