I've learnt some surprising and shocking things in this Yale University course on The Science of Wellbeing.
The professor gave the class the warning "Everything you thought was important for being happy is not".
It reminds me of that quote "People may spend their whole lives climbing the ladder of success only to find, once they reach the top, that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall".
We judge things in relative terms rather than absolute. Bizarrely, many people would prefer a lower pay (if higher than their coworkers' pay) rather than a higher pay (if their coworkers received even more). It's a bit like this optical illusion where we see the orange circles differently because of the other circles around them. Even though they are the same.
We get used to stuff. New things quickly become just normal. Even if our salary increases each year, happiness doesn't - because we get used to the new salary. Even lottery winners, one year later, are about as happy as everyone else.
We don't realise that we'll get used to stuff. We think that the shiny new object (phone, car, house) will make us very happy for a very long time. Very quickly they go from "new car" to "car", from "amazing new house" to "home", from "new model phone" to "phone" to "this old piece of junk".
About 50% is our genetic 'set point' - we were born that way. 10% is life circumstances - the stuff that happens to us. The other 40% is our own thoughts and actions.
The 40% is the most interesting to me. It's a large section and it's within our control. So there are things we can do to be significantly happier. But they might be different things from the things we thought.
I'll get into that in part 2.
PS. Also, I highly recommend the course. It's free and potentially life-changing.
The professor gave the class the warning "Everything you thought was important for being happy is not".
Miswanting
We want the wrong things. Typically people think happiness comes from a good job, money, cool stuff, good grades, good looks etc. A range of studies show the effect of these things on our well-being to be either negligible, non-existent or even negative.It reminds me of that quote "People may spend their whole lives climbing the ladder of success only to find, once they reach the top, that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall".
4 ways our thoughts trick us
Our intuitions are often wrong - much like the way our eyes are tricked by optical illusions. Even if we know the trick, our eyes still get tricked by the illusion.We judge things in relative terms rather than absolute. Bizarrely, many people would prefer a lower pay (if higher than their coworkers' pay) rather than a higher pay (if their coworkers received even more). It's a bit like this optical illusion where we see the orange circles differently because of the other circles around them. Even though they are the same.
We get used to stuff. New things quickly become just normal. Even if our salary increases each year, happiness doesn't - because we get used to the new salary. Even lottery winners, one year later, are about as happy as everyone else.
We don't realise that we'll get used to stuff. We think that the shiny new object (phone, car, house) will make us very happy for a very long time. Very quickly they go from "new car" to "car", from "amazing new house" to "home", from "new model phone" to "phone" to "this old piece of junk".
So what does cause happiness?
Our level of happiness is a combination of three things.About 50% is our genetic 'set point' - we were born that way. 10% is life circumstances - the stuff that happens to us. The other 40% is our own thoughts and actions.
The 40% is the most interesting to me. It's a large section and it's within our control. So there are things we can do to be significantly happier. But they might be different things from the things we thought.
I'll get into that in part 2.
PS. Also, I highly recommend the course. It's free and potentially life-changing.
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