The Happiness Lab Musings

[TexasProud]

Thoroughly loving the Happiness Lab podcast.  Thanks for the recommendation @Spryte

 

Just posting my musings here as I work through it.

S1 Ep1 You Can Change

I sort of already knew some of this like money doesn't make you happy.  The 1 percent are some of the most miserable people on the planet. Now we are not in the 1 percent, but are up there.  But what I thought was interesting was how the 1 percent were surrounded by 1 percent.  People only looked at them for what their money could buy.  Some of them were upset they couldn't buy x.  Yeah, money doesn't mean status to me. We deliberately chose NOT to live in the neighborhoods in the other town where all of the surgeons lived.  You guys know much, much more about our financial situation than anyone in our real life. Though part of it is that we have always lived on the salary that I am guessing most people make around here and then saved the rest.  For me, money is more about safety than status.

S1 Ep 2 The Unhappy Millionaire
Yes, I already knew the worst thing that could happen to your happiness is to win the lottery. The science that was interesting to me was that we overestimate how happy and how long the happiness will last for a good thing: Winning the competition, getting the book published, getting married, etc.  On the other hand, we also overestimate how bad a bad thing will be and how long it will last. So you worried about losing the boyfriend, but the truth is that you rationalize soon after he is gone and it doesn't affect your happiness as much as you think it will.  You return to your happiness baseline.  Most of us think the goal of happiness is to be a 10 all of the time.  But the truth is you will stay at whatever your baseline is most of the time.

The part I had a super hard time with is when the worst things happen, it isn't as bad either.  The expert talked about hedonic expectation. If people who lost a child, which is one of the worst of the worst things, though they wouldn't say what happened was good. They would still say it was awful. If you had them list out the good and bad things that happened as a result, they would list more good than bad.   The guy who did the study said we all have remarkable psychological immunity, the ability to rational and adapt to whatever life throws at us.   I guess I have very, very good physical   .  I just don't get sick very often at all.  But I would say my psychological immunity  is terrible.  I automatically think the bad thing will happen and I do think some of those things ARE bad.  I do not think if I make mistakes I will be ok.    I am sure they will get into the how to fix psychological immunity later.  But for now, I thought man this guy that had all the horrible burns is so happy.  I don't know.  This episode made me feel broken.

S1 Ep 3   A Silver Lining

Ok this one is really interesting. The happiest medal winners are typically the bronze ones.  The least happy are the silver.   The bronze medals  are happy just to be on the podium and realize how close they were to not making it at all.  The silver ones are so unhappy because they were so, so close to the gold.  Then they talked about how most people if they had the choice about whether to make 50,000 and everyone else made 25,000 or make 100,000 but everyone else made 250,000, most people would choose the 50,000?????   Yeah, seeing our neighbor build on to their house or whatever has never made me feel like I am missing out.  

So this is reference point bias and it can apply to anything: the amount of friends, your artistic gift, etc.  We tend to compare ourselves to the tippy, tippy top. 

I am not sure who my reference point is...  I have never wished I could be like anyone else or thought if I just had "their gift, their money, their friends, their success", then I would be happy.  Now, as far as singing, I did get mad in high school and college when people who had such a natural gift of singing and then didn't work to develop it at all.  I would practice, practice, practice and make it so far, but then get nervous and blow it in the higher levels.  They wouldn't practice at all and make it to state.  I just thought how much better they could be if they would just develop their talent and how I wish I had it, not because it would make me happy, but because I would actually use it.  And yes, I know that the parable of the talents means money.  I get that, but didn't know that as a teen.  I always felt like I had the 2 and I would double it and God would be happy.  But some of those guys with ten were just burying it.   LOL.  

Anyway, I have no reference for happiness or anyone I wish I could be like.  I never have. 

Then they talked about how Michelle Kwan was a good example of being happy with a silver medal:
1. Negative visualization- She had an injury and was grateful for making the team at all.  She saw the negative result that could have happened instead of the silver medal

2. Ok, they didn't put a term to this, but she beat out her sister early in her career and her sister was the best cheerleader.  She didn't think about beating others.  She wanted to encourage them.

3. Now this is what @regentrude has talked about.  She enjoyed the journey of skating, not the results.  Does writing give me this...occasionally.  

I know other writers have talked about happiness being about being in the flow....  I don't know that anything has ever given me that feeling in my work life.  I do the work because I had to make money for us to live, to have something to do, because someone else needed help...  But to do something for the pure joy of it.  No.

 

Edited July 24 by TexasProud