A little bit happier

Explore one practical approach to happiness.

Hello everyone!

This is your host Sayar Henry and thank you for tuning in to my podcast today. It’s really exciting for me to publish this episode because this is going to be the first episode of the new year 2022. Now, we all know how depressing the last year was with COVID and coup, but the time has come to start over, and to make things in our hand better, at least in terms of mental energy and individual goals. One school of thought that has been on my mind these days is that the longer we take in this fight for democracy, the more relevant it becomes for us to live a double life. I mean … we can’t commit to just one aspect of our daily life any longer. There are other issues of life that we have to deal with. So for most of us, it makes sense to split our life into two: one for the future of our country and another for the present days of our personal life.

And as we enter the new year, we don’t even have to talk about what everyone wants for our country because it’s so obvious and fundamental. But what most of us have to figure out, I think, would be the specific goals for our personal life. And luckily, whenever we talk about goals in the beginning of a new year, there are common items that we usually put into our list of resolution. It usually has something to do with things like health, relationship, finance, and happiness, right? But if we really — I mean really — think about it, trying to attain some level of happiness is always relatable to every living person. You can have all the money in the world and can still be unhappy. You can be in an ideal relationship with someone and be unhappy at the same time. You can be the world’s healthiest person but that doesn’t make you the happiest person either. Being happy is a delicate state of mind that can be affected by many factors. That being said, there are things we can do or change right now so that we become a bit happier than before. And that’s the topic I want to talk about today.

But let me clarify one thing first. Normally, when I talk about these things, I speak from my experience. I mean most of the advice that I give to my students or on my podcast are derived from my life experiences, or insights, or experimentation in some fashion. This time, however, I’m not speaking from experience. I’m just going to relay some information that I have recently learned from a behavioral social scientist, Arthur Brooks, who is also a Harvard professor. Although I have not tested all of it out yet, I’m excited to share it with you guys and to try to implement this knowledge throughout the year 2022 because I believe it can benefit us in many ways.

So let’s start with the basic requirements for a person to be happy. According to Arthur Brooks, there are three ingredients that can make happiness. The first one is the sense of enjoyment. It usually starts with some actions that give us a little bit of pleasure while we’re doing it. For example, if you enjoy listening to my podcast very much, which I hope you do, try to remember why you feel it that way. May be, in the beginning, you took the action of listening to one episode and you started to feel some kind of pleasure during the process. And the more frequently you take this action of listening to an episode, the more pleasure you get out of this action. When you repeat this process frequent enough, you subconsciously start to recognize listening to my podcast as an activity that gives you enjoyment. After that, you might start defining this activity as some kind of happiness. It makes sense, doesn’t it?

Now, the second ingredient of happiness is the sense of satisfaction. That means some kind of reward. For example, let’s say you want to impress your father and you work on something really hard. If, upon completion of your task, you don’t get any recognition or praise from your father, you don’t feel satisfied even if the quality of your work is superb and everyone else is impressed. But if, however, your father is impressed with your work, you feel proud and satisfied. The recognition from your father alone is a good enough reward for you and you are happy about it. And I believe that explains the unhappy behavior of some young people who are aggressively seeking validation from other people because they are not transparently appreciated by their parents at home. These young people are just looking for emotional satisfaction or reward, if you will, from others so that they can be a little bit happier. And it makes sense again, doesn’t it?

Now, let’s take a look at the third ingredient of happiness: the sense of purpose. This one is pretty obvious and straightforward. People cannot drive themselves to unlock their full potential and to feel fulfilled without a direction or a purpose. Not having a purpose is like trying to play in a football team without being assigned to a particular position. You are trying to be in everywhere but at the same time reaching nowhere because you don’t know what role you are playing. The longer you play in that team, the more you lose your identity, and the unhappier you get. So having a purpose, a reason, a why, is crucial for us to be a little bit happier. And that totally makes sense, doesn’t it?

Now if we combine all these ingredients of happiness and put it in a person’s life, this is what we get. We have a human being who knows what to do with his life, loves what he does, and is appreciated for what he does. Well, that is quite important. So let me highlight it again for you.

If a person knows what to do with his life, loves what he does, and is appreciated for what he does, this person must be happier than most of us.

This is not to say that his or her life is complete or perfect, but it clearly shows what we should be going for, if we are to be a little bit happier, right?

But the interesting thing is the story doesn’t end here. There are a couple of other things we can do to be even more happier. Arthur Brooks pointed out the two misconceptions that we should be aware of. The first misconception is that we tend to think of happiness as being free from unhappiness. I mean most of us assume that happiness means lack of suffering. That is simply not true. We cannot experience happiness without suffering, without experiencing unhappiness. So the key here is to become less unhappy by acknowledging that unhappiness is a part of life. Professor Brooks also mentioned that when we accept our unhappiness, we become meta-cognitive. And as a result of this awareness, the parts of our brain that are associated with more positive thinking are activated and we feel less negative, which in another word means feeling a bit happier. Simple yet profound, isn’t it?

Now the other misconception Professor Brooks highlighted is the misuse of the bucket list. People tend to imagine too much and put too many things in their bucket list without properly considering how practical or essential each item or goal is. More often than not, people tend to look at things they don’t have or goals they haven’t achieved, rather than appreciating what they have now and what they have completed so far. And if we keep things real, what we don’t have is always going to be bigger than what we have. So, for the majority of people, there’s a high chance that looking at the remaining items from our bucket list will keep us from feeling satisfied and happy. The bottom line here is that we want too much, keep too many things and are too busy with managing what we have, when we actually should be managing what we want in the first place. In another word, managing and prioritizing our desires wisely can make us happier. 

So, in a nutshell, in order to be a little bit happier in our personal life in the new year 2022, we should give ourselves time to do things that we enjoy, to participate in things that make us feel useful, and to give each other appreciation every day. And on top of that, we should learn to accept our sufferings as a part of life and be mindful about our desires and wants before pursuing these.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, this is the end of this episode. Thank you so much for spending time with me and I hope you stay safe and well wherever you are. And remember, my friends, it is okay to be a little bit happier in 2022. The only thing that matters now is that you and I stay on top of the game without losing our winning attitude. So, cheer up, whenever you can. I’ll see you in the next one. Goodbye for now.