A Scientific Approach To Happiness

Huh, a scientific approach to happiness? Yeah, you heard that right :) You and probably a majority of people out there think, that happiness is either something you have or you don't, it is based on our circumstances, the family we grew up in and the amount of suffering we have to face on a daily basis. This is a common misconception which I had engrained into my mind until I discovered an online course about the science of well being, which is taught by a professor at yale university. In this weeks blogpost I want to share the most lifechanging ideas I picked up during this course together with some additional thoughts that came to my mind.

What makes us happy? This is a very deep question and the answer varies a lot depending on the person you are asking. What if we turn the question arround. What doesn't make us happy? This is actually a question that we can answer based on scientific papers that have been published over the last decades. There are many things in life we strive for, because we think it will lead us towards ultimate happiness. If I get this amazing job at this amazing company I will be ultimately happy, if I earn additional 50 k per year I can live my life to the fullest, if I lost those 10 extra pounds I will feel amazing and last but not least If I have married the wife of my dreams I will be the luckiest man alive. You've probably all heard those sentences somewhere before or even had those thoughts yourself. What if I tell you that all those things I mentioned are'nt making you happier at all. But why is that? The main factor contributing to this is hedonic adaptation. Every Time we buy some new shiny gadget, get into this amazing relationship, get the salary increase we dreamt about or got into the greatest shape of our life, our mind gets used to this new normal pretty quickly. We get this short boost in hapiness, but after a short period of time, our happiness level returns back to baseline. But why is our mind so bad at evaluating which things are making us happier? There are a few biases playing a role here. First of all our mind does not think in absolutes, it always compares our current situation to some reference point. A simple example is our salary. If our salary suddenly increases by 10k, so does our reference point. We are comparing ourselves to people now, which earn even crazier salaries and the problem is that we get bombarded with new reference points left and right and it is really hard to escape from them.

Now we know all the things that don't make us happier and we know the reason for that. But what should we put our focus on, that actually is making us happier? First of all there are some principles we can implement into our life to overcome the biases I've talked about. Instead of spending your money on awesome stuff, you should rather invest that money into experiences. Experiences don't last long enough to undergo hedonic adaptation and it is much harder to compare your experiences to the experiences of others. In order to get the most out of an experience, you should also implement savoring into your life. Savoring is the act of stepping out of a situation for a moment to appreciate to have such an amazing experience. You can even picture great memories from the past. Thinking about happy memories delays hedonic adaptation and increases your level of happiness in the present moment. Another great practice which may sound a little counterintuitive at first, is negative visualization, where you visualize your life without all the the amazing people and things around you. When you return back to the present, you realize that all your friends and family members are still there and it makes you appreciate them even more.

Now I want to address some habits, where it is actually scientifically proven that they make us happier. You've probably heard about some of them, but some might be new. I strongly encourage you to pick at least one habit to implement into your life, because knowing is not half the battle. In order to really benefit from this article, you have to incorporate these habits into your own life. The first habit I want to talk about is meditation. 10 minutes of mediation can go a long way. During meditation you are focusing for a defined period of time on just one thing. This could be your breath for example. Focusing just on this one thing can massively increase your ability to live in the present moment and reduce mind-wandering, which increases savoring in order to get the most out of happy experiences. Gratitude is another massive happiness booster. Writing down just 3-5 things every day that you are grateful for is a simple habit, but it can increase our long term happiness by a lot. You can get an even bigger happiness boost by writing somebody a gratitude letter and reading it aloud to this person. This can create an even closer social connection to this person. Social Connection in generall is a big happiness booster and has many health benefits. This includes spending time with your close friends, but even talking to a stranger has similar benefits. So the next time you are sitting in the subway, start a conversation with your neighbour. It will increase your happiness and it may also make the day of the stranger. Last but not least acts of kindness that you perform to somebody else can make us happier. We often have the misconception that if we feel a little off, we need to do something good for ourselves like for example buying ourselves a little treat, but giving to others would actually make us feel much better.

Now I talked about all those habits, you should incorporate into your life, but in order to be the happiest person you have ever been, you have to get the basics right. Without good sleep, a healthy amount of exercise and a somehow nutritious diet, you will never arrive at your maximum happiness potential. If you don't feel happy at the moment always remember that you can do something about it by incorporating the principles I covered in this post. Happiness is like a leaky balloon. You have to pump air into it on a daily basis by practicing healthy habits and avoiding bad ones.

Cheers Emil