The Source of A Lot Of Unhappiness
Sonja Lyubomirsky got her PhD in social psychology from Stanford, and on her very first day, she took a walk around campus with her adviser, Lee Ross, a world expert on conflict and negotiation. At one point, they started talking about happiness. What is the secret to happiness? Why are some people happier than others? Can it be cultivated? Can it be measured? “Now, you have to understand,” Lyubomirsky said, “this is 1989.” At the time, no scientists were studying happiness. “It was considered to be a totally unscientific, fuzzy topic to study.” But by the end of that walk with Ross, Lyubomirsky said, “I decided to study it.” Before conducting some of the earliest scientific studies on happiness, Lyubomirsky read what there was to read on the subject. “Even though there was very little scientific research on happiness at the time,” she explains, “there were lots of people talking about it—in books, magazine articles, and so on.” As she immersed herself in this material, she began to realize: “the preoccupation with our own happiness mainly exists in the Western world. It’s mostly in America, Europe, and Australia that we have the luxury to worry about our happiness. If your basic needs aren’t being met, if you’re living with a lot of uncertainty and instability, you just don’t have the time in your day to be thinking, ‘Oh, am I happy? What should I do to be happier?’ I think that’s the source of a lot of unhappiness.” The point, as I took it, is that happiness often has less to do with specific situations and circumstances than it has to do with how we think—or whether we think at all—about those specific situations and circumstances. Thinking a little differently about certain situations and circumstances—that’s the theme of this SIX at 6…
I Just Need You From The Neck-Down
When Matt McCusker was coming up as a comedian, he worked a number of manual labor jobs. In one of those jobs, he was told, “Look, I just need you from the neck-down today. I don’t want to hear any ideas. I don’t want to hear some other way you think we should try.” Pointing from one spot to another, the boss added, “Just lift the box there and put it over there. There to there—that’s it.” I think about this all the time. With those necessary tasks I don’t necessarily love doing—in the past, I’d procrastinate by thinking, ‘Do I really want to do this? Does it make me happy?’ Now, when that part of me starts to overthink, I say to myself, ‘Look, I just need you from the neck-down.’” And usually, once whatever it is gets done, I’m happy I did it.
Putting Your Entire Self Into Things
Other times, of course, it’s good to get the neck-up involved too. The economist Steve Levitt once guest lectured in Daniel Gilbert’s introductory psychology course at Harvard and was stunned by the effort and energy Gilbert brought to his teaching. From decorating the classroom to curating a playlist for each lecture, and knowing the names of all 400-plus students—saying something unique about each one before they asked Levitt a question—he couldn’t believe how much thought and care Gilbert put into every detail. “I’m just curious,” Levitt said to Gilbert, “why do you teach like that?” “Somewhere very early on in life,” Gilbert replied, “I discovered that to the extent that you put your whole self into almost any task—even if it’s washing the dishes—it stops being work and it starts becoming play.” Instead of thinking about the drudgery of washing dishes, for example, he’ll think, Can I wash them by holding them in my right hand and scrubbing with my non-dominant left hand? Is there an interesting way to stack them to maximize space on the drying rack? Can I scrub, rinse, and stack dishes in sync with the beat of a favorite song? “Anything that you are creative and playful with is a joy,” Gilbert continued. “So I have to teach, it’s part of my job. I could go into the classroom and spend 10, 15 hours a week just going through the motions, which would make it feel like drudgery. Or I could spend double that amount of time fully engaged, having the time of my life. And so I do. The short answer to your question is putting your entire self into things turns it into joy.”
Bring The Little Scared Kid With You
For a long time, John Mayer struggled with anxiety. It stemmed from his childhood—he didn’t have many friends at school, where his classmates saw him as a weird music kid. His favorite musicians became his refuge. “Stevie Ray Vaughan, Buddy Guy, B.B. King—those were my imaginary friends,” he said. “I’d get home from school and put on their records and that was my world.” He felt like he was always on the outside looking in. “I remember thinking that [the TV series about youthful-looking undercover police officers posing as school students] 21 Jump Street was a good allegory for my school experience. It was like, ‘I’m not really a student. I’m undercover. Because what I’m doing is I go home and my classes start at 3.30 when these ones end.’” The feeling of not belonging stayed with him for a long time, following him into his own music performances, both before and while on stage. But things changed when, John said, “a therapist told me a while ago about my anxiety: bring the little scared kid up on stage with you. Say, ‘You can come along.’” Reframing his thinking before going on stage, he said, “changed so much for me. When I’m anxious and that part of me that’s still a kid is anxious, I go, ‘Do you wanna come with me? You can come up on stage with me.’ And I bring him next to me. I go, ‘You can come up on stage. There’s a lot of people out there. I know, I know, it’s weird. But trust me, we got this.’ And so you can take care of yourself.”
The Concept of Dream Achievement
After graduating from college, Ezra Koenig worked as a junior high school teacher in Brooklyn, New York. In his off-hours, he was the lead vocalist and guitarist of Vampire Weekend, a band he formed with college friends. “At that phase of my life,” Koenig said, “I was pretty unhappy. I enjoyed parts of being a teacher, but I stressed constantly, thinking, ‘Oh, I didn’t choose this. This isn’t my dream or passion. The band has to take off. My dream has to materialize.’ Everything felt very high-stakes.” Everything—his happiness, his identity, his sense of fulfillment—was dependent on the band’s success, on being a full-time musician. The commute to and from school, the quiet moments between classes, the downtime throughout the day—Ezra had plenty of time to be thinking about his happiness. “I really wish I could go back and tell myself, ‘Being a teacher would be fine too.’ I wish I could relieve some of that stress and say to myself, ‘Being a teacher is important too. If the band makes one album and you come back to teaching, that can be a really rewarding life as well.’” The band ultimately went on to be wildly successful, and while Ezra is happy and appreciates where he’s at, he’s come to realize that all the stress and pressure he put on himself wasn’t necessary. He could have been just as fulfilled if his life had taken the other path—that of a teacher, who moonlights as a musician. “There’s the belief that happiness only comes from achieving your dreams,” he said, reflecting on achieving his. “The concept of dream achievement is such a double-edged sword. Because the paradox is that most people’s dream, including mine, is really just to be happy. When you strip away all the specifics, the dream is to be happy…I’ve now met so many people in my life. I’ve met people who are infinitely more successful than me, who are some of the most stressed-out, miserable people you can imagine. And I’ve also met people who’ve watched opportunities come and go but are deeply happy.” Seeing firsthand that there’s no correlation between worldly success and happiness—“I think that’s why I now have that impulse to go back and tell myself, ‘Vampire Weekend or teacher in Brooklyn—on both paths, it’s about your attitude.’ Obviously, both could be rewarding because you see that being a musician and a teacher are both incredibly fulfilling jobs for many people.”
What We Change When We Range
In one of his Epistles, the Roman poet Horace writes to his restless friend Bullatius, who is traveling from place to place—Chios, Lesbos, Samos, Ulubrae, and on and on—in search of happiness and contentment. Horace tells Bullatius that he won’t find what he’s looking for in these famous destinations. He calls his friend’s nomadic pursuit of happiness “active inactivity,” saying that happiness has less to do with one’s external circumstances than it has to do with the thoughts we bring to them. “When o’er the world we range,” Horace writes, “’Tis but our climate, not our mind we change…What you seek at Ulubrae you’ll find, if to the quest you bring a balanced mind.”