September 19th, 2024
Jonah Paquette, PsyD
Welcome to this week's Three Good Things, my newsletter where I share 3 ideas, resources, findings, or skills related to happiness and well-being.
Each week, I focus on a specific theme drawn from the science of happiness, including concepts like awe, gratitude, social connection, managing burnout, mindfulness, and much more.
This week's newsletter focuses on the idea of happiness, which is admittedly a pretty big topic to cover! Because of its complexity (heck, I sometimes spend entire 4-5 day retreats covering this topic), I thought we'd narrow our focus a bit and instead talk about our pursuit of happiness. And no, not the eponymous song by Kid Cudi, nor the movie with Will Smith (although I think that one was spelled with a "y" to be fair). Rather, we're going to explore some of the pitfalls and opportunities regarding our desire to find happiness.
But first, we might even be wondering, "What on earth is happiness"? And indeed, there have been countless definitions of happiness over the years. Gandhi famously said that "happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony." I always liked that one. On the other hand, Albert Schweitzer observed that "happiness is nothing more than good health, and a bad memory." I like that one too. While there's not a clear-cut definition that everyone agrees on, I tend to draw from researchers who emphasize an interplay between our emotional states, our subjective sense of well-being, and our feelings of connection to something beyond ourselves. And in my writing and speaking, I often talk about the idea of happiness as something consisting of 3 separate but connected ingredients:
- Hedonic Happiness: experiencing more in the way of pleasant emotions than unpleasant emotions.
- Evaluative Happiness: a sense of deep satisfaction with our lives (akin to contentment).
- Eudaimonic Happiness: a sense of connection to something bigger than ourselves (akin to meaning or purpose).
While individuals (and broader cultures) can and often do differ in terms of which "ingredient" of happiness they value most, we all need some combination of the above 3 pillars for a happy and fulfilling life. But how to cultivate happiness the right way? That's the challenge many of us struggle with. Many of us fall into the trap of thinking that happiness comes from the outside in, perhaps from wealth, achievement, and so forth. But as newsletter readers know, in truth happiness comes from the cultivation of specific habits of the mind -- practices like gratitude, self-compassion, social connection, mindful awareness, and more.
As it turns out, the way that we pursue happiness plays a big role in our ability to become a happier person. If we look for it in the wrong places, think of it as a destination rather than a journey, or obsess over our own happiness...we end up less happy unfortunately. So this week I thought I'd share a few interesting findings and ideas related to this theme. And with that, here are this week's Three Good Things:
- First off this week, I wanted to share a paradoxical finding pertaining to happiness that I often discuss in my workshops and seminars. And that's how on the one hand, we know that happiness is a good thing in and of itself. Moreover, becoming a happier person is linked to a wide range of benefits to our mind, body, and relationships. So it stands to reason that we just need to focus a bit more on our happiness, since it's so important after all. But the problem is, research over the years has shown that the more we obsess over our happiness, the more we worry about it...the less happy we become! And other studies have shown that tracking our own happiness too much can even backfire and make us less happy. So while it's tempting to focus on our own well-being in this way, almost the way you might track your weight on a scale if you're following a new diet, it's important to resist that urge and focus on the process rather than the outcome. In focusing on the process of becoming happier, we focus instead on the building blocks of our own well-being -- becoming more grateful, more present, more connected, more kind, more in awe...on and on. And that, as it turns out, makes us a happier person in the long run.
2. Another pitfall we run into when it comes to the pursuit of happiness is that we often look for happiness in all the wrong places. Most of us (myself included) fall into the trap of the old "I'll be happy when..." story we tell ourselves. You know, where we tell ourselves things like "I'll be happy when I make more money, or get a promotion, or meet the right person, or move to a different city, or..." on and on. And to be fair, it's not that those things don't make us happy, they often do! But the happiness they give us often isn't quite what we hoped for, and nearly always "wears off" before we expect. This tendency to get used to good things is known as hedonic adaptation, and it's one of the main reasons why external factors don't impact our happiness levels nearly as much as we expect. Once again, rather than looking for happiness as a result of external circumstances, we need to look inward at the sorts of skills mentioned earlier.
3. This brings us to our third idea for today -- the importance of looking at happiness as a habit. While much research over the years has demonstrated the effectiveness of happiness-boosting interventions like gratitude, mindfulness, savoring, social belonging, compassion, and other similar skills -- there's a catch. Which is that these help us only to the degree that we incorporate them into our lives regularly and turn them into habits. Along these lines, this study showed that happiness-boosting practices worked...but only with continued practice. So much like going to the gym, improving our diet, or any behavioral change we're working on, increasing our happiness isn't a quick fix.
Stay in touch!
Thanks so much for being part of my newsletter, and I look forward to sharing more fun updates with you each week here. I'd also love to connect with you on social media (links below at the bottom of the page), and share a few fun resources with you in the meantime!
- If you're interested in my books, check out Happily Even After and Awestruck.
- Click here for my TEDx talk on the power of Awe.
- Click here for my TEDx talk on Gratitude & Mindfulness.
- Click here to check out my speaker reel, and here to book me as a speaker for your next event.
- Click here to check out my online course offerings.
- And of course check out my website for more information about my work.
Thanks so much for joining me!
Until next time,
Jonah
