In our materialistic, consumer-oriented culture, we generally view happiness as the end-product of a gradual process of accumulating the things and attaining the goals we've set out for ourselves. Only when everything finally falls into place - the right house, the right job, the right relationship, the right stuff - do we feel entitled to call ourselves happy.
Success can't bring you lasting happiness
But experts in the emerging field of positive psychology have found that life circumstances exert only minimal influence on the happiness we experience. For example, extremely rich people are only ever so slightly happier than sales clerks or construction workers. Because of a mechanism known as hedonic adaptation, we quickly become habituated to the latest accomplishment or acquisition and lose the happiness we initially gained. No wonder we restlessly move on to the next experience or thing we imagine will bring us the lasting happiness we seek. In fact, researchers have found that only 10% of our happiness is based on health, possessions, power, or status.
Your default happiness level
What, then, are the factors that contribute to lasting happiness? First, fully half of our happiness is actually hardwired at birth by what scientists call our emotional set point, our default level of subjective well-being that's determined by heredity and tends to remain more or less constant throughout our lives. Though we may fluctuate up or down to some degree, we inevitably return to this emotional baseline. In one study, for example, researchers found that lottery winners passed through a relatively brief period of excitement and elation and then returned to their emotional set point. In other studies, scientists found that those who were struck by catastrophic events like blindness, cancer, or paralysis went through an extended adjustment period but eventually returned to their accustomed emotional baseline.
The characteristics of a happy life
As influential as this emotional set point may be, it still leaves 40% of our happiness that can be shaped and expanded by the actions we take and the attitudes we cultivate. In other words, nearly half of our happiness is up to us! In an attempt to determine what we can do to make ourselves happy, positive psychologists have identified a number of the qualities and activities that seem to characterize a happy life.
These include:
- Positive/realistic thinking and feeling
- Living in the present
- Kind and loving attitude toward others
- Forgiveness for past hurts
- Gratitude for the present
- Savoring the good things in life
- Connection with friends and family
- Engagement in meaningful life activities
- Spiritual involvement
Live in the fullness of the moment
Many of these same qualities have been cultivated and enhanced for thousands of years by the great meditative traditions. From this perspective, which corresponds in many ways to the perspective of positive psychology, happiness is an abiding attitude of gratitude, appreciation, acceptance, contentment, and satisfaction with the way things are. Happy people tend to live in the fullness and completeness of the present moment, rather than in regrets about the past or fears about the future. For the happy among us, the proverbial glass is half full, rather than half empty.
Raise your emotional set-point
As for the happiness set point described by positive psychology, recent brain research suggests that meditation has the power to do what unexpected catastrophe and extreme good fortune could not?permanently raise this emotional baseline. In one ground-breaking study, biotech workers who practiced mindfulness meditation (in which awareness is focused in the present moment) for just a half hour each day for two months had increased activation of their left prefrontal cortex (the brain center associated with happiness and well-being) and reported feeling healthier, more positive, and less stressed out. Follow-up studies done four months after the experiment ended found the same level of left prefrontal activation, even when the workers had stopped meditating, suggesting that their emotional set-point had been permanently raised.
Connect with something greater than yourself
In another study, brain researchers found that the key to the extraordinary happiness and contentment experienced by longtime Tibetan meditators was the practice of generating compassion for others. By some mysterious alchemy, it seems that extending compassion to others lifts our own mood, raises our self-esteem, and deepens our sense of meaning and connectedness, which are core components of lasting happiness. As positive psychology has discovered, we can't feel truly happy unless we feel connected to something greater than ourselves, whether it's family, a network of friends, meaningful work, social involvement, or religious or spiritual community, and compassion directly connects us with others.
Reclaim your birthright
In the end, despite individual variations in the emotional set point, happiness is our birthright as human beings, our natural state, hidden beneath all the accumulated dissatisfaction and suffering of a lifetime. With the meditations provided in this program, you can reclaim your birthright by developing the power of mindful awareness and cultivating some of the positive emotions like forgiveness, gratitude, love, and compassion that contribute to happiness and overall well-being.
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