Happiness Part 1. How happy can you be?

Norwegian filmmaker Line Hatland made a movie “How happy can you be” (original title in Norwegian: Hvor lykkelig kan du bli). It is science documentary about happiness and things that should make us happy. Hatland had interviewed a big number of professors and researchers [1], [2] who discussed the most recent studies and speculated what to make of them. I remember some fantastic statistics from that film, even though it has been a while ago since I saw it. For example:
- The experts claimed that 50 % of our happiness is “in our genes”. So that no matter what we do, 50 % of our happiness is already defined regardless of what we do. Consequently some people are just naturally happier than others and that’s it.
- Surprisingly only 10 % of happiness is defined by circumstances. That means that regardless how we arrange our life, the circumstances affect only a little to our overall happiness. The film claimed that this is because we are adaptable, we get used to our circumstances whether we are rich or poor, married or unmarried, kids or no kids etc… Wow!
- But most interestingly, 40 % of our happiness should be defined by how we act and react in our everyday life and what kind of attitudes we have. I understood it to mean that we should think positively, “glass is half full” rather than “half empty” kind of thinking. Just reacting positively and acting proactively would make us happier. Dwelling in self pity and accusing circumstances would be the worst thing to do.

Ok. All that sounds fine to a laywoman in psychology like me. Somewhat surprising perhaps, but if the scientists so say, why not. But the film moved then to concluding that that you get a better return (in terms of becoming happier) by investing your time in changing your attitudes and reacting positively to whatever happens to you rather than struggling to change your life’s circumstances. Of course, positive thinking and changing circumstances are not directly contradictory, you can change your attitudes and be positive all the time and still act to make changes to your environment and lifestyle, why not? I just started to doubt that what if you always try to react positively even if the things that happen to you worsen your circumstances. Can that make sense?

The film continued to list several techniques how you should think and act in everyday situations in order to be happier. It’s been a while since I saw the film so I don’t actually remember any of the tips any more, but I remember that for the most part they sounded like common sense to become more positive. Rules how to react in different situations and thinking patterns how to make your attitude to be more positive.

But then the program went on concluding that since in order to be happy in the present, you need to avoid dwelling in problems and that in turn would be best achieved by not thinking unpleasant things and remember only the happy things in your past. It was said that people who remember their past as happy times are also happier in the present time and that all of us have in fact a very selective memory. We create ourselves a kind of history we like it to be. I think the film claimed that it is never too late to get a happy childhood – just forget the unhappy memories and remember good ones. At that point I remember that the whole thing started to bother me more seriously for some reason. Now that happiness popped up in discussions in PH, I started to process what was it that made me so confused then.

Looking back I think it is that the whole thing started to sound like some sort of “life management” coaching, which is probably fine if you have to motivate yourself to accomplish specific tasks, let’s say in a business assignment where you need to execute specific tasks at your peak performance and not get too philosophical about questioning the deeper meaning of the whole strategy… that’s fine.

But is the meaning of our life to be as happy as we can? Are we really motivated to make changes in our life or environment if we are just happy to the things as they are? Isn’t that a bit too fatalistic attitude? Can it be even hurtful to start managing your lifestyle and create own life history too much? Shouldn’t we remember also mistakes and learn from them? ….I started to wonder shouldn’t there be more to having a good life than just trying to be happy all the time. I think the program “how happy can I be” did ask these questions a little bit, but not very much if I remember correctly. If you got interested, I found that there is also a critic about the program published in “Journal of Happiness studies” [3]. There is likely more discussion about the validity of the program’s conclusions.

Just some days ago I told about this program in PH and we had chat with Loki and Sophia about it. I was awed about the good insight girls had that indeed pursuit of constant happiness (whatever it is) cannot be the sole meaning of our life. Since Loki as a professional in psychotherapy immediately recognized that the theses presented in the program are probably based on the paradigms of a “positive psychology movement” (as I later found to be case according to [1]) , I decided to ask Loki if I could interview her more in detail for my blog, and to my great delight she accepted!!!

I think this whole topic is really important….should we try to be happier or is it ok just to be miserable. Should we try to accomplish something or is it wasted time since we can be happy more easily, were all the claims and recommendations in the program actually true…

See Happiness part 2. for Loki’s interview!

Q

References
[1] internet page, feb 26th 2009 http://www.nfi.no/english/norwegianfilms/show.html?id=605
[2] internet page, feb 26th 2009 http://icarusfilms.com/new2006/hhap.html
[3] internet page, feb 26th 2009 http://www.springerlink.com/content/g3u37tr415854750/