How to Be Happier

A part of me believes that if only I had ____, I’d be happy. Or when ____ happens, then I’ll be happy. It’s one of the most pernicious lies that exists but I take comfort in knowing I’m not the only one who falls for it. There’s a reason we have about a billion books, podcasts, and courses on how to be happy – we humans don’t really know what will make us happy. We think we know but we don’t. Fortunately, there’s been a lot of research on the topic.

My favorite resource on happiness (so far) is Dr. Laurie Santos and her podcast “The Happiness Lab.” Dr. Santos is a happiness expert and taught THE most popular class at Yale in 300 years: Psychology and the Good Life. It’s been adapted into a free online course taken by more than 3.3 million people to date.

Dr. Santos has done a ton of research on happiness and discovered the way we go about achieving happiness is all wrong. We think happiness is about our circumstances – the job, the relationship, the house, etc., but in practice, science shows that’s not true. It’s not true because the brain gets used to anything – good and bad. For instance, when you buy a new iPhone, it’s fun for a while because it has cool new features, a better camera, etc., but then you just get used to it. It’s not the exciting, shiny thing it once was. It’s just your phone.

“We kind of get that with material objects, but we forget that with big life changes,” Dr. Santos says. “You get this new promotion, or you get a new salary, or you get into a relationship. At first, yeah, it’s amazing, but then over time, you just get used to it. And this is hedonic adaptation; all the best things in life, we kind of just get used to over time.”

Not only do we get used to the best things in life and forget how easily we acclimate, but we also have a built-in mechanism telling us we’d be happier with more. That’s what dopamine, the happiness molecule, seeks: more Instagram followers, more gadgets, more money, more. In my spiritual philosophy, we say every human being has a thirst for limitlessness. Even when a person has a lot, they still want more. Clay Cockrell is a wealth psychologist to the 0.0001% and found even those people are miserable because instead of being satisfied with enough, they’ll say, “I have $500 million, but I’m not a billionaire.” The millionaire wants to be a billionaire and a billionaire wants to be a trillionaire.

My spiritual teacher says:

“However great may be the wealth of attainment, it cannot satisfy the hunger of the human mind, which always yearns for unlimited happiness. Those who run after wealth and reputation, name and fame, can never be happy unless they can attain an infinite quantity of the same. But because the world itself is finite, how can the objects of this world be infinite? Besides, it is not materially possible to acquire objects of an unlimited quantity. So worldly achievement – even if it is the acquisition of the whole globe – is neither unlimited nor eternal.”

I’ll address the desire for infinity shortly but to go back to happiness research, Dr. Santos says to change your reference point so that you look down, not up. Instead of comparing yourself to someone who is better off than you, compare yourself to someone worse off. It could also be the “you” from a different time or circumstance. Comparing down elicits gratitude, which increases happiness.

Santos also says we’re terrible at prioritizing the things that make us happy. When we’re stressed with work, the first thing we drop is a yoga class with a friend, but socializing makes us happier. When we’re tired, we scroll Netflix, but we’d be better off playing on Duolingo, a language-learning app. It’s for that reason I have a 734-day streak on Duolingo. I’m committed to my happiness y’all. And if you want to follow me there, I’m @kfpixie.

The biggest thing I’ve learned from Dr. Santos, and that I have to remind myself of frequently, is happiness is a daily activity. There is no arrival or destination. You don’t publish a bestselling book and then feel happy forever. It’s the day-to-day behavior that affects our overall happiness. Part of that day-to-day behavior, which Santos addresses in a later episode, is a spiritual practice. When I meditate, I’m touching into something infinite and quenching that thirst for limitlessness. It’s the way I’m able to satisfy the part of me that endlessly craves more. At least sometimes.

Part of being happier, right now, also involves recognizing our moods change, our circumstances change, and it’s unrealistic to think we’ll feel Happy with a capital H all the time. But that doesn’t mean we can’t move the needle to happier. It just takes some effort.

I dream of a world where we remember happiness is a behavior, not a destination. A world where we understand the material world will never satisfy our desires because we’ll always crave more. A world where we point ourselves to something greater than us to satisfy that craving. A world where we do what we can to be happier now.

Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.