Daily habits of happiness experts
time.com
time.com
> If anyone knows the secret to happiness, it’s surely the people who have dedicated their careers to studying it
Just because you study something doesn't mean you live the life. There was a fun little study that showed professional ethicists don't act particularly more ethical than the average person:
https://aeon.co/essays/how-often-do-ethics-professors-call-t...
It's frighteningly easy for someone who has no experience with wealth to squander a fortune very quickly. Look at big lottery winners who spend it all and end up in bankruptcy.
It's more than just inheriting money from your parents; they teach you how to keep it.
I think the truly happy people don't go around and tell others how to be happy. They just are happy.
On the other hand, people who are happy/content see a lot of pain and suffering in other people and might wish to impart some of their own wisdom into the world. At least that’s how I feel sometimes. But if someone is trying to make a profit from the information or advice then it’s probably not coming from a good place and less likely to be legitimately useful.
- Irish proverb: There is often a hole in the seat of the tailors pants.
>Barbara Fredrickson, a psychology professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
>Emiliana Simon-Thomas, science director of the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California
Sounds like the real path is to win a good job at a large educational institution that allows you the time off to do all the things you need to be happy. I'd rather hear from those "experts" who manage to find happiness when not sitting under a tree on a sunny campus. Where is the expert who works 16-hour shifts on north sea oil rigs?
Sinister sounding. The greater good has been the excuse for some of the worst atrocities in history.
My first reading is actually the later. It sounds to me like a science center that was amalgamated or expended into a "greater" version.
Most of the academics I know are ridiculously busy, trying to juggle teaching, research, publishing, grant applications, conferences, and so on.
> Where is the expert who works 16-hour shifts on north sea oil rigs?
Oil rig workers get a lot more time off than academics. Most work 2 weeks on / 2 weeks off, or 2 on / 3 off.
Probably working, and making fat $$$$ in the process. And if he's not working, probably chillin like a villain.
Instead, where are the people working 2 x fast-foot jobs to pay their bills. 16 hour oil rig gigs or long days fishing translates to lots of days off, but slangin burgers at Maccas without means you'll never advance.
Quite a few years ago, there was the "Seven habits of highly successful people" (or something similar) fad. The idea being if only you can copy these habits, you, too will be successful. Except it doesn't work that way. These habits are more a symptom of the sort of personality that is successful, rather than a cause of success.
My personal impression is that people have a "happiness set point" that is more or less a hardwired part of their personality. Chronically happy people will be so even if their life isn't so great, and chronically unhappy people will be so even with good success metrics. Trying to move your happiness set point by emulating habits of happy people may not work very well, no better than trying to tell a chronically depressed person "just cheer up" or a chronically overweight person "just eat less".
Sleep, exercise, and time spent in nature are the essentials for me: when I don’t have time for them, everything goes to shit. I’ve found that my mood also decreases pretty drastically when I don’t work on hobbies. I also need to at least talk to friends/family even if just on the phone or texting. Meditation is sort of in the middle, with only a slight affect on my happiness, so I dropped it. Prayer doesn’t do much for me, and I’ve never tried therapy. Spending time on social media, news, and/or Reddit completely destroys my mood.
That’s my personal hierarchy. The major points align with the “experts.” And IME, the activities do affect my mood, not necessarily the other way around.
It was a royal slog that I dreaded in the beginning. But from the start it was a mood-improver, and subconsciously I caught on, because I've come to look forward to it and to enjoy it for itself. It gets me outside and in motion, with a reasonable amount of exertion. Doing it without hurting myself requires enough attention to pry me away from my other problems. It relaxes and somehow elevates rather than detaching me. The cleaning up satisfies my subclinical OCD in a deep way. Yard work has become a privilege that came with this property rather than a responsibility and chore.
So now the job is almost done and I'm looking longingly over the fence at my neighbors' wild yards. Maybe I'll make a deal with them, or maybe find some other way of generating happiness from being outdoors and working hard with natural randomness. Like gardening.
In other words, if you have control over aspects of the work, it's more likely to make you happy. This seems to be consistent with the findings in the article.
My courgettes and pumpkin got mildew on them and i couldn't help it but they still kept producing what they could and i had more than i used regardless. I could not keep my tomato plants from getting blown over, keep up with the cutting work, etc....but i still had an abundance of those.
As an aside to your last thought, there's a local teacher in my town that offers to paint home interiors in the summer time. He expects customers to do all the prep work and acquire the paint, but he will show up with brushes, rollers, etc. He does charge a fee, but it's much lower than any professional. When I asked why he does it, he simply answered that he loves painting and finds it relaxing, so he decided to do it on the side to help locals out. Maybe you could do something similar for yards in the neighborhood.
Funny, I thought the same thing about the amount of sick people visiting doctors. The healthiest people I know don't ever see doctors.
* Every day * 5–6 times per week * 3–4 times per week * 1–2 times per week * Less than weekly
Most people I know who go to therapy go once or twice a month. Very few go weekly, and I don't know anyone who goes 3+ times a week.
Also the goal of therapy is to get to a place where you can quit it, so it makes sense that once people are more content with their lives they wouldn't go anymore.
The therapist provides a service with some practice that hopefully leads to some goal, but without excessive professional and emotional investment in the outcome of therapy. After the 50th minute of the session, however, you are on your own.
some nits:
1. everyone's happiness is different. Families are the extreme: I know lots of people in all 4 quadrants of kids/nokids, happy/unhappy. Western culture says that kids=happiness and no-kids=emptiness, but I'm here to tell you that's total and obvious BS. Hobbies are another silliness, again all 4 quadrants, INCLUDING miserable people addicted to their hobbies or using them to hide from unfulfilled lives. Sleep? all 4 quadrants, INCLUDING miserable people who sleep. Excitement? Education? etc etc etc - all 4 quadrants for everything.
2. people are fulfilled/happy/energetic/etc or less, at different times in their lives, and it's really true that sometimes you need to experience a period to find happiness in the next ("growth"). Eat, pray, love, kumbaya, and so on. One of my dearest and most happy/fulfilled friends recently lost his wife and he's miserable, barely holding on - but he recognizes this grieving period and leaning in on his Jewish heritage and year of mourning. Also, times of great learning can be miserable while you're going through them.
3. the survey was around weekly habits, but I've found that my happiness requires "everything in moderation, even moderation" - which includes annual deep-dive projects that utterly destroy any sense of balance, in order to "ship" something professionally or personally. More subtly, regular habbits need to be changed at different times in my life, including diet, exercise, sleep and so on.
hope this helps.
Sorry, but this is panglossian nonsense.
Currently stuck in a field that I don't enjoy, but I'm another year away from completing my master's in the field I would rather be in. But, I gotta pay the bills
Would be interesting to see what constitutes a happiness expert and what type of work they do. I sincerely worry that people who sell happiness(for profit) are those who themselves are most unhappy.
If the happiness experts had said happiness is overrated and to not bother, would time have written that?
How does one qualify as a happiness expert? Is there a post-intervention survey?
It was a French molecular biologist who became a Buddhist monk and spent 25 years meditating.
They tested his brain with an fMRI machine and found that he was 4 standard deviations above the average when it came to the place in his brain where they suspected happiness stemmed from.
IMO he’s qualified as a happiness expert. Not sure about these writers though.
The western scientific tradition is just starting in this journey (about 50 years of scientific studies exist on people that are considered high meditation achievers).
One of the main ideas of buddhism lacks a good translation, but it is in the fact that understanding something intellectually is NOT the same as understanding something experientially. That's apparent in the way this article is laid out. Just because you have been studying happiness doesn't mean you experience it. This difference in types of knowledge is key, and so foundational at the highest levels of buddhist tantra that working with the intellect is often seen as an impediment. That's why Buddhism is seen as a practice above a religion or philosophy.
But to your point, you are right, looking for transitory moments of happiness is not the same as working towards enlightenment.
Also there's nothing more fake than a "happiness expert".
This is also very well trod ground, Plato did a good job on it.
Plato would have called your definition of happiness hedonism.
He would have called the articles definition of happiness eudaimonism, and that lines up pretty good with what you said can make you miserable. Plato and happiness scientists generally agree that eudaimonism is the best route to long term happiness.
Perhaps we should just stop using the word happiness and use the words pleasure and satisfaction instead.
When you ask a software developer that has worked for 3 years on a "successful" side project. He will probably tell you that it cost him lots of evenings he could have been seeing friends or sleeping. Yet that same person may feel very satisfied for having done so.
Still. It is difficult territory. Dissatisfaction is often leads to action that can then lead to "societal success". Should you be dissatisfied then? The Tony Robbinses of the world might say yes!
I think you're misconstruing this a bit. Plato and some happiness scientists see eudaimonia as superior to "affect" (the actual emotional state of "happy"). One is not a route to the other.
Daniel Kahneman is, as far as I can make out, a hedonist and so, fwiw, am I. To me eudaimonia is just smugness
> We don't really want what we think we desire.
“Getting in the history books” aka fame is per definition never going to happen for most people. An important part of growing up is recognizing that you are neither rich nor famous and properly won’t be. General life advice needs to take that into account.
You state this like getting in history books is a universal desire, or a common goal for everyone.
Why is getting in history books a desired thing?
I had fun once. It was awful.
The other 50% do not.
Time time time. What is it something something that buy time? Bingo!
This are the kind of things that make me close a web page.
So called experts.