What is happiness?

In the field of positive psychology, happiness is defined by the

“relative frequency of positive experiences.” (1)

This definition does not mean that negative emotions and experiences are not present, but they are less frequent than the positive experiences. In describing the definition of happiness, researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky identifies a second component which is

“having a sense of satisfaction with your life. Being content with the way that you are progressing towards your life goals.” (2)

Finding happiness.

The pursuit of happiness is never a finished journey. There are moments that you’ll have during your lifetime where you will feel contentment and satisfaction. Those moments will feel like you have arrived at the doorstep of pure happiness. Those moments are the memories we hold onto when we say we want to achieve happiness. We spend energy attempting to replicate those emotions, to retrace our footsteps that lead us to that place or follow someone else’s map that promises to lead us back. The issue is that those moments were not a destination.

The idea that happiness is a destination is the wrong paradigm. If this were true, it would mean that if we found happiness it might be possible to stay forever happy.

Why is this the wrong paradigm?

What brings us happiness changes over time. When we are young we find happiness in different things then when we are old. In the winter, we find happiness in ways that would not bring us happiness in the summer. As time passes what elicits happiness changes, which makes viewing happiness as a single point of destination a poor mental model.

We are terrible at predicting what makes us happy. Dan Gilbert, in his book, Stumbling on Happiness, shares research on people’s ability to predict what will make them happy. The observation he made, is that we are not very good with these predictions. What we think will make us happy rarely fulfills us. Even when we achieve our goals or obtain something we predicted would make us happy, it has a limited lifespan. At some point, we begin losing the happiness that we felt. If happiness were a destination, then it should be easier to predict and identify what brought us true happiness.

If happiness is not a destination, then what analogy or mental model would work?

The experience of finding happiness is a lot like finding a radio station when you are traveling across the Great Plains of the United States, without satellite radio. If you have ever experienced this, you would know that there’s always a radio station to be found. However, it requires a lot of tuning and seeking. You’ll need to switch between AM and FM bands from time to time. There will be periods where you’ll have excellent reception with high quality sound, but you will also need to accept a little static in some situations. As you travel, you may have a single station for hundreds of miles. But the more likely scenario is that you will be switching stations ever thirty minutes to an hour.

I love this analogy because if we view finding our happiness as something similar to our ability to find a radio station in the Great Plains states, it puts us in a mindset that we always need to be active in our pursuit. It also highlights that there are many different dials to turn, options to select, however there is always some amount of happiness for us to find. Today that happiness may sound a lot like old time country, while tomorrow it could be modern hip hop.

(1) Happiness Definition 1 (2) Happiness Definition 2 Sonja Lyubomirsky Video