Arthur C Brooks: how to build a happy life
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday/audio/2018825074/arthur-c-brooks-how-to-build-a-happy-life
Happiness is something we can all manage individually if we apply the right practices to our lives, says social scientist Arthur C Brooks.
Enjoyment, satisfaction and purpose are what he calls the "macronutrients" - or essentials - for a happy outlook.
Arthur C Brooks Photo: Supplied
Arthur C Brooks is a Harvard professor who writes The Atlantic column How To Build A Life and hosts the podcast How To Build A Happy Life.
Learn to manage your feelings
Over the past year and half, Brooks says he's been hearing a lot from people about feelings of loneliness, uncertainty, fear, disappointment and insecurity about the future.
Metacognition - the practice of observing our feelings - is an "unbelievable source of power" when it comes to not getting overwhelmed by these challenging feelings, Brooks tells Kim Hill.
"There are all kinds of good reasons to be in touch with your feelings, but mostly so you can manage those feelings.
"If you're reactive, if you let your feelings happen to you, your feelings will manage you. And your good feelings will make you feel happy and your bad feelings will make you feel sad or angry.
"Paying attention to your emotions and learning to consciously manage them takes time and effort, but eventually your feelings won't manage you and you can learn to manage them, he says.
Stop chasing 'the next thing'
The attachment to stuff is a common barrier to happiness for people who actually have more than 'enough', Brooks says.
On the "hedonic treadmill", we chase the next achievement or possession or success, honestly but mistakenly believing "the next thing" is what will give us satisfaction.
No specific system is to blame for this state of affairs, he says, the bigger problem is our lack of "fundamental happiness hygiene".
"The biggest problem our society is not an economic system that doesn't work, it's that we've created moral systems that don't work well. We've alienated ourselves from one another. We can blame the economy if we want but the truth is the problem starts with our own human hearts."
It's futile to try and stop economic growth as innovation and growth in the developing world are the only way climate change can be successfully addressed, Brooks says.
Most entrepreneurs get a huge sense of achievement from doing things and making things, and we need more who are equally enthusiastic about the greater good.
"The point of the free enterprise system should be the freedom to earn our success and serve others."
Be more in the moment
The power of the human brain gives us an uncanny ability to time-travel into the past or future, Brooks says, but not experiencing and enjoying life in the moment has a big impact on our happiness.
Because of something called the 'fading effect bias', we tend to look on the past and believe it was better than the present. As a result, we underappreciate progress and feel dissatisfied and ungrateful about the present.
Brooks still feels hopeful about humanity - if we can pull together.
'We've gotten out of worse fixes than this ... There are big problems but in big problems like big opportunities and those opportunities almost always revolve around a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood."
Find a serious pursuit
To ensure greed and consumption are not the motivating force in each of our individual lives, people need some kind of spiritual pursuit, Brooks says.
"The data say that having a serious commitment to a faith or life philosophy is critically important and really irreplaceable. This could be atheism or a serious interest in existential philosophy - something that explains consciousness, something that explains the transcendence in our lives."
<<<<<<>>>>>>
The Key To A Happy Life Is All In The Equations – Three To Be Exact
https://www.ppccfl.com/blog/the-key-to-a-happy-life-is-all-in-the-equations-three-to-be-exact/
It may seem a bit out of place to be discussing keys to a happy life in the midst of a worldwide pandemic, social unrest, and economic upheaval. However, this may just be the perfect time to ponder pathways to happiness, especially since we may have a bit more personal time on our hands with working from home and social distancing.
Arthur C. Brooks, professor of the Practice of Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School, a senior fellow at Harvard Business School, and host of the podcast The Art of Happiness with Arthur Brooks offers three equations for well-being which, in his opinion, are vital to know in order to start managing your own happiness more proactively.
Let’s take a look at his three equations to jump start you on a journey towards a happier life:
Equation 1: Subjective Well-being = Genes + Circumstances + Habits
Subjective well-being is what sociologists refer to when assessing one’s level of happiness. It is how people experience and evaluate their lives and specific domains and activities in their lives. As Dr. Brooks puts it: subjective well-being answers the question “taken all together, how would you say things are these days – would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?”
Research has shown that there is a huge genetic component in determining your “set point” for your subjective well-being, the baseline you always seem to return to after events sway your mood. Psychologists David Lykken and Auke Tellegen estimate that the genetic component of a person’s well-being is between 44 and 52 percent, a guideline determined from an exhaustive study of twins, which included identical twins reared apart and then tested as adults.
The percentile impact on subjective well-being by the other two components, circumstances and habits, is not as easy to nail down. Research is all over the board on what percentage each part represents. The circumstances of one’s life can make up as little as 10 percent and as much as 40 percent. However, the effects of circumstances are fleeting, so most scholars think the impact on happiness is not as pronounced. For instance, getting a big promotion or having an increase in income does not guarantee long-term happiness – it feels awesome in the moment but then we get used to our new circumstances rapidly and then return to a happiness set point (think about the feeling purchasing a new car or house and then how you felt one year later).
Dr. Brooks says that focusing on genes or circumstances is not very productive, for these things are mostly beyond our control. One variable that is under our control and which greatly affects our long-term well-being is habits, which leads us to Equation 2.
Equation 2: Habits = Faith + Family + Friends + Work
Dr. Brooks has distilled Equation 2 from thousands of academic studies and is convinced that it is accurate, though some scholars dispute it as too crude. In his words, enduring happiness comes from human relationships, productive work, and the transcendental elements of life.
The key to the first variable, faith, is to find a structure through which you can ponder life’s deeper questions and transcend a focus on your narrow self-interests to serve others. Many different faiths and secular life philosophies offer the happiness edge – find the one that best motivates you to shift your focus.
For the family and friends variables, the key is to cultivate and maintain loving, faithful relationships with other people. The extraordinary Harvard study, which followed graduates over a 75-year period, looking at all aspects of their health and well-being, showed that people who have loving relationships with family and friends thrive. Conversely, those who do not have these relationships fail to thrive.
The final variable in the equation is work, which may be surprising. However, happiness research overwhelmingly finds that productive human endeavors create a sense of purpose in life and are a key component of happiness. The kind of work is less important than the level of fulfillment; meaning, does the work give you a sense that you are earning your success and serving others?
Equation 3: Satisfaction = What You Have ÷ What You Want
We try to achieve higher levels of satisfaction by increasing what we have – by working, spending, working, spending and on and on, according to Dr. Brooks. But this is pure futility, for we will never be satisfied with obtaining status quo. Satisfaction will always be just beyond our grasp, forcing us to strive even more.
According to the professor, the secret to satisfaction is to focus on the denominator of Equation 3. Quit obsessing about your haves and instead manage your wants. Do not count your possessions (or money, power, prestige, romantic partners, or fame) and try to figure out how to increase them; instead, make an inventory of your worldly desires and try to decrease them. He posits that the fewer wants there are screaming inside your brain and dividing your attention, the more peace and satisfaction will be left for what you already have.
Take a moment to analyze these three equations and determine where you can tweak some of the variables to increase the happiness in your life. Can you introduce some new, positive habits in Equation 1? Can you make a positive increase in one or more of the variables in Equation 2? Are you able to make a bucket list of attachments you need to discard in Equation 3 so that you find greater peace and satisfaction?
To learn more about living a happy life, you can follow Dr. Arthur C. Brooks here and listen to his podcast here.
<<<<<<>>>>>>
