The Happiness Formula

In 2002, Dr. Martin Seligman presented The Happiness Formula to the world where Happiness (H) is the sum of three factors:

1. (S) – one’s genetic happiness set point (50% of your happiness score)
2. (C) – life circumstances (10% of your happiness score) 
3. (V) – factors under one’s voluntary control (40% of your happiness score)

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But what does The Happiness Formula mean, anyway? What do each of these variables stand for, and how can we apply this strategy to our lives? Let’s break it down to digestible portions, starting with the definition of each.

H: What is our Happiness Objective?

Dr. Seligman explains in The Happiness Formula that both momentary and enduring Happiness have value in our lives, but Enduring Happiness is the true objective:

Momentary Happiness – Little events of joy, praise, a birthday cake, movie, a promotion, or a weekend getaway are transient bursts of joy are lovely and important – but are not the true objective.

Enduring Happiness – you will not reach enduring happiness by merely increasing the number of bursts of momentary positive feelings. Rather, the remaining three variables are needed to demonstrate what increases or decreases enduring happiness. Here we go:

S: We all have a Happiness Set Point:

According to Seligman, we all have what is called a Happiness Set Point: About 50 percent of happiness is completely out of your control – because it is dependent on your genes. You may be wired to be more-than-average happy or sullen and dour. Most of us are somewhere in the middle. Your happiness set-point is something you will always gravitate towards, whether in good times or bad.

Going on vacation, meeting your future spouse, or bagging that promotion you have been vying for will raise your happiness levels. However, in a few weeks or months, you will drift back to your happiness set point through a process called adaptation.

Human beings, it turns out, are adaptation machines.

• Did you win the lottery? You’ll be happier for a bit…and then be back to your set point.
• Did you get fired from your job? You’ll be less happy for a while…and then back at your set point.

We take good things for granted and overcome daunting obstacles, only to return to our natural happiness set-point, as demonstrated by this excerpt from the book Authentic Happiness by Martin Seligman:

“Even individuals who become paraplegic as a result of spinal cord accidents quickly begin to adapt to their greatly limited capacities, and within eight weeks report more net positive emoting than negative emotion. Within a few years, they wind up only slightly less happy on average than individuals who are not paralyzed.”

The bottom line is, that we have a set range of happiness towards which we naturally gravitate. This set range is what keeps your base level of happiness from dramatically changing.

The good news? Thankfully, we can use the other remaining variables, C and V, to raise us up.

C: We all have Circumstances that matter:

According to Seligman, If you want to raise your level of long-term happiness through the external circumstances of your life, try to affect change where possible in the following areas:

1. Live in a wealthy democracy, not in an impoverished dictatorship (a strong effect)
2. Get married or partner up (a robust effect, but perhaps not causal)
3. Avoid negative events and negative emotion whenever possible (moderate effect)
4. Acquire a rich and diverse social network (robust effect, but perhaps not causal)
5. Get religious or spiritually connected (a moderate effect)
6. Make more money (little or no effect once you are comfortable enough; as more materialistic people may be less happy)
7. Stay healthy
8. Get as much education as possible
9. Live in a sunnier climate

You’ve probably noticed: Changing some of these circumstances is impractical, expensive, or downright impossible. And even if you could modify all the above circumstances, they wouldn’t make much of a difference to your happiness. Why? Because they account for only 8 to 15 percent of the happiness variance.

The good news is that there is a set of internal circumstances that are easier to change and will have a greater impact. These internal circumstances are what the last variable, V, is all about.

V: We also have Voluntary variables:

This is the best and most controllable part of the Happiness Formula. If you want to change your enduring level of happiness, this is where Seligman says you must put your greatest effort to use.

Voluntary Variables account for about 40 percent of your happiness and get divided into three buckets:

1. Positive emotions about the past (e.g., satisfaction, contentment, fulfillment, pride, and serenity)
2. Positive emotions about the future (e.g., optimism, hope, faith, and trust)
3. Positive emotions about the present (e.g., joy, ecstasy, calm, test, ebullience, pleasure, and flow)

Fun (happy!) Fact: The more positive emotion you have about the past, future, and present, the happier you will be.

1. The Happiness Formula can make you feel happier about your past

How you feel about the past can have a big impact on happiness. You can either experience plenty of negative emotions (such as resentment, anger, and pity) or positive emotions (such as satisfaction, contentment, fulfillment, pride, and serenity). It may seem oversimplified, but it is mostly true: The more positive your view of the past is, the happier you will be.

So, how do you improve your perspective (and happiness) about the past?

Dr. Seligman offers three strategies:

1. Let go of the belief that your past determines your future. This belief engenders a certain passivity about life that will not be helpful. The remedy is easy. Simply realize and accept that you have a fairly sizeable amount of control over life. You can make yourself happier. You can become more successful. And, of course, you can achieve many great things if you put in the work and stay patient.
2. Be grateful for the good things in your past. Gratitude amplifies the pleasant events that happened to you in the past. To ignite feelings of gratitude about your past, you can try to build an attitude of gratitude by writing a gratitude letter or journaling about things/events/people you’re grateful for.
3. Learn to forgive past wrongs. Forgiveness is all about loosening the power of terrible events in the past to embitter you. Holding on to grudges, anger, resentment, pity, or any other negative emotion over a past event will lower your levels of happiness, something we all intuitively know but do not necessarily try and change. Seligman recommends a process called R.E.A.C.H. to practice forgiveness.

2. The Happiness Formula can make you feel happier about your future

Your feelings about the future — good (optimism, hope, faith, and trust) or bad (fear, anxiety, or dread) — are determined in large part by your thoughts and interpretations of the world.

If you think you’re going to mess up your next week’s presentation completely, then you won’t be happy. If, on the other hand, you’re eagerly awaiting your vacation in Bali next month, then you’ll be a lot happier.

The #1 strategy Seligman recommends for improving our feelings about the future is to recognize and dispute automatic pessimistic thoughts. It’s all about keeping things in perspective, and it’s pretty easy to do.

How to recognize and dispute automatic pessimistic thoughts:

For example, let’s say you’ve just got some bad feedback from your boss. Your natural reaction might be terribly negative:

“Oh my God, I must be the worst employee ever. I can’t even get a simple reservation right. Maybe I should just quit. My boss thinks I’m useless anyway. I really can’t seem to do anything right. I’m such a loser …”

Instead of letting such negative thoughts make you unhappy, why not dispute them? Consider this instead:

“Okay, so my boss wasn’t happy with my performance. That’s OK. I guess I really could have put in more effort. I was slacking a bit. Let me work a lot harder over the next few weeks to show my boss what I’m capable of. I want to be better than what I’ve shown lately. I’m really excited about that. Let’s make it happen!”

You can be a lot happier if you drew the second interpretation of the incident after challenging the first that came up automatically. This is how you can go on from sadness, despair, and self-pity to excitement and optimism, without a single fact changing in your circumstances.

3. The Happiness Formula can make you feel happier in the present

Improving how you feel about the present is the last step in raising your enduring level of happiness.

To feel lastingly happier in the present, we need to understand the difference between pleasure and gratification.

Pleasure: Has strong sensory and emotional components, what philosophers call “raw feelings” – exuberance, thrills, ecstasy, delight, and comfort. They are mostly temporary and involve little, if any, thinking. Examples of pleasureful activities include watching TV, getting a massage, listening to music, eating chocolate, or drinking wine. Pleasures are fine and can give you a temporary lift, but they will not bring lasting happiness.

Gratification: These activities aren’t necessarily accompanied by raw feelings at all. Rather, these gratifications engage us so fully that we become immersed and absorbed in them, and lose self-consciousness…in other words, we experience flow. Time stops, our skills match the challenge, and we are in touch with our strengths. This differs from pleasure in 3 crucial ways:

1. It lasts longer,
2. Involves quite a lot of thinking, and
3. Is secured by our virtues and strengths.

Examples might be: playing a sport, enjoying a great conversation, reading a delightful book, writing, dancing, woodworking, painting, or helping someone less privileged. So, take the time to ask yourself, when does time stop (or the “flow” state begin..) for you? When do you find yourself doing exactly what you want to be doing and never wanting it to end?

The lesson? Stop chasing too many momentary pleasures, and start seeking the flow of gratitude instead.

Five ways to increase the flow of gratitude

Happiness Science suggests that the more we use our signature strengths, the more happiness and well-being we will have. Dr. Sandip Roy, founder of The Happiness Blog, describes five top character traits of a truly grateful human:

1. Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence: Finds beauty in nature, art, science, ideas, people, and everyday experience.
2. Honesty: Speaks the truth almost all the time, and acts and presents themselves in a genuine way.
3. Love of Learning: Tries to learn something from every situation, and loves mastering new skills.
4. Judgment: Examines, thinks, and analyzes the details of an issue from all sides.
5. Perspective: Provides wise counsel to others, and can look at the world in ways that make sense to those around them.

Final thoughts and forward thinking:

We each have aspects of signature strengths in our personality which are essential to who we are, and character strengths which can help us experience gratification and authentic happiness more often. Overall, we need to put our best foot (and strengths) forward for ourselves, and for those we love.

In summary, Dr. Martin Seligman puts it this way:

“When you figure out what are your signature character strengths and use them as often as possible, you increase your happiness and life satisfaction. The good life is using your signature strengths every day to produce authentic happiness and abundant gratification.”

 

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Laura Milo DeAngelis | Owner and Founder | Bergen Concierge Service LLC

www.bergen-concierge.com • 201-303-7301 • bergenconcierge@gmail.com

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Credits:

Martin Seligman, MD: Authentic Happiness

Dr. Sandip Roy, MD, The Happiness Blog

Reading recommendations:

Don’t always give pleasure a top priority. You Must Ask For Joy, Not Pleasure.

NJlifehacks, a blog dedicated to helping people live a better life through relentless self-improvement.