Chapter: Happiness (Page 210/300)
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Happiness
If you want to boost your happiness, it helps to understand what happiness is and how it works. Pursuing happiness without understanding the mechanisms behind it is like planting a garden without knowing the basics of fertilization, pest control, watering, and frost. It's easy to pop a seed in the ground, but it takes a deeper understanding to grow something wonderful. Happiness, like gardening, only seems simple.
Let's start by defining happiness. My definition is that it's a feeling you get when your body chemistry is producing pleasant sensations in your mind. That definition is compatible with the science of happiness.
It's tempting to imagine happiness as a state of mind caused by whatever is happening in your life. That's a helpless worldview and it can blind you to a simple system for being happier.
Science has done a good job demonstrating that happiness isn't as dependent on your circumstances as you might think. For example, amputees often return to whatever level of happiness they enjoyed before losing a limb. And you know from your own experience that some people seem happy no matter what is going on in their lives, while others can't find happiness no matter how many things are going right. We're all born with a limited range of happiness, and the circumstances of life can only jiggle us around within the range.
The good news is that anyone who has experienced happiness probably has the capacity to spend more time at the top of their range and less time near the bottom. To do that I treat myself like the moist robot I am and manipulate my body chemistry as needed. I also try to improve my situation and circumstances wherever I can, but I see that as 20 percent of the solution. The big part—the 80 percent of happiness—is nothing but a chemistry experiment.
You can't always quickly fix whatever is wrong in your environment, and you can't prevent negative thoughts from drifting into your head. But you can easily control your body chemistry through lifestyle, and that in turn will cause your thoughts to turn positive.
Let's get to the mechanics. Obviously your doctor can give you a pill to change your mood. And you can change your chemistry by drinking alcohol or doing recreational drugs. The problem is that it comes with risks and side effects you'd rather avoid. I advocate a more natural approach.
For starters, the single biggest trick for manipulating your happiness chemistry is being able to do what you want, when you want. I'm contrasting that with the more common situation, in which you might be able to do all the things you want, but you can't often do them when you want.
For example, you might enjoy eating a delicious meal. But if the only time you were allowed to eat delicious food was right after you'd already filled your stomach with junk food, the delicious meal would not make you happy. A mediocre meal when you're starving will contribute more to your happiness than an extraordinary meal when you're not hungry. The timing of things can be more important than the intrinsic value of the things.
Napping is another perfect example. A good nap can be wonderful, but if the only available time to nap is an hour before bedtime, a nap would do you little good. You need to control the order and timing of things to be happy. It's important to look at happiness in terms of timing because timing is easier to control than resources. It's hard to become rich enough to buy your own private island but, relatively speaking, it's easier to find a job with flexible hours. A person with a flexible schedule and average resources will be happier than a rich person who has everything except a flexible schedule. Step one in your search for happiness is to continually work toward having control of your schedule.
Parents understand what I'm talking about. Most parents love their kids and are glad they had them. At the same time, kids remove almost all of the flexibility in your schedule. It's no wonder that parents who seem to have everything—nice house, great kids, and good friends—still find themselves in misery during the years their kids are young. Those parents might have all the "stuff" they could ask for but no flexibility to enjoy what they want when they want.
As I write this chapter, I'm sitting in a comfortable chair with my trusty dog, Snickers, while enjoying a warm cup of coffee. I just came from a good workout, so I'm feeling relaxed and in the mood to write. By any definition, what I'm doing is work, but because I can control the timing of it on this particular day, it doesn't feel like work. I've transformed work into pleasure simply by having control over when I do it.
In your personal life and your career, consider schedule flexibility when making any big decision. Just remember to keep your eye out for ways to maximize your schedule freedom in the long term. You won't all become work-at-home cartoonists, but you can certainly find a boss who values your productivity over your attendance.
That brings me to the next important mechanism for happiness.
Happiness has more to do with where you're heading than where you are. A person who is worth two billion dollars will feel sad if he suddenly loses one billion because he's moving in the wrong direction. But a street person will celebrate discovering a new Dumpster behind an upscale restaurant because it means good eating ahead. We tend to feel happy when things are moving in the right direction and unhappy when things are trending bad.
The directional nature of happiness is one reason it's a good idea to have a sport or hobby that leaves you plenty of room to improve every year. Tennis and golf are two perfect examples. Slow and steady improvement at anything makes you feel that you are on the right track. The feeling of progress stimulates your body to create the chemicals that make you feel happy.
When you choose a career, consider whether it will lead to a lifetime of ever-improved performance, a plateau, or a steady decline in your skills.
Taking care of my body always influences my happiness more than whatever task I'm involved in. That's an important point because normally when you feel unhappy, you blame your mood on your environment. It's easy to blame your environment because you know you can interpret almost anything as bad news. I'm here to tell you that the primary culprit in your bad moods is a deficit in one of the big five: flexible schedule, imagination, sleep, diet, and exercise.
Ask yourself this question: At times when you've exercised earlier in the day, eaten well, hydrated, and had enough sleep, what percentage of those times have you found yourself in a good mood? Now that I've put the idea in your head, you'll automatically find yourself noticing the link between daily body maintenance and your not-so-mysterious happiness. I predict you'll observe that your good moods are highly correlated with exercise, diet, and sleep.
Exercise has two very different benefits. The exercise itself releases natural pain-relieving substances, endorphins, and that gives you a direct feeling of well-being. But exercise is also a mental escape from whatever was stressing you. That's why I recommend forms of exercises that occupy your mind at the same time as your muscles.
Exercise also helps you sleep better, so that's a double benefit. Of the big five factors in happiness—flexible schedule, imagination, diet, exercise, and sleep—my pick for the most important is exercise.
Recapping the happiness formula:
- Eat right
- Exercise
- Get enough sleep
- Imagine an incredible future (even if you don't believe it)
- Work toward a flexible schedule
- Do things you can steadily improve at
- Help others (if you've already helped yourself)
- Reduce daily decisions to routine
If you do those eight things, the rest of what you need to stimulate the chemistry of happiness in your brain will be a lot easier to find. In fact, the other components of happiness that you seek—such as career opportunities, love, and friends—might find their way to you if you make yourself an attractive target.
📚 Want the rest of the book?
This is just one chapter from How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams. The book covers systems vs. goals, energy management, business writing, persuasion, career strategy, and more—all in Scott's signature contrarian, practical style.
If this chapter resonated with you, the full book is worth the read. It's the kind of book that changes how you think about success, failure, and building a life that works.
Sam
