On Thursday night I asked my English conversation class these two questions:
What do you think is the key to living a happy life? When are you at your happiest?
There were eight of us this week – Luiz, Kize, Jarvis, Funda, Carolina, Carlos, Payal and myself. Six nationalities – Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Turkey, India and the United States. Here’s what they said:
“The key is to be around nature, to be in the trees. I’m happiest when I’m away from noise and outside.”
“I am happiest when I’m with kids, or when I’m doing yoga. When I’m thinking about important questions.”
“Relationships – with family, friends and partners – are the key to happiness. Nothing else is a substitute for relationships.”
“The key to my happiness is being focused on the present. It is a waste of energy to focus on the past and the future. You can only control the present.”
“My happiest moment is hiking with friends, above the clouds, and enjoying a hot cup of coffee up there.”
“This class makes me happy. If I’m feeling depressed, I come here and it goes away.”
That last one is not made up. It can’t be made up because I feel the same way – every Thursday night at 6:20pm, I wish I could have my night to myself, and then ten minutes later I’m laughing and smiling and feeling like a million bucks, talking to a group of new friends.
We don’t often ask each other what makes us happy. Kind of odd, right? We have these huge brains, an amazing capacity to communicate with each other, and we hardly ever focus them on the most important questions. I have more conversations about the latest iPhone, salaries and sports than I have about happiness. And I don’t really like talking about all three of those things!
All of that is perfectly okay. We’re on Earth for around 700,000 hours if we’re lucky – a good portion of that has to be filled with practical communication, like where to buy groceries and which movies to watch. Scheduling appointments and making plans with friends.
But here’s what surprised me about Thursday night: I don’t really “know” any of those people. One person I’d met for the first time, the others a handful of times. All but one are virtual relationships. And yet, when asked what makes them happiest, every single person had an answer. A very clear answer that they were comfortable sharing with strangers. And that leaves me convinced that there is demand out there to focus more of our energy on the big questions, and let some of the smaller stuff fall away.
Here is why I think this is important. I think we all mostly agree with the fundamental things that lead to happiness and fulfillment. That doesn’t mean everyone will buy themselves beautiful flowers each month, like Carlos, but it means that the broad strokes are largely the same: build and maintain strong relationships, get outside into the beautiful world, focus on what you can control, find beauty in the little things.
The problem is that we don’t have these conversations, so we don’t realize that a) we mostly agree on this stuff, and b) we often stray from these fundamental principles. We don’t articulate what truly matters to us, so we fall into what we’re told should matter: the pay and prestige of our jobs, the Vegas trip we’re afraid of missing, the size of our apartment or sheen of our new car. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve felt jealous of someone else, only to come out of my fog and realize… I have completely different goals than they do! Snap out of it!
Particularly now, we are so willing to externalize our happiness. “I’ll only be happy if…” we have a new president, I get that new job, I have some dating success. If this pandemic ends. But that’s crazy. We know that those things – unless your boss is a tyrant – don’t produce increases in happiness.
This week I spoke with a coworker whose father passed away last year. Here is what he said about our current situation:
“People need to realize they can continue to live their lives through this. I can spend time with my family this winter, and go to the beach this summer. The stuff I love to do. It doesn’t need to get more complicated than that.”
Now I can hear some of you getting worked up – what a privileged thing to say, right? And it is. The above statement doesn’t apply to everyone. But the important question is whether it applies to you.
And if it applies to you, as it does to me, then maybe the key is to focus on doing exactly what it is that provides you the most happiness. For my coworker it’s the beach and family. But it could be anything, and it’s under your control.
Margaret Atwood gave a commencement speech in 1983, at the University of Toronto, that’s worth a read. But if you skip it, here’s my favorite part, some advice on what to say when you go bald:
“God only made a few perfect heads, and the rest lie covered with hair.”
Atwood goes on to say:
“[This] illustrates the following point: when faced with the inevitable, you always have a choice. You may not be able to alter reality, but you can alter your attitude towards it. As I learned during my liberal arts education, any symbol can have, in the imaginative context, two versions, a positive and a negative. Blood can either be the gift of life or what comes out of you when you cut your wrists in the bathtub. Or, somewhat less drastically, if you spill your milk you’re left with a glass which is either half empty or half full.”
“You may not be able to alter reality, but you can alter your attitude towards it, and this, paradoxically, alters reality.”
Here is my request for you all: Take a second to jot down the 5-10 things that made you happiest in the past week. Then send them to me, in a reply to this email or directly to [email protected]. They will stay anonymous, and if any are too personal to share with me, feel free to exclude. But if you’ve stuck with these newsletters for this long, please do me this favor.
Here are mine:
- Watching The Great British Baking Show with Anne
- Helping undergraduate intern candidates prep for final round interviews at work
- Leading my English conversation class
- Spending the weekend biking with my dad
- FaceTiming with my grandfather over dinner
- Running the Brooklyn Bridge during an eerie, foggy morning
- Getting dinner with two friends
- Having a development conversation with the analyst who works for me
- Writing this newsletter
- A Zoom call with college friends
- Reading The 4-Hour Workweek
The next part of the exercise is for you and you alone: How can you focus more of your time and energy on the above activities? On what’s important? What would a life designed around these moments look like?
It’s a scary question, and a daunting one. But it’s worth the effort.
Can’t wait to see your responses, and don’t worry – if I don’t get enough replies I’ll just ask again next week!
– Emmett
Recent Posts:
What I Learned From My 54 Day Run Streak – A lesson in consistency, eliminating decisions… and throwing in the towel
What I’m Reading: Happiness, happiness, happiness
Are We Trading Our Happiness For Modern Comforts? – Arthur Brooks, The Atlantic, 2020
“Don’t buy that thing. Don’t put your faith in princes (or politicians). Don’t trade love for anything.”
Hacking Hedonic Adaptation to Get Way More For Your Money – Mr. Money Mustache, 2018
“Keep a list of your top life priorities on your fridge door, or your work computer monitor, or somewhere else that you see it many times per day. Stuff like better friendships, better parenting, health, financial independence, happiness, personal growth. Looking at this list before you decide to do anything – whether it’s planning a lunch or moving to a new house, can serve as a surprisingly powerful anchor to help you fine tune your happiness bumps – stretching out the good parts and eliminating the hangovers.”
Why Gen Z Yuppies are Unhappy – Tim Urban, Wait But Why, 2013
“Social media creates a world for Lucy where A) what everyone else is doing is very out in the open, B) most people present an inflated version of their own existence, and C) the people who chime in the most about their careers are usually those whose careers (or relationships) are going the best, while struggling people tend not to broadcast their situation.”
Happiness Is a Glass Half Empty – Oliver Burkeman, The Guardian, 2012
“All too often, the Stoics note, things will not turn out for the best. But it is also true that, when they do go wrong, they’ll almost certainly go less wrong than you feared. Losing your job is unlikely to condemn you to starvation and death; losing a relationship won’t condemn you to a life of unrelenting misery. Those fears are based on irrational judgments about the future.”