As promised from last week, I tackle the question: "what is happiness?"

One of the trickiest questions in the happiness project is: “What is ‘happiness’?”

Scientific texts use various terms, such as utility, hedonic tone, subjective well-being, positive emotionality, and positive affect. One study identified 15 different academic definitions of “happiness.”

Several kinds of tests measure various concepts of “happiness.” Some studies focus on “life satisfaction,” by asking people how satisfied they feel with their lives, all things considered. (Interesting side note: when asked “How happy are you these days in your life?” the Pew Research Center Study 2006 reports that 50% of Americans report themselves as “pretty happy” and 34% are “very happy”—that’s 84% who say they’re happy.)

Other tests get at different measures, by asking participants how they feel at random moments throughout their days, or by asking them the next day to reconstruct their feelings from the day before.

To put it crudely, there’s the “happiness” of how you feel moment to moment, and the “happiness” you feel when you evaluate your life overall. And these two very well might not match up. Positive affect, negative affect, and life satisfaction are separate constructs, and move independently from one another.

Now, in what might be a worthless dodge on my part, I decided that instead of spending a lot of time debating the various terminology (and whether satisfaction was more important than gratification, and whether pleasure mattered to happiness, etc., etc.), I would think of it this way:

I would think about being happier. Can you and I become happier?

This way, I can have my own working definition of happiness, and you can have your definition of happiness. What matters is what we do to be happier.

So, this question, “What is happiness?” became for me “What are the elements of a happy life?”

I anticipated – rightly, I think – that the proper formula would make the need for a precise definition less pressing.

After a huge amount of thought and false starts, I arrived at my formula: to be happier, think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.

Therefore, applying my formula, I would say that “happiness” is a life in which you:

 Work to have many opportunities to feel good – to have fun, to feel love, to learn about things that interest you, to feel sensual pleasure, to see friends and family, to connect with other people, to feel of service to others, to have energy, to feel control, etc.… (positive affect)
and
 Work to eliminate sources of feeling bad – instances in which you feel anger, resentment, irritation, guilt, anxiety, boredom, grudges, worthlessness, disorder, exasperation, frustration, failure, etc. (negative affect)
and
 Work to feel right about your life – take steps to live the kind of life you feel that you “ought” to be leading, in terms of job, family, location, service, etc. (life satisfaction)
and
 Work to include an aspect of growth in your life – a sense of progress, advancement, increasing abundance, potential, opportunity, learning, mastery, responsibility.

Note the repetition of the word “work.” Happiness isn’t a passive state that descends on you like a golden cloud when everything goes right. It’s an unceasing effort.

Also, note that this formula embraces both the daily experience of positive affect (the pleasure of sitting in your favorite café with a perfect cup of coffee and the morning newspaper) and the overall sense of life satisfaction (having, at last, gotten that stressful job you really want, or the birth of the new baby who is keeping you up all night).

If you disagree with me on the definition of happiness, I urge you to take your definition and think about it in the context of my happiness formula.

Often, I’ve noticed, people write to me telling me that they reject my concept of “happiness,” then they go on to define happiness in a way that fits my concept perfectly.

Tomorrow: about unhappiness and depression.

*
Zoikes, I missed my own anniversary. I started this blog on March 27, 2006. To start a blog was one of my resolutions for March, the month of work and leisure. And I must say, keeping a blog has made me very happy. Exactly as all the research would predict.

Tonight, to celebrate, I’m going to Lulu.com and making a book out of my first year of blog entries – one of my favorite things to do.

Comments

[Matthew Pianalto]

If you mean WORK, you might want to say WORK rather than THINK ABOUT in your "formula."

Depressed people, I presume, can think about things all day, too.

(I'm so glad you didn't actually try to define happiness itself after all your hard work. I would have thrown something...)

[Patti]

I am in agreement with your definition of happiness and that it is something we must constantly work at. I'm looking forward to tomorrows post. Looking at unhappiness really puts happiness in perspective. Happy Anniversary! - I have been enjoying your blog immensely.

[Adriana]

I like your "working" definition very much.

After reading the comments from last week's debate, I think it could pertain to those suffering from depression. To be happy, to find peace, requires work. We're all in the same boat and when it comes down to it, we all have a choice: to be happier or to be miserable. Nothing we face in life ought to be a crutch, a justification for misery.

[Claudio]

Spot on! Well done. I agree with you that we must work out our own happiness in order to achieve a balanced live in an atmosphere of growth. Your formula puts it very well.

[ozma]

While the Greek term eudaemonia might not exactly and perfectly overlap with our term happiness I think you might want to look into Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics to round out your view.

A view of happiness has to be argued for--it can't be merely defined. What happiness is can be seen as an ethical question concerning what human life should be about.

They would agree and disagree with certain elements on your list--it's very interesting that your list is primarily about the subjective way a person experiences his or her life. You do mention doing things that are worthwhile but is the end of those activities to increase your subjective sense of satisfaction? Can a person who is subjectively pleased with morally bad things lead a happy life? The harder questions are the more interesting ones. Any definition you come up with is not going to be entirely satisfactory probably without looking at the harder questions.

[Helen]

I was driving back to work after a stressful meeting and was reflecting on why one of my staff was so disgruntled. For some reason your happiness formula popped into my head and I started to review her status from that perspective: she was ignoring every opportunity to feel right, amplifying every opportunity to feel bad and had completed stagnated in her job. She was on a downward spiral of utter unhappiness. Certainly your formula helped me to mentor her forward. I've actually used your formula a number of times to evaluate situations etc. and have been impressed at how useable it has been for me.

[Gretchen Rubin]

Thanks so much for these reactions to my formula. It really helps me think through whether it works or not. Good point especially about replacing "thinking" with "work." I need to work on my wording.

I have looked at Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Epictetus, etc. There is so much to say about these philosophers, it's hard to know where to start.

One particular issue, with Aristotle for example, is his equation of a virtuous life with a happy life. “It is virtuous activities that determine our happiness, and the opposite kind that produce the opposite effect.” “Since happiness is an activity of the soul expressing complete virtue, we must examine virtue; for that will perhaps also be a way to study happiness better.”

Now, for myself, I think this is absolutely true. My happiness project is really a virtue project, as dull as that sounds. My increased happiness has been the result of acting more virtuously. And I think that would be true for most people.

But what about the person who takes gleeful pleasure in malice or cruelty? The person who gets a thrill from spreading gossip or undermining other people? Or WORSE? Daniel Gilbert summed this problem up perfectly in STUMBLING ON HAPPINESS: "For two thousand years philosophers have felt compelled to identify happiness with virtue because that is the sort of happiness they think we ought to want. And maybe they’re right. But if living one’s life virtuously is a cause of happiness, it is not happiness itself, and it does us no good to obfuscate a discussion by calling both the cause and the consequence by the same name…By muddling causes and consequences, philosophers have been forced to construct tortured defenses of some truly astonishing claims—for example, that a Nazi war criminal who is basking on an Argentinean beach is not really happy, whereas the pious missionary who is being eaten alive by cannibals is.”

So that's why I've stuck to the subjective side of things, rather than arguing about what it means to live a "good life." That's important, obviously. And for me, being happy does mean being good.

But, I have to confess, I'm also intrigued by why more superficial things -- like cleaning my closets and doing weight-training -- contribute to my happiness. Which they do. These are not on the same plane of existence, and yet they do make a difference.

Though now that I think about it, the Greek philosophers spent a lot of time mulling over the pleasures of wine, food, friendship, prosperity, etc. Though not closets. Maybe closets hadn't been invented yet.

[phquaryn]

Happy Anniversary! I'm loving the comments lately. Matthew Pinalto's comment is raising a question for me -- Why isn't happiness something you 'think about' rather than 'work' on (which implies movement of the body)? Does happiness originate in your brain or in your body?

[Matthew Pianalto]

I like that Gilbert passage, too. But I'm not entirely convinced that the "happiness researchers" aren't guilty of the same general charge. And "sticking with the subjective" isn't going to solve that problem...

[randy]

there is no way in hell 84% of americans are happy. i guess optimism is required just to get through day-by-day but i think some of what you say is what you'd like to believe, not what is true.

[Sam]

I also like Scott Adams' happiness formula:
Happiness = health + money + social life + meaning
[http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/03/happiness_formu.html]
Personally, I like to equate happiness with contentment.