The Forty Percent

If only I lived in sunny Arizona or the Colorado Rockies or on Maui—then I would be happy.  If only could win the lottery or pull a big combo on the slots—then I would be happy.  If I had a better car or a nicer house or a cushier job—then I would surely be happy.  

We attribute the overwhelming majority of our happiness to life circumstances.  Then we bemoan those circumstances and remain victimized by our own unhappiness.

In fact, life circumstances contribute only a modest amount to overall and continuing happiness.  In “The Architecture of Sustainable Happiness” (2005) Lyubomirsky, Sheldon and Schkade give a description of the consensus understanding of the psychological sources of ongoing happiness.  Fifty percent of that happiness is rooted in a genetically determined personal “set point” (see a previous post entitled “No Set Point Yet”).  Forty percent of that happiness is defined by intentional activity designed to promote personal happiness.  So only ten percent of ongoing happiness is really determined by life circumstances.

So we blame ninety percent of our unhappiness on ten percent of the actual cause of that unhappiness.  And we look to that ten percent to provide ninety percent of our ongoing happiness.

Some life circumstances can have small but lasting impacts on happiness.  Marital status is probably the most impactful life circumstance, and this appears to be true across cultures.  Married people on average and in the aggregate are happier than those who are not married.  Job satisfaction has some marginal impact on personal happiness.  Financial security at a modest level favorably impacts personal happiness.  Wealth, however, is at least as likely to reduce happiness as it is to increase ongoing personal happiness.  Money can buy a little bit of happiness, but the effect runs out pretty quickly.

So, happiness is a choice.  It is, however, a choice that depends on taking intentional actions to make oneself more happy.  In that sense, happiness is indeed “an inside job” as has often been said.  Have you ever been asked by someone, “Are you happy here?”  That question makes less and less sense to me.  I understand if someone asks me, “Are you satisfied with your job?”  I can understand if someone asks me, “Do you have concerns or worries or fears or anxieties?”  I can understand if someone asks me, “Do you agree or disagree with the direction we’re taking?”  Those are social and organizational questions, and the answers depend on others in addition to me.

“Are you happy?”  That is a question whose answer lies, insofar as change is possible, within me much more than outside of me.  I can take actions to enhance my personal happiness.  I can connect to my sense of gratitude regularly.  I can help someone who has a need.  I can take a walk.  I can pursue my passions. I can exercise my gifts in my work, my relationships and my service to others.  I can connect to worthwhile purposes greater than my own selfish needs.  I can play.

I can do things to enhance the forty percent that is susceptible to change.  You can as well.  In this way, my happiness is never held hostage by others.  I am not an unhappy victim of circumstances.  I can find other paths, other options, other roads to a happy life.

If only I could be happy.  Oh, wait!  I can!