The Future of Happiness

Daniel Gilbert is a really smart guy. He's got a PhD, he's a psychology professor at Harvard, and he's written a bunch of books. In his latest, Stumbling on Happiness, he basically tell us that we're not very good at figuring out what makes us happy. It's a book that's chocked full of research studies and witty phrases (so witty, in fact, that I was sick of them by page 8), all aimed at convincing us that when it comes to happiness most of us don't know the proverbial shit from the Shinola!

You see, Gilbert is of the school that believes that happiness is based on the decisions we make about our future. The technical term is "prospection," i.e., the art of looking forward in time or considering the future. It is Gilbert's contention that the best way to be happy is to make good decisions for out "future self.," to help it be happy. The problem he says is that really seeing what will make us happy in the future is not so easy. In Gilbert's eyes both our prognostication and decision-making abilities are considerably flawed.

After spending the lion's share of the book making his case for how really piss-poor most of us are at choosing people, activities and places that will make us happy, Gilbert comes to the conclusion that the best way to know if something will make us happy is to ask someone who is already doing it. While there may be some usefulness in this approach, it's overall utility seems severely limited due to the individualistic, not to mention, idiosyncratic, nature of human preferences. 

Example: Let's say, I'm thinking of moving to New York City, NY. You already live there and you love it. You really believe that "it's the city so nice, they named it twice." I move there, and it's crowded, dirty, noisy, expensive, and a host of other things that I abhor.  What good has your voice of experience done me?  

What I'm saying is, go ahead and ask other people's opinions, just don't take them as gospel. What I'm also saying is that I can't believe this guy wrote a whole book, 90% of which is telling us we don't have a clue when it comes to happiness, only to tell us in the last few pages that the best way to be happy is to ask the opinions of other clueless people who are very different from us but who just happen to be doing what we're considering doing. ("Hey, Frank, I was thinking about hitting on your wife. How is she in the sack by the way?").

OK, perhaps I'm being too hard on the good Dr. Gilbert. In interviews since his books came out, he has also given us what he calls his Four Rules of Happiness. Here they are:

1) Bingeing is bad, except when it isn't. You'll get more happiness from eating two whole cookies on Saturday than from eating one-quarter of a cookie each day for a week. In other words, something has to pass a certain "pleasure threshold" in order to be happiness-inducing. Of course bingeing all the time won't bring happiness, either, but try a few strategic binges, and you'll be much happier than if you live a life of moderation, moderation, moderation....

2) Happiness often comes from what you don't know. Strangely enough, many times we are happier if we receive a reward for no apparent reason than if we receive a reward that is tied to a specific reason. In some of the psychological literature on rewards and motivation, the term used is "jackpot." We are happier receiving a jackpot out of the blue than earning a performance-based bonus. Huh? Test this theory yourself by practicing "random acts of kindness," and see what level of happiness ensues in your test subjects.

3) Keeping your options open won't necessarily make you happier. The worst decision you can make is usually indecision. Just go ahead and choose one person, place, activity, or thing, or another. And live with it. You'll most likely be happier than you would be stuck in limbo land.

4) The things you fear are not as bad as you think. Even when people suffer catastrophes, their pre-catastrophic level of happiness usually returns. Alot of it has to do with your "happiness set point," which I discussed in a previous post. The problem with fear and catastrophic expectations is that they keep us from taking risks, from doing things that might actually bring added happiness into our lives, like moving to a different area, training for a new career, or asking out that person who really catches both your eye and your heart. The message here is loud and clear: Even if you screw up, you'll recover -- go for it! 

So, binge every now and again, stay open to unexpected happiness, make some friggin' decisions already, and don't be paralyzed by fear. The Four Rules, Dr. Gilbert provides us actually contain some pretty damn good life advice! He didn't need a whole book to tell them to us, but what the hey. Oh, and if nothing else works, and you still don't know what decision to make, use your final lifeline -- phone a  friend.