We tend to forget that happiness doesn’t come as a result of getting something we don’t have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have. ~Frederick Keonig
Some of us like to put happiness on hold until when
– we have better jobs
– we are able to buy bigger houses
– we get married
– our kids are in school
– we don’t have to work
– we lose some weight
The list goes on and on. Once one goal is fulfilled, we experience either fleeting satisfaction or outright disappointment. But still we push on, working harder and harder in an effort to control and manipulate our external circumstances while feeling scared of losing whatever we already have.
Humans supposedly are much better than other animals at predicting future events since only we have the ability to imagine hypothetical situations we have never experienced before. Gibert, the author of Stumbling on Happiness, has done some fascinating research that shows that we are actually not very good at predicting what will make us happy in the future. He’s concluded that time and time again, we overestimate the happiness we’ll receive from getting the stuff we want, such as going on a dream vacation or getting a promotion or having a particular relationship. When we finally get them, we are usually far less happy than we thought we’d be.
Daniel Kahneman and colleagues had almost a 1,000 American women reconstruct their working day and rate each activity. Like most people, the women self-reported that they got enjoyment out of sexual, social and sensory pleasures. They also reported that commuting and working were what they disliked the most during their day. Any yet, so many of us choose a higher-paying job with longer commute and a 12-hour workday (including time on the road) isn’t abnormal in this day and age. Fortunately, more and more companies are realizing that happy employees are more creative and productive and therefore offer flexible work schedule. Ask for and take advantage of the work-from-home benefit. Even if nobody else is doing it, you can be the first to start a work-life balance trend.
Kahneman and colleagues also asked the subjects to predict the mood states of women in other circumstances such as different income (low, high), marital status (single or married), and with or without health insurance. Given that the researchers had chosen women from all these categories they were able to compare how these women self-reported their mood and how other women thought they would report their mood. Not surprisingly there were some differences in negative mood states between the different groups of women, with for example, less negative mood in the high-income group than in the low-income group. But the most striking and significant differences were between the predicted and the actual scores for the different groups, where for example, most women predicted that the low-income group would be in a bad mood two-thirds of the time, when in fact they were only in a bad mood a third of the time. Generally there were around 25 to 40% points between the prediction and the actual self-reports*.
So not only are we not very good at foreseeing what might bring us happiness, we are also bad at estimating the feelings of the people who are in different circumstances from us. When we put them in the ‘worse-than-us’ category, we are prone to exaggerate the impact of their conditions on their happiness.
If you can’t be happy until certain conditions are met, you probably will never be truly happy. The time and place to experience happiness is right here and right now. Happiness can be found in a cup of coffee, having lunch with a friend and singing and laughing with your children in the car. So choose to be happy today!
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* The Pleasure Center by Morten L. Kringelbach