by Ray White
These foods are relatively cheap and within walking distance. He knows he needs to exercise; but he really doesn’t like to sweat, and he can’t seem to find the right time or the energy. Even with all the caffeinated sodas he consumes, he still feels sluggish. Also, he doesn’t understand the hygiene complaints. Since he doesn’t work out, he doesn’t sweat. He spends most of his time in the apartment, so he showers every two or three days, or when he feels he really needs to.
As he is starting his fifth game of Halo, the power goes out. Dylan does the calculations in his head and comes up with about three months. That's about how long he figures it's been since an electricity bill was paid. He wonders whether his grandma will pay the bill again. She said it was the last time three months ago. Maybe she will understand that this time is different.
This is an extreme example, but true. Names and events have been slightly altered or adjusted, but otherwise this represents how Dylan currently lives his life.
Let’s look at another real example. Kyle gets up at 7 am when his alarm goes off for the second time. He wants to stay in bed, but he has things to accomplish. He has to get in 20 minutes on the treadmill and 15 minutes of weights before he leaves for work at 8 am. Kyle has put on a little extra weight since he finished college two years ago, and he's trying to reverse that trend. He's not thrilled with his job, and some days he really hates it; but he knows he has to build some experience and make some connections before he will be able to move into something else. He takes his lunch to work or goes home to eat when he can, because he needs to stay on a budget and a reasonable diet. He also works an extra job on Saturdays to save money for a cruise he is planning with his girlfriend. Kyle picks up the mess he made last night while watching TV and hanging out with his friends. He has roommates, and they don’t appreciate living in a trashed house.
After a long day of work spent mostly on the phone with his customers, Kyle and a few friends go back to his house to have a few beers, play a little Xbox, and share the ups and downs of their days. Kyle is going to his girlfriend’s for dinner that night, so he has to limit it to one beer and one hour of Halo. It's a good plan, since he seems to keep getting killed in Halo anyway.
Kyle and his girlfriend are eating in more than out so they can save money for the cruise, and because Kyle wants to make sure he never has to move back in with his parents. The three months after college were more than enough for him to learn that he is happier on his own, or at least with roommates. He still texts his parents on a regular basis and has dinner with them once every week or two.
Who would you choose to be, Dylan or Kyle? They are two different people with clearly different lives and motivations, but their extreme differences provide a great opportunity for comparison. They indulge in similar pleasures, but the degree to which those pleasures are constructive and support happiness vs. being destructive and disconnect from happiness is significant and makes a noteworthy impact on the quality of their lives.
Both were accepted to community colleges and had the opportunity to choose more enticing pleasures over homework. Dylan chose pleasure to an extreme, and as a result he failed out of college. Kyle chose those pleasures more sparingly and was able to complete college, although not as soon as he would have liked. Dylan enjoyed the pleasure of sleep, but practiced it to the detriment of exercise and job searches. Kyle got enough sleep but stopped enjoying that pleasure so he could move on to other additional happiness activities like exercise and contributing at a job. Neither was as pleasurable as staying in bed, but each was necessary for happiness.
Dylan was focused on getting as much pleasure from the Xbox as he could--so focused that he was willing to blow his budget, and more importantly the trust of his girlfriend, his best relationship, in order to indulge in that pleasure. By comparison, the pleasure of Xbox had a positive impact on Kyle’s happiness. He played for a reasonable amount of time and was able to share the experience with close friends. By experiencing the pleasures with his friends, Kyle had a double positive impact on his happiness. He had the pleasure of playing, and the pleasure of spending enjoyable time with other human beings.
Experiencing pleasure is different for every individual. We all have different levels of sleep, Xbox, and financial responsibility that are right for us. Each one of us has to determine when the pleasure is contributing to our happiness, vs. when it is too much and is taking away from our happiness.
The table below provides some examples of pleasures, how they can connect to happiness, and how they can interfere with happiness.
Real Life Disastrous Consequences
Josh Brent, formerly a 24-year-old starting nose tackle for the Dallas Cowboys, was recently found guilty of intoxication manslaughter. This young man, with an extremely bright future, apparently chose to overindulge in his pleasures, which in this case appear to have included alcohol and driving. He wrecked his car, killing his passenger, a family friend and teammate (needless to say, another young man with a bright future). As a result, he is in jail, has retired from a job that millions aspire to have, and has probably derailed his happiness for the foreseeable future, not to mention the happiness of his lost teammate's family.
The pleasure of going out to have fun, drinking a few beers, and spending quality time with friends can connect you to happiness. But pleasure becomes disconnected from happiness when a choice is made to let those things go too far. Happiness includes having fun, but it also requires good choices and active consideration of future consequences.
Chapter 4
Take Control of Your Life
In the previous chapters we established that happiness is internal and is a state of mind. That means it's something you can control. You can change your level of happiness. You can decide what your life will be.
Taking control of your life requires:
1.The desire to change and grow
2.A belief that you can actually make changes in your life
3.Identification of the areas to change or adjust
4.A choice to take the actions necessary to change your life rather than passively observing how the events in your life unfold
Sonja Lyubomirsky, in her book The How of Happiness, provided a summary of the research about what determines happiness. She illustrated it with a pie chart that showed 50% of happiness is determined by genetics. In other words, some people are born with more ability to be joyful and happy than others. It turns out that people have a set point, or a level of happiness that is natural to them. Another 10% of happiness is influenced by our external circumstances. Who we marry, how much money we have, what type of house we live in, etc. These are what most of us spend our time chasing and why we find it so difficult to capture happiness. They add to happiness, but only to a small degree and often only for a limited time.
That leaves 40% of happiness that can be determined by our thoughts and actions. This is what we can control. This 40% is how we think, feel, and act in the hundreds of little situations that we encounter every day. This 40% is our opportunity to increase our level of happiness. So even though we have a set genetic point and can’t influence more than 10% of our happiness with money and other circumstances, we can control our thoughts and actions to raise our level of happiness above our set genetic point, if we so choose.
NOTE: Sonja Lyubomirsky points out that these numbers are based on a consolidation of many research studies--they are not exact and vary by person. The graph is intended to illustrate the concept that a high percentage of our happiness can be determined by controlling our thoughts and actions.
What are you choosing? Our state of mind has four times more impact on our happiness than do our circumstances. How are you influencing your state of mind? How are you categorizing your life? If you have to miss a meeting to stay home with a sick child, is it a catastrophe that makes you angry and unhappy, or are you grateful for the time with your son or daughter? Which feeling is your child seeing during your time together?
If your sig
nificant other gets you a gift on your birthday that you're not excited about, are you thinking about how bad the relationship is because they don’t know what you want, or are you appreciating someone who remembered and was thoughtful enough to get you a gift? Do you become unhappy when, after reviewing your finances, you find out you can’t buy that new house for another year? Or are you grateful that you have a job, can save money, and don’t just have a home but can plan to upgrade your home? It all depends on your perspective.
Here are a few conclusions you can draw from the happiness research:
1.You choose happiness. It is not something you receive.
2.You have the power to influence your happiness.
3.Happiness starts today. If you are waiting until tomorrow to be happy, that day will never come.
4.Change how you think about happiness and the world and you will change your level of happiness.
Despite all of Americans’ modern conveniences and growth in average income, we continue to have lower and lower happiness ratings and consistently increasing rates of depression. The things we think will make us happier are not, and our general knowledge of how we can control our own happiness seems to be fading away through the generations.
Lyubormirsky explains how happy people take control of their happiness:
If we observe genuinely happy people, we shall find that they do not just sit around being contented. They make things happen. They pursue new understandings, seek new achievements, and control their thoughts and feelings. In sum, our intentional, effortful activities have a powerful effect on how happy we are, over and above the effects of our set points and the circumstances in which we find ourselves. If an unhappy person wants to experience interest, enthusiasm, contentment, peace, and joy, he or she can make it happen by learning the habits of a happy person.
In his book, The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg came to similar conclusions: “If you believe you can change – if you make it a habit – the change becomes real.” He relates a story about William James, who was an interesting 19th-century psychologist and philosopher trained as a physician. He taught the first psychology course in America. He decided, in a single day, to change his life. He was distraught by the success of his family members and his own complete lack of success. James’s father was a wealthy and prominent theologian and his brother was a successful writer.
William had failed at being a painter, an adventurer, and a doctor. As a last resort, and in an effort to put off committing suicide, he decided to attempt a one-year experiment in free will. He would believe that he had the ability to change his life, then determine if that magnitude of change was possible. He knew and wrote that in order to change, he had to believe. “My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will,” James said. Over the next 12 months, William James started creating habits and making changes. As a result, he got married, started teaching at Harvard, and began spending time with friends who would eventually become more famous than he. He spent time in discussions with Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (who would eventually become a Supreme Court justice), Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain, and Sigmund Freud.
We can change our level of happiness by changing our thoughts and taking action on a daily basis. Going through the motions is not enough. You have to want to change and you have to believe you can change.
Ellen Langer did an interesting study on the ability of humans to change their thoughts and improve their lives. In 1979 she invited a group of senior men, in their 70s and 80s to a monastery in New Hampshire, where they would pretend to be 20 years younger. The real year was 1979, but they were going to pretend it was 1959 and live for a week as if they were younger, healthier version of themselves. Prior to the experiment, the participants were put through a series of tests to measure their weight, vision, flexibility, dexterity, intelligence, and health, as well as psychological function.
They also took photographs prior to the experiment that could be compared to photographs after the experiment. The monastery was set up like a resort so that everything the men would need for a week was within the 1959 environment. The men had badges that had their old pictures from 1959. They had regular discussions about politics and current events from 1959. They listened to music and watched movies from 1959. They discussed sporting events as if it were 1959. They even wrote their own bios as if it were 1959 to share with the other participants. They were instructed to talk and act as if it were really 1959. In this world, nothing after 1959 existed yet.
The results were astounding. Besides feeling younger and refreshed, their physical health based on objective measures actually improved. Their hearing improved, their eyesight improved, their grip improved, and their memory improved. Their arthritis diminished and they had more flexibility in their fingers. They had a separate group of people compare the before and after photos of the participants. In the photos taken after the experiment was completed, the participants looked younger than in the photos taken before the experiment.
By purposely changing their thoughts and actions, the participants were able to significantly change objective measures of their health and well-being. We can change our happiness and our lives by changing our thoughts and actions.
In a related experiment, Langer and her team worked with hotel maids. She divided them into two groups and measured their physical characteristics as well as their attitudes about health and well-being. The maids believed that they did not get any exercise and did not categorize the work they did as exercise. She explained to one group how the work they did was similar to exercises done in a gym. Pushing a vacuum cleaner or a cart, bending up and down, and making a bed all had physical benefits. Once they had educated the group about their work being much like exercise, they left them alone to go back to their normal lives. After a period of time they came back and interviewed them again. They asked the group if anything had changed. Had they started exercising or in any way changed their habits to improve their physical health? They had not. They also interviewed the maids' coworkers to confirm that nothing material in their lives had changed. So they had a group of maids whose only change was that they now believed the work they did was like exercise.
Once again, people's thoughts had resulted in changes to their physical condition. The maids who now believed their work was like exercise had lost weight, had reduced their waist-to-hip ratio, had reduced their BMI (Body Mass Index), and had lowered their blood pressure. How they thought about their work changed the physical characteristics of their lives. What about you?
When you think about changing your life it can seem big and overwhelming. In later chapters we will include a roadmap about how to make small, incremental changes. For now, it is important to note that most people don’t change their lives in a day, and they don’t change everything at once. They find a single small change they can turn into a habit. Then they add additional incremental changes, one at a time, until they have created the life they want to live. Take baby steps, focus on one thing. Find a small area where you can be successful, implement it, and then build on that success.
It Starts at an Early Age
The thoughts that help us learn to be happy come under attack at a young age. The Marketing Store Worldwide creates an index that measures kids’ happiness around the globe. Their studies show that kids’ belief that the world is “a good place” falls by more than 30% from the time they are 6 to the time they are 12. As our children start learning about the world from parents, teachers, their friends, and the media, they find that the world is not as full of cotton candy and balloons as they had once thought. They get introduced to the realities of life and death, relationships, financial challenges, crime, and other general impediments to constant happiness.
They learn to start thinking about the things that go badly instead of assuming everything will always be good. Unfortunately, along with those lessons they learn to give up instead of to persevere, to expect perfection instead of accepting good effort, and to try to control the w
orld around them rather than risk being vulnerable and hurt.
We can increase our level of happiness by controlling our thoughts and actions. But starting in our early years, we build habits to protect ourselves from the world, which we see as scary and intimidating. At times we also forget what thoughts and actions enabled us to be happy in the first place. We learn early on not to control our thoughts and actions related to happiness, but instead to experience and suffer through what is making us unhappy.
Chapter 5
Autonomy
One of the first ways we can take control of our thoughts and actions is by cultivating Autonomy.
“Autonomy - the feeling that your life, its activities and habits, are self-chosen and self-endorsed “Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
“Having a strong sense of controlling one’s life is a more dependable predictor of positive feelings of well-being than any of the objective conditions of life we have considered…” Angus Campbell
Research has shown that autonomy has a greater effect on happiness than does money, and that providing autonomy reduces negative psychological symptoms. Three studies that included more than 420,000 people across 63 countries and spanned more than 40 years found that money has an indirect positive effect on happiness, only in that it increases autonomy, and more autonomy has a direct positive effect on happiness. If autonomy decreases or stays the same, money does not increase happiness.