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Some Obstacles to our happiness 

Today I am discussing a few more things that concern all of us. I think by now all of you agree that being happy is very important to us in our lives. We believe happiness depends upon many things that may be and may not be in our control.

But I am putting forth an argument that we are the ones who lay the biggest obstacles to our happiness. Yes, it is we who stand to block our happiness.  We create these blocks by doing certain things.  Some authors put them in a category called “happiness sins.”

First, we underrate the importance of happiness.  We sometimes sacrifice happiness to material objects or gains. We may be unaware, but we do it several times. For example picking up things which are considered to have more value for money than those that we enjoy most. It is most common in food items. We know that latter will give us more happiness yet we chose the former.

The second obstacle is becoming more competitive. In this race we are chasing superiority. “How is the neighbor having a better car than I have?” We falsely believe that becoming superior to others will bring us more happiness. We tend to find satisfaction in becoming richer, stronger, faster, higher achiever,etc.,than others. The list is endless. We also encourage our children to do so. Sometimes we want to be the best in every aspect of life. This desire leads to more competition, and we end up finding someone somewhere better than us in one or the other element. We forget that this will not make us any happier. Chasing superiority is the biggest killer of happiness.

There is a story that I tell in my training which goes like this

Once a crow was living happily in a forest until he saw a swan. The swan was pure white, and its feathers glowed like pearl in the sun. The crow said to the swan, “Oh, you are so beautiful and admired. I would have been delighted if I were like you”. 

The swan told the crow that he was pleased until he saw the two colored parrot with a fine beak. “It is much more beautiful,” the swan said. The crow went to meet the parrot to admire how beautiful it was.  The parrot said, “I took pride in my colors till I didn’t see the peacock. He has beautiful multicolored feathers, and it’s amazing to see them spread out when he dances. I wish I were so beautiful like him”. The peacock was in the zoo in a cage.  Many people had gathered to look at him. When the people left, the crow went near the peacock and said, “I am envious of you. You are so beautiful, and people come from far to have a look at you. I would be very happy if I were like that”.  The peacock said, “I always thought that I was the most beautiful and happy bird on the planet. But because of my beauty, I am entrapped in this zoo. I have realized that the crow is the only bird that is not kept in a cage. So for the past few days, I have thought that if I were a crow, I could happily roam around everywhere.”

Isn’t that our problem too? We make unnecessary comparisons with others and become sad when there is no guarantee that the other person would be happier than us.

Doesn’t the grass always seem greener on the other side?

 We pursue superiority. We fall for the rat race, or we try to take pride in what we have achieved.

Good and healthy relationships share the same position as happiness in the list of top things that people want in life. We all want to be in healthy, loving, nurturing relationships. But if this desire is expressed in an unhealthy way it strains relationships.

 We cannot sustain healthy relationships if we become either too needy or too avoiding. Being needy or clinging is not suitable for our emotional health.  The opposite of it that is being too avoidant or asocial is equally bad.

The third thing that kills happiness is being emotionally too needy or too asocial or aloof.

The fourth mistake we make is to become too controlling, especially for our spouse or kids and also on our employees or staff. For example “My husband wouldn’t tell me how his day went,” or “My wife doesn’t pay much attention to my needs,” “children do not listen to me,” etc.  We try to control other people’s actions or behavior.

Not only this, we want to control the surroundings and even situations and the outcomes of events. For example, “I didn’t want it to rain today,” “such and such person was talking to others but not to me,” etc.

Such a tendency to control the outcomes also lowers our happiness levels.

The next obstacle to our happiness is to have a distrust in other people. It is to believe that you cannot trust people unless they are proved to be trustworthy. People who trust others more are generally happier. Researchers have found that when you trust others a hormone called oxytocin is released. Some researchers call this hormone the trust molecule. It's the same molecule that gets released when two people are in love with each other. It's also the same molecule that gets released when a mother is feeding her baby. And because this hormone gets released when you trust others, they generally tend to repay your trust with trustworthy behavior. If we could somehow trust people without really knowing whether they are reliable or not, we would build a culture of mutual trust. The act of trusting people more would increase our level of happiness.

The sixth factor that lowers are happiness is keeping a distrust for life in general.  It is focusing more on the negative aspects of life than the positive ones, looking at the glass as half empty rather than half-filled. We all have some setbacks in life. But we can overcome the hindrances and researchers call this ability as resilience. People who have more resilience are happier. We should not rely on outcomes for our happiness.   There is always a big or small positive outcome to even the grimmest situations.

The last mistake that we make is to ignore the source within. There is an excellent source of happiness within oneself. Tapping this resource can overcome all other obstacles too. Deepak Chopra in his book “You are the Universe,” says that one secret to happiness is to “know who you are.”  He further says, “Everything that matters like happiness, contentment, fear of loss, joy and creativity and love and compassion and empathy comes to us from knowing who you are. According to yoga knowing who you are is not your body or your mind or not your experiences of the world.   Who you are is the awareness, the consciousness in which all experience occurs. What is experience? Experience is thought, experience is perception of the world, sound, touch taste and smell. So who are you? You are the source of thought, you are the source of perception, and you are the source of volition or choice.”

We must increase our awareness of self.  There are several ways to do so like meditation, mindfulness, etc.

Happiness is a choice

Happiness is a choice

When I was younger 20 years back, I used to believe that if I could secure a good job my life would be set, soon before my marriage I had let myself think that I would be happily married ever after. Then later, as life progressed, I imagined that I would be too happy if my children excelled at school. After some years I thought if I could lose some weight, I wouldn’t want anything else from life. Now in my later years, I felt I would be very happy if I could feel more energetic, look younger, and would be able to take care of my back pain. Achieving all or some of these things made me happy for some duration, but I fell back again. There was always something else to look. It wasn’t lasting happiness.

I don’t think that this phenomenon is unique to me. You also might have had similar experiences at whatever stage you are in your life.

For a long time, I have been interested in “Happiness” as a subject and so did a lot of research on it and am still researching it. In almost every nation, across different cultures, people put happiness at the top of their lists of the things they want in their life. I train officers on several topics, including government rules and soft skills.  I also teach stress management and meditation. I have taken training in the Shri Shri Ravishankar’s Art of Living course.

Recently I studied an eight week’s course on “A Life of Happiness and Fulfillment” from the Indian School of Business. I read several books by the researcher and leading authors who have put in a lot of effort and their time in this field.

A lot of work has been done in the past one and a half-decade in the field of Positive Psychology, which is the scientific study of what enables individuals to thrive and increase their levels of happiness.

I discovered that Happiness is a matter of choice and can be enhanced.  Yes! You can choose to be happy! Whatever be your circumstances or your genetic makeup.

What do you think would make you happier? Take a moment to consider. Might it be:

·        A relationship?

·        More flexibility at work?

·        A new job that better provides for you and your family?

·        Some extension to your existing house or maybe a bigger house?

·        A more attentive spouse?

·        A baby?

·        Are you looking younger?

·        Relief from your lousy back or sour knees?

·        Are you losing weight?

·        Your child excelling at school?

·        Is it to know what you want to do with your life?

·        More supportive, loving parents?

·        Cure from a chronic illness or disability?

·        More money?

·        More time?

These things might bring you happiness but only for some time. None of these things will make you substantially happier. Does it mean that the finding lasting happiness is unrealistic or unreasonable? You’ll be surprised to know that it is possible to find lasting happiness that endures throughout life. People have already been able to achieve it and if they can do it, so can you!

The only catch is we are looking for happiness at the wrong places.

Scientific research shows—that things or events listed above make only a small difference in our overall happiness and that too for a short time, while we overlook the real sources of personal satisfaction and well-being which is within us and not outside.

We all have a happiness baseline, which is our general long-term happiness. There exists a 'hedonic set point' that may go up or down during specific periods of life but generally remains constant. We may be happier for some time but will return to the base level after some time.  We may also be sad for some time but then again come to the same level of happiness after some time.

Dr. Happiness aka Prof. Ed Diener, a professor of Psychology at the University of Utah and the University of Virginia who has spent 30 years in research has revealed that even after such drastic life changes such as winning the lottery and being paralyzed, happiness will eventually return to the baseline. Professor Ed Diener has been one of the leading pioneers in scientific research on happiness for the past twenty-five years. Indeed, he has been nicknamed “Dr. Happiness” based on the sheer volume and depth of his body of work. Many of the research protocols currently used by positive psychologists, such as the Satisfaction with Life Scale, were developed by Diener. He is chiefly responsible for coining and conceptualizing the aspect of happiness, which can be empirically measured—“Subjective Well Being” (SWB). His latest book is Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth.

Then, if we keep going up and down our set point, what determines Happiness?

Sonja Lyubomirsky a Professor of Psychology in California University and the author of the book the “The How of Happiness” mentions that our happiness is determined 50% by the Setpoint that is the genetic makeup, only 10% by the circumstances that we are in and 40% by intentional activities. The Pie chart below depicts it better:

It means half of your level of happiness is fixed. You’re either lucky to have “happy genes” or unlucky to have “unhappy genes.” There’s nothing you can do about it.

·        Your life circumstances—whether you’re rich or poor, healthy or unhealthy, married or divorced, beautiful or plain, driving a new or an old car—only account for a measly 10% of your happiness. That is why some kids in slums can be just as happy as grumpy millionaires. “Stuff” and other circumstances don’t have much of an impact on happiness.

·        Intentional activity (40%). Intentional activity refers to our behavior: what we do and how we think. As far as boosting our happiness goes, this has a great impact. Why? Because it makes up a whopping 40% of our happiness. Plus isn’t our behavior much easier to change than our circumstances?

Happier people are different. They engage in more behaviors that boost happiness, such as spending time with their family, practicing optimism, exercising regularly, savoring life’s pleasures, living in the present moment, or expressing gratitude for what they have.

What intentional activities can we undertake?

Sonja Lyubomirsky and other authors mention 12 such activities which I have listed below. But here I am going to discuss only a few.

1. Express gratitude for what you have. Count your blessings. Don’t ignore them. Make it a daily habit of starting your day with thanking the god, universe, or the life for what it has given you.

2. Do acts of altruism or kindness. When psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky had students perform five acts of kindness of their choosing per week for six weeks, they reported a significant increase in their levels of happiness relative to a control group of students who didn’t. Kindness helps to raise our self-esteem and also gives us a sense of purpose and doing something valuable in life.

3. Break the Habits of Overthinking and Rumination

We human beings are different from animals in several ways, but one is more striking. We can think about the future and of course also about the past. Unfortunately, most of the thinking that we do is negative. Negative thoughts attract more negative thoughts. One negative thought triggers a stream of other negative feelings.

There are two ways to overcome the habit of overthinking and negative thinking-

·         When you start negative thought, it is like seeing images or a movie on a TV channel. You need to change the channel as you do on TV if you do not like a program. Instead of letting one lousy thought or event escalate into hours of rumination, redirect your full attention somewhere else—engage in physical exercise, read a captivating book, watch a funny video, or meet a friend. Anything that fully absorbs your attention will do the trick.

·        Writing down your ruminations into words helps you organize them, make sense of them, and discover a pattern you weren’t aware of before. It enables you to unburden yourself from negative thoughts, allowing you to move past them.

4. Practice mindfulness

A series of studies conducted at the University of Rochester focused on people ‘high in mindfulness’ are more likely to be happy, optimistic, self-confident and satisfied with their lives, and less likely to be depressed, angry, anxious, hostile, self-conscious, impulsive or neurotic. They experience frequent and intense positive emotions, to feel self-sufficient, competent, and to have positive social relationships, while those who are not usually mindful report more illness and physical symptoms.

There are two ways of practicing mindfulness: formal and informal.

Formal practice is what we call meditation. You take time out of your day to focus on an object of concentration (e.g., your breath) and bring your mind back to that object every time you get distracted and are lost in thinking.

Informal practice doesn’t require taking any time out of your day. Instead, you do whatever you’re currently doing mindfully. We call this mindful eating, mindful cooking, mindful showering, or careful commuting. Whatever you do, you give your full attention to it. When you get lost in thought, you bring your attention back to the task at hand. That’s easier said than done, but that’s the gist of it.

Here is the list of activities that authors claim can boost your happiness

The 12 Happiness Activities

·        Expressing Gratitude

·        Cultivating Optimism

·        Avoiding Overthinking and Social Comparison

·        Practicing Acts of Kindness

·        Nurturing Social Relationships

·        Developing Strategies for Coping

·        Learning to Forgive

·        Increasing Flow Experiences

·        Savoring Life’s Joys

·        Committing to Your Goals

·        Practicing Religion and Spirituality

·        Taking Care of Your Body (Meditation, Physical Activity, Acting Like a Happy Person)

So, friends becoming lastingly happier demands making some permanent changes that require effort and commitment every day of your life. Consciously doing these things or this ‘happiness work’ may be the most rewarding work you’ll ever do.