This 3-part series on the how of happiness inspired by Arthur Brooks gives us insights into what we can do to boost our happiness, even when we don’t always feel like being happy.  

Transcript:

Welcome to Everyday Happiness where we create lasting happiness, in 2 minutes a day,  through my signature method of Intentional Margins® (creating harmony between your to-dos and your priorities), happiness science, and musings about life. 

I'm your host Katie Jefcoat and Arthur Brooks is an accomplished scientist and professor at the Harvard Business School and also writes a column for The Atlantic.  He says there are 3 equations for well-being to manage your own happiness.  The first is EQUATION 1: SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING = GENES + CIRCUMSTANCES + HABITS.

The scientists have purposefully not called “subjective well-being” happiness because they all think happiness is too vague.  But if we were to interchange it for a moment it would be the equation for what you might define as happiness.  Genes + circumstances + habits.   

But this is where it gets interesting. If the equation is a cup and we’re asking ourselves, how do we fill our cup with happiness well, the science says that our genetics make up about half of our happiness cup.  

But then, the research is all over the place.  It says that 10-40% of our happiness is based on circumstances, the good, the bad, everything that comes into our lives.  That could be a lot.  But, here’s the kicker, it doesn’t matter as much as we think, because there is this scientific principle called the hedonic treadmill that says, whatever the circumstance, we humans return to our baseline anyway.   

So, as we dig into the how of this happiness equation, genes and circumstances aren’t a productive focus because we can’t change our genetics and circumstances don’t last - we know we return to baseline.  So we’re left with our habits.  And this is where equation number two comes into play - tomorrow.  But this is not what you think. It’s not about how to make good habits.  Turn in tomorrow and we’ll unpack this. 

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