Completing the Happiness Equation
The complete equation of happiness is:
Happiness = (expectations from the world — perception of events) * (expectations from self-own behaviour) * health_quoficient
But how did we arrive at this complicated equation?
Happiness is an universal emotion. One that we all share and seek. For all its commonality, it is an elusive feeling. Researching happiness is like peeling an onion: you think you understand it, only to find there is a deeper and deeper truth hidden under each layer of comprehension.
Layer 1: common perception of happiness is of something that can be attained.
What you need to do to obtain this Holy Grail of happiness depends on the interest of the one who is selling it: either buy the right products (such as snacks, smartphones and clothes), or associate with the right people (such as celebrities, influencers, politicians), or do the right things (such as religion, civic causes, spiritual movements, political parties). And the list can go on and on.
Happiness, it seems, is a rather cheap and abundant commodity if you can buy it from so many different sources. But you get what you pay for: a short cheap hit of happiness.
Layer 2: after buying the so-called ‘happiness’, you inevitably ‘consume’ it.
And then you need to get more and more ‘stuff’ to continue feeling happy. This usually leads to understanding that happiness does not reside in a product or person or movement. The blase response is that of the cliche evolutionary psychologist saying that happiness is merely a carrot to make man perform actions for this survival. But like the carrot and the donkey in the fable, it is a carrot man can never hold on to, as it is forever moved outside his reach. So he has to always do more and more in order to get a taste of the carrot.
One interpretation is that you just cannot be happy for long the carrot is never his for long. But that’s not the end. Looking deeper leads to another layer of the onion.
Layer 3: happiness is the de-facto natural state.
Mo Gawdat argues in Solve for Happy quite convincingly that newborns are happy. They become unhappy only when they have problems. He then extends this to the adult life. In essence it says that we look at the problem the wrong way around: happiness is not something to be gained, happiness is the absence of unhappiness. Thus if you identify what causes unhappiness, then you can prevent it. And you will remain happy.
What causes unhappiness then? There are the ‘real’ problems: if he is hungry, the newborn is unhappy. If you are in debt, or rejected by other people, or suffer illness, then you are unhappy. In these cases unhappiness is a useful signal: it motivates you to solve the problem causing the unhappiness. But Mo Gawdat and many other argue that most of the causes of modern unhappiness are in our heads, not in reality. They are imaginary problems. And these problems become unsolvable by our actions alone.
Layer 4 of the onion: happiness is the difference between what happens and what you expect to happen
If you expect customer support to solve your problem in 1 hour, you are unhappy if it takes a day. But if you expect it to take a week, then a day becomes a pleasant surprise.
The first variant of the happiness equation:
Happiness = Expectations — Reality
You have surely seen this before in one form or another. It states that we create Expectations from the world. And then we compare what happens, Reality, with this. If reality does not match our expectations, then we are unhappy.
If you expect to arrive at work in 30 minutes, you are unhappy if it takes one hour. But if it usually takes 2 hours, then 1 hour is a happy surprise.
Jason Friedman, of Signal v Noise fame, proves this in the business world. His business, Basecamp, does not have any goals or KPIs, except ‘build things we believe in’. He argues that a goal is bad even for business: if you put a goal of 15% growth for your business, then if you do 14% growth you are unhappy even though it is a tremendous achievement.
When you think of expectations, you probably think of what happens in the world. But a change in what you expect from the world, needs a change in how you think of yourself. Dr. Carol Dweck talks in her book Mindset about having either a fixed or a growth mindset. People with a fixed mindset see themselves to be in a certain way, a fixed personality. While people with a growth mindset see themselves in terms of what they do, rather than how they are, so they don’t think about their personality as fixed, rather as a collection of actions.
The people with the fixed mindset inherently have expectations. They focus on results of their behaviour: winning a race rather than running as fast as they can. They see themselves in a certain way and expect to prove this and for the world to treat them accordingly. This is a surefire road to unhappiness.
People with the growth mindset don’t have expectations. They focus on their actions: running fast in a race rather than winning. The results are a learning method for them. Thus they are not disappointed by not winning the race as they did not have expectations from the results.
You would be well served to adopt more of a growth mindset in seeking happiness. It’s quite logical after all: you cannot control the world, but you can control yourself. Or can you?
Layer 5: happiness is when the world behaves as you expect AND you behave as you expect
If you see yourself as kind, you are unhappy if you don’t help someone.
If you see yourself as always right, you are unhappy when you are wrong.
If you see yourself as having an iron will, you are unhappy when you don’t keep a habit.
If you see yourself as fit, you are unhappy when you are lazy and don’t exercise or when you overeat.
If you see yourself as self-determined, you are unhappy when you are
Our expectations from the world are important to us. But we all consider the world distinct from ourselves. So we can reduce our expectations from the world. Yet, we find that even if we do so, we are not happy. Why?
Because we fail in our expectations of ourselves. We believe we consciously decide our behaviour. So we should behave as we expect from ourselves. But we do not. You spend more time on Instagram than you would want. You eat the whole chocolate instead of two pieces. You act badly towards your spouse when you are unhappy even though it’s not their fault. You waste time with meaningless acts even though every second bring you closer to death. Every time you do not live up to your self-image, you are unhappy.
Why do we behave against our conscious decisions?
The Hidden Monkey Model
Because we do not consciously decide our own behaviour. Homo Sapiens exist for over 200,000 years. We have agriculture for about 10,000, so 5% of this. The Internet for less than 50, so less than 0.03% of history. An overwhelming majority of our history was in the Stone Age. We have evolved to be adapted for the Stone Age.
The conscious mind is too slow to survive in the Stone Age. If there is a unidentified sound in the bush, until you consciously decide what to do, the lion has eaten you twice over. That is why your behaviour is decided by your unconscious. Your unconscious is a savage monkey that decides instantly to run if it hear a weird sound in a bush. Because it is literally a survival engine.
Your monkey makes decisions by having a model, a detailed map, of the world. It uses this model to quickly decide the best behaviour for you to survive. Problem is your unconscious, your monkey, evolves slowly, at a biological pace. And the modern age is too recent. So your monkey makes bad decisions because it uses an obsolete model, it still thinks it is in the Stone Age.
Your conscious cannot overrule the monkey. It would be detrimental to survival. However your conscious is the narrator of your life. It tells the story of your life. Thus it can change the monkey’s model of the world by telling it a different story.
When your monkey behaves differently than how you see your self, you are unhappy. It is more painful to be disappointed in yourself, than to be disappointed in the world. Thus the equation of happiness becomes:
Happiness = (expectations — reality) * (self-image — own behaviour)
The 6th and final layer: happiness depends on your health
The sixth layer is the most basic, and yet we blind to it most of the time. If you live in Western world, you probably see the body and mind as separate, dissociated. It is an inheritance from the Church with its separation of the soul from the vulgar body. And yet, we are our body. If the mind or soul or spirit lives on without a body, is yet unknown. But as long as it is connected to the body, as we are alive, mind and body are one.
The Lancet recently released its 2018 update for Global Burden of Disease. it measures the impact and prevalence of illnesses and accidents and violence. Maybe its best measurement is something called DALY: Disability-Adjusted Life Years. It means the number of years lost due to ill-health, disability or early death.
I have taken this data and plotted it for each country along with the Happiness Index from World Happiness Report. The dots are each of the countries.
As you can see there is a clear correlation between Health (as measured in DALYs) and Happiness. The relationship is clear from a visual inspection (9)the red line). The statistical correlation is -0.75. It is measured from 1 = perfect direct correlation to 0 = no correlation to -1 = perfect inverse correlation. -0.75 is a very strong inverse relationship.
This means in countries where the disease burden is low, e.g. health is high, happiness is also high. And in countries where health is low, happiness is also low.
But correlation is not causation. We don’t know if health causes happiness, or happiness causes health, or some other factors cause both. For that we need to look at another research.
The Terman study of the Gifted is the longest ever longevity research. It tracked 1,500 intelligent children throughout their lives for over 75 years. It started out as a means of understanding the effect of childhood intelligence in adult success. But it became a goldmine of data on what determines longevity.
One obvious finding is that longevity is determined by health. So less disease, even conditions that are not deadly themselves, means a longer life, with fewer years of disability. So health leads to fewer DALYs.
Another important findings has to do with happiness. The researchers found that not all happy people were healthy, but healthy people are more likely to be happy than unhealthy people.
This suggests that health creates the potential for happiness. They also found that depression was in most cases a precursor for chronic illness and often death. So depression is a warning sign for impending health issues. This further supports the idea that emotions indicate health, among other things. And so that health is necessary for happiness. If you are unhealthy, it does not matter that you have the lowest expectations in the world, your biology makes you unhappy. It is literally a flashing red alarm for you to fix your health.
We peeled the onion of happiness. The result is that this very fluffy, mushy emotion is not found through either materialism or wishful positive thinking. It is found in a clear formula:
Happiness = minimum ((expectations from the world — perception of events) AND (expectations from self-own behaviour)) * health_quoficient
How do you find happiness?
- Take care of your health. If you don’t, the rest is pointless
- Adopt a growth mindset: don’t expect results or actions from the world. Rather focus on what you can do to achieve your goals and desires
- Accept you are not your monkey: it decides for behaviour that you might not agree with or like
- Learn to train your monkey: use your conscious to tell the monkey stories that change its model. And change its decisions. And change your life.
At Avantgarde Savage I explore how to change your monkey’s model so that it makes better decisions for you. Follow on Patreon or Youtube or Instagram.
