Mission 7: Happiness

Hello wisdom-seekers,

Sorry to interrupt your cheerful, light-hearted weekend.
We’re about to get reeaaal serious: let’s talk about a thing called happiness.

• happiness
  /ˈhapɪnəs/
  noun
  the state of being happy.
  “she struggled to find happiness in her life”

Damn it — the dictionary is not really helping us here. Let’s start at the beginning…

Why do we need to talk about happiness?

Amazon currently lists over 20.000 books on or related to happiness. (!)
Apparently — we’re all looking for ways to be happier.

But despite amazing societal advances in the last decades — happiness levels have not significantly increased in the Western world.
Instead — burnout levels have been rising for years in almost every developed country.
According to OECD, over 10% of people in the US are currently taking some form of anti-depressant.
Apparently — we’re not very good at it…

From a personal point of view — I also feel I don’t master “being happy” all that well. I have my fair share of grumpy days — and a long list of regrets/fears/bad moments hovering around in my mind. Not that I don’t like my life — but I know people who seem to be able to nail it every day. What are they doing differently?

Apparently — no one ever taught me “How to be happy 101” in high school.

What I do know, is that happiness is an underlying motivation for almost all of my actions in life. So it’s probably worth examining closer.

What is happiness exactly?

As a result of my complete ignorance on the subject — over the course of a few years, I’ve probably had 10 different viewpoints on what happiness means.

• Being grateful with what you have — aka not always wanting more.
• Being excited about what you’re doing/working on — aka “finding your passion”.
• Spending a lot of time with people you love — aka meaningful relationships.
• Having ZERO worries in your life (financial, professional, physical, …) — aka living on a tropical island.
• Doing something that helps others — aka making other people happy.
• Exploring, seeing new places, meeting new people — aka adventure.
• …

A lot of people relate happiness to success. This may be true — but research has shown that it actually runs in the other direction. So, rather than success being the key to happiness, happiness could in fact be the key to success. This is why it’s such an important topic.

Now, we have a bit of a problem. All these different views result in different actions, different life choices — with real consequences.

Is it all purely personal, different for everyone? Or can we find some common threads? Some timeless principles that could apply everywhere?

The timeless view

As you may have guessed — I believe in the latter — and I’ve decided to give it a shot. Without proclaiming the end of all wisdom, I’m listing some of my “realizations” concerning being happy — coupled with the blogs, videos or books that have inspired these views.

You can find all of this on the Happiness page. As usual, it will be a combination of:

• Science
• The advice of great people, with a decent amount of life experience
• Other shit that just struck a chord with me.

One more thing — I would LOVE for you guys to challenge me. Comment on these pieces — share your favorite happiness hacks, daily rituals, philosophical titbits, quotes, … We might learn something from each other!

Here it goes:

0. DEFINITION → Happiness has two sides

Psychologists have long been studying the characteristics of happy vs. unhappy people.
They first need a definition of course — and they have come up with this one (2min watch).

I like the fact that it’s two-sided:

1. Happiness = a set of positive emotions that you feel right here & now (but fleeing)
2. Happiness = a long-term sense of satisfaction about your life and where it is headed (less fleeing)

That’s a start.

1. SCIENCE → It is possible to rewire your brain for happiness

Building on this definition, amazing advances have been made in the field of Neuroscience. The research mostly relates to part 1 of the definition: how do you cultivate this positive set of emotions on a regular basis?

I’m not an expert; but the basic conclusions are simple and quite startling.

• Your brain is not static: it is possible to change and re-connect neural pathways inside your own brain — which then leads to changes in your emotions.
• If you keep reinforcing certain “happiness pathways”, these will get stronger, and it actually becomes easier to be happy over time.
• You can do this by practicing your mind in very specific ways. (e.g. thought exercises, meditation, …

The deeper conclusion is that happiness is a skill, something you can practice and get better at.

I’ve only scratched the surface in learning about this, but here are some of the best pieces I’ve found:

• On the Neuroscience of Happiness
  Rick Hanson (2010), 20min listen
• Neuroscience reveals 4 rituals that will make you happy
  Eric Barker (2017), 4min read
• The Surprising Science of Happiness
  Dan Gilbert (2004), 18min watch
• An Equation that Predicts Happiness
  Cari Romm (2014), 3min read
  Really cool — and a little disturbing/depressing as well. As a dreamy type, I’m not sure I can realistically aim to lower my expectations all the time. :)
• The Neurobiology of Happiness
  Jayne Goddard (2015), 4min read
  Goes a little deeper into how our thoughts reinforce the connection between certain synapses — and how these then become our “default” connections. I think this is fascinating. “Choose your thoughts wisely…”

I think this is only the beginning, and science will have a lot more to say about happiness. In the meantime, let’s try to apply what we already know.

2. ADVICE OF GREAT PEOPLE → Time is Limited

“A long-term sense of satisfaction about your life”. Part 2 of the definition gets a little less science-y.

Kind of like the advice everybody keeps telling you: make decisions for the long term…. But how do you actually do that? Should I give up present-moment happiness in exchange for future joy? How much should I trade then? And should I maximize happiness for when I’m 40? 50? 60? I don’t know…

I never really knew how to do this, until I saw three specific pieces. They inspired me to think long term, but not in a traditional way.
Enjoy:

• Regret Minimization Framework
  Jeff Bezos (2008), 2min watch
  This simple framework by Jeff Bezos does succeed in getting me to think long-term, and actually make decisions. I love it.
• The Tail End
  Wait But Why (2015), 5min read
  Once you’re anywhere past age 18 — this is a painful eye-opener. I was amazed by the graphic view of your life in weeks. We all need a reminder sometimes!
• Your Time is Limited
  Steve Jobs (2005), 4min watch
  No explanation needed…

There must be other gems where people talk about long-term happiness. And actually try to link it with your daily decision making.
We’d love to hear about them…

3. MY VIEW → An interesting life >> a happy life

As usual, I have to mention Tim Ferriss at some point.

He states that the opposite of happiness is not unhappiness, but boredom (!). The more practical synonym of happiness is excitement — thus, you should chase whatever makes you most excited about living and waking up for another day.

I’m not sure this applies everywhere, and that it applies in the long term — but I do feel that whenever I’m doing something interesting, it’s almost impossible for me to be unhappy. It just doesn’t happen.

Therefore, I liked this little piece:

1. What makes an interesting life interesting?
   Cal Newport, 2007, 4min read
   There are many different views on what makes for an “interesting” life. So Cal Newport just lists up the 5 things that matter most to him. Great inspiration from a great author (check him out!).

Conclusion

As usual, I don’t have it all figured out yet. So I’d love to know your opinion. What makes you happy? How do you prioritize happiness in your life? Is there one blog/clip/podcast you re-visit often?

We’d be glad to hear it from you.

Adios?

Nope, making this post was way too interesting… Gonna have to keep doing it!

Have a great and heppy week!
Gilles & Thomas

Why Timeless?

As you may know, we’re trying to find and preserve truly valuable content on the web. The first blog post gives some more context on the idea of an open database of “wisdom”. In short: we’re trying to separate the signal from the noise on the web. We’re not looking for the next hype or trend; we’re looking for principles that can be applied in many different circumstances.

Gameplan

First and most crucial step: find the wisdom. On today’s over-crowded internet, ruled by the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and other hype-machines… this could prove hard enough.

Here’s the plan:

• Every week, I start things off with my 5 all-time classics on a certain theme.
• Productivity, Decision Making, Health, Creativity, Entrepreneurship, Relationships, … y mucho más!
• If you have great material on this subject, you can upload it into the database. Sharing is caring!
• We check out each other’s favorites and rate them on their timeless value.
• Subject by subject, we build up “hit-lists” of wisdom to preserve and expand.
• Maybe most importantly, we all learn a shit ton of each other in the process.

Visit the first version of the database: Timeless Wisdom