What’s In It for Me?
What is the simplest formula for a happy life? The Happiness Equation is the result of over a decade of research by author Neil Pasricha, containing the collective wisdom of hundreds of positive psychologists, dozens of Fortune 500 CEOs, and thousands of personal interviews. The advice given in the book is somewhat counter-intuitive, but can be easily applied to your own life.
The Big Idea
The book suggests there are three important goals: 1) To want nothing-that’s contentment. 2) To do anything-that’s freedom. 3) To have everything- that’s happiness. There are nine secrets that can help us accomplish these goals. I’ll briefly summarize the nine below, with more detail on five of the secrets in the key concepts:
Be Happy First: Instead of trying to achieve and accomplish things, thinking that will lead to happiness, focus on being happy first, which will then lead to great accomplishments/outcomes.
Do It For You: Don’t compare yourself to other people and live your life on your own terms, making sure you are pursing something because you want to, not because others expect it from you.
Remember The Lottery: Be aware of the problem scanning part of your brain (the amygdala). Do not fall into the trap of always wanting more, and remember how lucky you are.
Never Retire: It is important to have a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Chances are you will lose more components to happiness in the workplace setting than you think by retiring.
Overvalue You: Understand how valuable your time is and realize how much you a are truly making after factoring in commuting time and overtime. it is possible that an Ivy League MBA is actually making the same salary as a teacher if you compare the amount of hours put it.
Create Space: Categorize your decision making to free up mental capacity and create more time.
Just Do it: Action is the best form of motivation. Getting started is the hardest part.
Be You: “Your relationship with yourself is the most important relationship in your life.” The Happiness Equation p.242
Don’t take advice: The world is full of conflicted advice. You are often times better off not taking advice.
Key Concept #1
Be Happy First
“Happy people don’t have the best of everything. They make the best of everything. Be happy first.” Happiness Equation p. 27
The author challenges the common notion that we should work hard in order to achieve big success and then we’re happy. In real life, that model is broken. It can be easy to get caught in the trap of always striving for more. Why stop at a college degree when you can get a masters of PhD? Why settle for Director when you can become a VP? We never get to happiness with this line of thinking. Instead of focusing on working hard to achieve big success and then achieve happiness, why not flip the sequence around and start with being happy first. If we start with being happy, we feel great. When we feel great, we end up doing great work because we feel great doing it. Great work then leads to big success.
In order to understand why being happy can be such a challenge sometimes, it is helpful to understand evolution. We all have negative self talk, and that’s okay. The problem is not when we have negative thoughts in our brain, but when we think we shouldn’t have negative thoughts. Why do our brains focus on negative things? Because for most of the history of mankind, life was short, brutal and highly competitive. Our brains are trained for this short, brutal and highly competitive world. 99% of human history was living in this world, where the average life span was thirty years, and our brains were constantly battling for survival.
Thankfully, there are methods to overcome our brain that is wired for survival. California psychology professor Sonja Lyubomirsky published research that concluded 10% of our happiness is based on circumstances, while 90% is based on how we react to those circumstances. Included in that 90% is our genetic predisposition, but more importantly, our intentional activities. Intentional activities are those specific things we can do to improve our happiness, which have four times the effect on our happiness than anything happening in our life. Said another way, if someone told you their job, health, martial status, and income, you would only be able to predict 10% of their happiness. The remaining amount is not determined by your external world but by the way your brain processes it.
If being happy first is the key to being happy, how does one go about this process? The author gives 7 ways to be happy first:
Be Physically Active
Researchers reported in the Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology that the more physically active people are, the greater their general feelings of excitement and enthusiasm. The good news is it doesn’t take much. Half an hour of brisk walking three times a week improves happiness.
Write for 20 minutes
Writing for 20 minutes about a positive experience improves happiness because you actually relive the experience as you’re writing it and then relive it every time you read it.
Random Acts of Kindness
Professor Martin Seligman stated “we scientists have found that doing a kindness produces the single most reliable momentary increase in well-being of any exercise we have tested.” Carrying out a few random acts of kindness a week can dramatically improve your happiness.
Unplug
The most productive people have the ability to fully engage in the challenge at hand, but then disengage periodically to seek renewal. Try turning your phone off after dinner or reducing your phone screen time. Your mind needs a break.
Hit Flow
When you’re completely absorbed with what you’re doing it means you are being challenged and demonstrating skill at the same time. Time flies and you feel like you are “in the zone.”
Meditate
Research studies from Massachusetts General Hospital and other high profile institutions have confirmed that meditation can permanently rewire your brain to raise levels of happiness and increase self awareness and compassion.
Gratitude
Write down 3-5 things you are grateful for from the past week. Charles Dickens said it well: “Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has many, not your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.”
Key Concept #2
Do it for you
Many people think the approach to getting ahead in life and being happy is to set goals and achieve them. However, it is important to delineate between external goals and internal goals, as the latter has little impact on your happiness or helping you become a better person. The author suggests using the mantra “do it for you” to block criticism and remember why you are pursuing your goal. We know we shouldn’t listen to our critics and instead do things for ourselves, but why do we listen and take outside rankings, results, or opinions over our own opinion of ourselves? What makes us interested in external measurements? The underlying reason is our lack of confidence. The author concludes the mindset of truly confident people can be defined as having both a high opinion of other people and a high opinion of themselves. In contrast, people who have a high opinion of themselves and a low opinion of other people are perceived as arrogant and they don’t understand that having a high opinion of others doesn’t lower their opinion of themselves. It can be human nature to compare yourself to others or feel threatened by confident people, but remember to exhibit true confidence you have to not be affected by other people’s confidence.
How do we get to that ideal state of accepting ourselves and thinking highly of others at the same time? There are three steps to achieving a high opinion of yourself.
- Hide
- Apologize
- Accept
To apply the steps to an example, the author for years was afraid to mention to others that he graduated from Harvard because of other people’s perceptions. Rather than mention this in his biography, he hid from it. Pasricha at first told himself it was out of humility, but realized fear was really the motivating factor. He later reluctantly told people he attended Harvard if they asked, but realized this was in a sense apologizing as if he didn’t want to admit it. The final step was acceptance, where he no longer was reluctant to tell people where he attended college if they asked. This approach exhibits confidence because it allows whatever judgement that comes to be wholly owned by the other person. Accepting yourself communicates confidence. This example might sound like a “first world problem”, but the reality is we all have insecurities that undermine our self confidence and if we progress through the three steps above we can make progress to stop hiding and start accepting ourselves.
Key Concept #3
Remember the Lottery
The book suggests there are multiple “wars” we are fighting everyday. The first war is between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex. The amygdala is the oldest part of the human brain, responsible for scanning the world for worries. This problem scanning machine is on 24/7 and if there is a problem, or even the perception of a problem, it pumps your body full of adrenaline and stress hormones (i.e. the fight or flight mode). The prefrontal cortex is the newer part of the brain responsible for rational thoughts and helps you think things through. These two parts of the brain tend to be at odds with one another, reminding us of one major truth: We cannot control our emotions, but we can control our reactions to our emotions.
The second “war” mentioned is between more and enough. This is the constant battle of “keeping up with the Joneses.” We are all subjected to countless advertisements daily and live in a consumer driven society, making it nearly impossible to avoid the culture of more.
What can we do to avoid the culture of more? 3 words: Remember the lottery. That means be conscious of your problem scanning amygdala, be conscious of the more you want, and conscious to remember how lucky you are to be where you are. Essentially, remember you already have enough, and more is NOT always better. If this still difficult to comprehend, think of this reality: There are 7 billion people on Earth today and 115 billion people who have ever lived in the history of the world. That means 108 billion people are dead, or said another way, fourteen out of every fifteen people who have ever lived will never see another sunset again, enjoy summer, see the ocean, or kiss their loved ones goodnight. In addition to being lucky to be alive, chances are you are among the wealthiest people in the entire world. The average world income is five thousand dollars. If you make more than fifty thousand dollars a year, you’re in the top 0.5%. Do you really need much more than 99.5% of people alive? You already have more than almost everybody on this planet. On your very worst days, take a step back and reflect on these thoughts. Remember the lottery, because you’ve already won!
Key Concept #4
Never Retire
“The world has far more problems, opportunities, and challenges that it has people like you to do interesting and meaningful work on them.” The Happiness Equation p. 125.
Men and women in Okinawa, Japan live an average of seven years longer than Americans and have the longest disability-free life expectancy on Earth. Not surprisingly, they eat off of smaller plates, stop eating when they’re 80% full, and they are put into social groups as babies to slowly grow old together. They also have a much different outlook on life than we do here in the West. Americans like to think of retirement as the golden age, while people in Okinawa don’t even have a word in their language for retirement. Instead, they have the word ikigai, which roughly translates to “the reason you wake up in the morning.” In fact, scientists at the Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine put this concept to the test, spending seven years studying the longevity of more than 43,000 Japanese adults and concluded participants reporting an ikigai at the beginning of the study were more likely to have higher levels of self-rates health and lower levels of stress, including living longer than those without an ikigai.
Where did the concept of retirement come from? The Germans. Retirement was intended to free up jobs for young people by paying those sixty-five and older to do nothing until they died. But there was a big difference between 1889 Germany and today: The average life span was sixty-seven years old.
In 1962, the cover story of Time magazine featured the rapid aging of Americans who had lots of time and money but no place in society. The article discussed age-segregated housing develops than focused on leisure in Arizona and other parts of the country, transforming American’s image of retirement into a time of self-absorption and fun. Apparently it worked, because by 1982 nearly 50 percent of men said they were retiring to pursue leisure, versus only 3 percent in 1951.
While there are some positive results for older adults who took the path of retirement, it also lead many into boredom and a lack of sense that they were contributing to society or others’ lives. The author thinks it’s important to remember three things about retirement:
- Retirement is a new concept. With that exception of Germany, it didn’t exist before the twentieth century anywhere in the world.2
- Retirement is a Western concept. It does to exist in Okinawa or much of the developing world. Old people in much of the world do not play golf everyday. Instead, they contribute to their families and society.3
- Retirement is broken concept. It is based on three assumptions that are not true: we enjoy doing nothing instead of being productive, we can afford to live well while earning no money for decades (think of the retirement savings crisis in America), we can afford to pay others to earn no money for decades (i.e. social security could very well be gone by the time Millennials reach retirement age) .
So, if retirement is not the answer, why continue to work? Pasricha provides the 4 S’s of work:
Social
Study after study concludes that is is our social connections that are the single biggest driver of our happiness. New York Times bestselling author Daniel Gilbert writes in Stumbling on Happiness: “If I wanted to predict your happiness and I could only know one thing about you, I wouldn’t want to know about your gender, religion, health, or income. I’d want to know about the strength of your relationships with your friends and family.” There is no question we need to be social to be happy, and work provides major social stimulation.
Structure
We all have 168 hours in the week, and the author suggest thinking of your time in three buckets. Roughly speaking, one could think of 56 hours being devoted to sleep and 56 hours to working (including time commuting, thinking about work, emails at home, etc). That leaves a reminding 56 hours a week. This is your bucket where you spent time with family and friends, workout, listen to music, etc. Our work bucket earns us our third bucket and work provides this structure and pays for it.
Stimulation
Work exposures us to hundreds of tiny joys that can be easy to overlook. It may seem trivial, but coming back from lunch and getting a better parking spot, or when the meeting ends early, or the sense of accomplishment from getting through a major project all contribute to our happiness. Work gives us a place to learn and discover many new things about our lives and our world. Since the age range in most jobs is typically quite diverse, different backgrounds and experiences provide thoughts we don’t always get from family or friends.
Story
Every company has a story, whether it is as simple as Coke wanting to bring happiness to the world or Medtronic contributing to human welfare by restoring health and extending life with their pacemaker. When you are working you become part of something bigger than yourself. Retiring chops you out of a productive story.
Key Concept #5
Create Space
We likely all feel too busy. The author had a high profile corporate career and watched many business leaders burn out. The solution to prevent burnout is to create space. No thinking, not doing. This is the relaxing beach vacation without plans, phones, or thoughts. Too much of anyone thing is bad, so happy people know how to have balance in their lives and alternative between high intensity thinking or doing and creating space.
There are literally thousands of small decisions we make every day. Barack Obama admitted to only wearing gray or blue suits because he wanted to pare down decisions. You will notice a similar simplistic wardrobe strategy by high profile executive such as the late Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg. Creating automatic decisions helps in other areas of our lives, such as investing. Many corporates auto-enroll participants in 401(k) plans and make target date retirement funds the default option, so participants do not even have to think about starting to save for retirement.
The books suggests looking at decisions you make on a daily basis and decide which ones you can automate, regulate, effectuate, and debate. Below are brief examples:
Automate: paying the phone bill, buying toilet paper and detergent, picking your workout routine. Basically anything that is of low importance and low time commitment.
Effectuate: Eating dinner with family, grabbing the kids from day care. Effectuate simply means getting in done. These are tasks that are low in time but high in importance.
Regulate: Checking email or managing your calendar are prime examples. Make rules and follow them. These can be time consuming tasks that are generally considered to be of low importance.
Debate: Buying a house, picking a spouse, applying for a new job, etc. High-importance, high time decision are obviously the ones you want to spend the most time on. Debate in your head, call friends, list the pros and cons. These are the decisions that really matter.
Over time you will have devolved the mental muscle to automatically categorize decisions based on the four broad rules above, which can save you significantly amounts of time and mental stress. Creating space comes from hacking at choice, time, and access.
- How can we make every decision at twice the speed? Remove choice (i.e automate like Mark Zuckerberg).
- What is the counterintuitive way to having more time? Remove time by creating a deadline. “It is a common observation that works expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” P. 183
- How can we add an hour to the day with one small chance? Remove access. Although this may not be possible for everyone, the author deleted his instant-messaging software at world and only checked email at specific times each day. By removing the mental strain of constantly switching between tasks, you can effectively increase your productivity and add back time to your day.
Apply It
- Think about some of the daily decisions you make. The hundreds of small decisions we make everyday drain our mental capacity. Can you automate some of your decisions to make your day easier? It could be something as simple as laying out your clothes for work the night before so you don’t have to think about what you are going to wear in the morning.
- The book mentions the concept of being happy first. Write down a list of ten items that make you happy and evaluate how much time you spending on these items.
- Social connection is a vital component of happiness. It can be more difficult to make social connections if you have a demanding career or have a family, but try to schedule a time to get together with an old friend for drinks. Or better yet, sign up for an intramural sports league to meet new people.
- If you are on the verge of retirement, think about how you can still incorporate the 4 S’s of work (social, structure, stimulation, and story) into your retirement life. The Japanese have taught us the importance of having a reason to get out of bed each morning.