CHAPTER 12 HAPPINESS

“There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do”.

Freya Stark¹

Happiness is a state of being.²

Studied for decades, the question “What makes us happy?” has been posed all around the world, over time, and in different ways. Happiness is an important emotion, and has a role in the survival of the species.³

Feeling good is an overall motivational state that keeps us alive. The avoidance of loss and pain and the search for good feelings is the mechanism that has preserved and multiplied the human race.⁴ The impact of happiness has been demonstrated in different studies to improve health, life expectancy,⁵ recovery from setbacks and much more.⁶

Dr Ross McDonald describes most people as wanting love, acceptance, respect and esteem from others. They want romance, happiness, success and a sense of positive purpose. And given the fundamental nature of these needs, people will give huge attention to anything that suggests it will satisfy them.⁷

Happiness consists of positive emotion (hedonic pleasure), and assessments of flourishing, meaning and purpose (eudaimonic wellbeing) – both are important in evaluations of life satisfaction.⁸

Happiness is not only an individual quest, but is something organizations are keen to enhance among employees because there are organizational benefits to a positive, engaged, and energized workforce.

Well-being is part of the measure of human capital, which is finding its way into the annual reports of listed companies. There is little doubt that management of health and well-being in the workplace reduces healthcare expenditure and yields a significant return on investment.⁹

If we look at happiness and unhappiness as two ends of a health dimension – the cost savings alone of reducing unhappiness (both in direct financial terms and down-time resulting from unhealthy employees) should raise the priority of the “happiness” agenda in the workplace. At the other end of the dimension, optimal health is a factor in optimal productivity;¹⁰ engaged employees are associated with innovation, described as moving the organization forward¹¹ and with putting their discretionary effort into driving growth and performance.¹²

And the quest doesn’t stop at organizations. Nations too are keen to enhance the overall “happiness” of their populations. With an ageing population and the growing health challenges across the age spectrum combined with the benefits that happiness can bring, happiness is a vital economic issue.

The 2012 World Happiness report argued: “if we continue along the current economic trajectory, we risk undermining the Earth’s life support system … necessary for human health and even survival in some places”. There is hope: “if we act wisely, we can protect the Earth” and at the same time “raise quality of life broadly around the world … by adopting lifestyles and technologies that improve happiness while reducing human damage to the environment.”¹³

THE HAPPINESS DELUSION

“We human beings are terrible at predicting what will make us happy”

Ronald D. Siegel¹⁴

One of the challenges we face is that we think we know what will make us happy – your instant response to Siegel’s statement is likely to be “of course I know what makes me happy”. To find out if you’re on the right track, we invite you to read on.

What if Ronald Siegel is right? – let’s assume he is for now. Why are we so poor at working out what will make us happy?

One part of the answer is simple – we compare ourselves with others to determine whether we have enough to make us happy. If we are in a better material position than our comparison group, then we are more likely to be happy (of sorts), whereas if we’re in a worse material position, it reduces our happiness. Lord Layard, a leading economist and researcher into happiness, has coined the term “the hedonic treadmill” – he equates our need for material possessions to the needs of drug addicts: the more we have, the more we need to have to feel the same level of happiness.¹⁵

In life, there are always those who have more than us and we are exposed to constant messaging across society about what we should aspire to in terms of lifestyle and possessions in order to be happy. The amount we have in comparison to others can lead to us us overinvesting, distorting our lives towards working and making money (activities that do not necessarily make us happy and often make us unhappy) and away from other activities that actually increase our happiness in more sustainable ways.¹⁶

National measures of happiness are distorted along the same lines – feeding the comparison agenda. In general, Governments use a basic economic equation to measure happiness:

Greater income = Greater happiness

This way of looking at happiness feeds the comparison agenda. The media and consumer marketing add to the messaging. Television advertising, for example, is designed to deliver carefully crafted suggestions that happiness, social acceptance, success and respect are all associated with very high levels of material consumption.¹⁷ Income can buy you new circumstances and new experiences, such as having more money to spend, buying a new house, or buying a new car. People soon get used to what they have.¹⁸ Before long, you feel you need the new car and the new house. Going back to the old car, the old house, you’d feel much less happy than you did before you had the new experience.¹⁹ As our income level increases, what we believe is our “necessary” income level increases too.

From our work exploring employee engagement across organizations, despite great satisfaction when a much hoped-for change has taken place, the initial euphoria soon reduces to create a new baseline.

Even being “poor” depends on comparison to social norms. Poverty is defined in relation to the average income levels in a country and in terms of what “most people” in a country would consider basic necessities.²⁰ Defined in this way, poverty becomes a cultural, subjective idea. By this kind of reckoning, one aspect of poverty in the UK is now defined as not having your own bedroom as a child – for previous generations, it was not having enough food, not having shoes, or having to share your bed with siblings.

The idea behind this comparative approach is that unless the poorest can keep up with growth in average incomes, they will progressively become more excluded from the opportunities that the rest of society enjoys and as a result, be less happy.

What people “should have” in order to be happy in comparison to others is core to the culture of consumer-based economies at every level.

In reality, increased income only increases happiness in limited circumstances – when it lifts you away from hard physical poverty. In western countries, while life may be materially better, happiness has not increased since 1950.²¹

Our own experience of this comparative effect happens approximately once a year and coincides with a visit from the financial advisor. Although we tend to be optimistic, appreciative individuals, content with what we have in material terms, after an hour or more of looking at figures and hearing stories of what we could do if we had more, exploring risk and reward tables and hearing tales of clients with a much greater disposable income, the mood plummets. It takes about 48 hours to rebalance. This temporary upwards change in social reference group can seriously affect our temporary feelings of happiness at that point.

As examples, take the annual visit of the financial advisor, or a child’s request for the latest gaming technology or the latest fashion accessory. Although you might see yourself as optimistic and appreciative, content with what you have in material terms, all of these examples create a focus on comparisons with others that can impact on your happiness and it can take some time to rebalance.

Our addiction to consumerism in order to achieve the happiness that we aspire to can, and often does, have a negative impact on overall happiness. The “keep up with the Jones’ mentality”, the obsession with what others have, means that we are depriving ourselves by continually trying to achieve happiness through focusing our attention away from ourselves.

This hedonic treadmill we find ourselves on creates dysfunction, associated with increased depression and anxiety among other things – and in particular, a general dissatisfaction with life.²² Our pursuit of happiness is perhaps actually making us miserable.

PERHAPS LESS IS MORE

There are some interesting examples of individuals and countries that take a different approach to happiness. What could you and your organization learn from these?

The story of the Kingdom of Bhutan

Bhutan, one of the most isolated countries in the world, has more monks than soldiers, measures Gross National Happiness, and sees the “individual’s quest for happiness and inner and outer freedom as the most precious endeavour”.²³ The country has limited exposure to “western” influences: there are neither fast food chains nor even traffic lights.

In 1999, television and the internet were legalized as part of the journey to a modern, democratic nation. The impact was complex as the tiny Buddhist country that was steeped in ancient tradition wrestled with modern, less controllable cyber influences. In April 2002, the remote kingdom suffered its first crime wave, including fraud, violence and murder. While direct cause can’t be attributed to television and internet access alone, dramatic changes to Bhutanese society occurred that led to increasing crime, corruption, an uncontrolled desire for western products, and changing attitudes to love and relationships.²⁴

We have access to the internet, television and clever marketing – we can’t turn back to a time when these things were not integral. But perhaps we can learn to live more wisely and with greater happiness within this technology enabled world.

The story of the poorest president

President Mujica of Uruguay is characterized as the poorest president. Once of many rebels that were part of the crushed Tupamaros guerrilla organization, Mujica was shot six times and spent 14 years behind bars – until democracy returned to Uruguay and he was freed in 1985. Most of his detention was spent in harsh conditions and isolation.

Those years in jail, Mujica says, helped shape his outlook on life. In a recent interview, he notes “I don’t feel poor. Poor people are those who only work to try to keep an expensive lifestyle, and always want more and more”.

“This is a matter of freedom. If you don’t have many possessions then you don’t need to work all your life like a slave to sustain them, and therefore you have more time for yourself,”

“I may appear to be an eccentric old man... But this is a free choice” ²⁵

The story of the laundry worker

There was a newspaper article some years ago about a lady in China who worked in a laundry. She worked seven days a week, from early morning into the evening and did not have holidays. The article explained how hard she worked, how menial the job was and how cramped the conditions were. But it then went on to explain how they had asked the lady how she felt about her work and life. The answer may surprise you but the lady said she loved her work and had a very happy life, saying she never wanted this to change.

If you’re wondering how this lady could love her circumstances and gain so much happiness and fulfilment from her life, we bring to your attention that nowhere in the story does a high income, material possessions or comparisons with others feature.

“People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

Abraham Lincoln ²⁶

WHAT DOES MAKE US HAPPY?

The answer is both simple and complex.

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony”

Mahatma Gandhi²⁸ (1869–1948)

In other words, when you “walk the talk” of your own life, identify your own path and follow it. This is core to the thinking and philosophy behind 31Practices and in tune with Oliver Burkeman’s view of happiness as akin to authenticity.

“Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.”

Dalai Lama XIV²⁹

Kennon Sheldon and Sonja Lyubomirsky³⁰ talk about changing your actions, not your circumstances, to achieve sustainable gains in happiness. The work to explore well-being and what makes us happy is growing and thriving. Leading pioneers in this field (Martin Seligman along with others³¹ such as Professor Carol Ryff, Dr Alex Linley and Lord Layard) draw together work across a range of disciplines to identify factors which lead to happiness and well-being. These include:

Having control and choice about aspects of our lives: Of course, control and choice is more likely in certain circumstances; for example, those in leadership roles have greater responsibility and autonomy (and greater well-being).³² However, we do have choice at all times in our life; it’s just that often we’re not aware of it. Victor Frankl highlights our choices even in extreme circumstances (see also Chapters 14, Resilience and 23, Choice).

“The last of the human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way”

Victor Frankl³³

Positive relationships with others: signifying love, friendship and trust.³⁴ Mood and quality of life are more related to the quality of close relationships than to wealth. The quality of relationships between people and the experience they have sharing continuous creativity and learning, is even fundamental to excellent business processes.³⁵

What investments are you making in your relationships both inside and out of work? How do you signify your appreciation and positive affirmation of others? Stephen M. R. Covey equates our relationships to our deposit account – the more you invest, the greater the return.³⁶ How does the balance sheet read for your relationships at work and in your personal life?

Satisfaction with our financial situation: Apart from physical poverty, where we are hungry, homeless and in physical danger, happiness with finances is simply an attitude of mind – who are you choosing to compare yourself to? No matter how much you have, if you’re reading this book, you’re more likely to belong to a minority with much more than most. So, give some of what you have away, generosity is good for you. Givers can be not only happier but more successful too.³⁷

Having a meaning and purpose to life: The sense of making a contribution and doing things for others. From Tony Robbins through to existential philosophers, purpose and a meaningful life are seen as a core element to happiness. Existential angst (or the “mid-life crisis”) is rife as people wake up to the hedonic treadmill they are on and start to wonder what their purpose really is.

Feelings of competence and personal growth: Choose goals that stretch you, but are attainable with high probability.³⁸

Our health – eat well, exercise regularly: There is a growing literature supporting a link between exercise and mental health, including better mood.³⁹

Self-acceptance: the “real” version, “warts and all”, rather than the aspirational version. As well as positively appreciating others, appreciate what you bring. We are often our harshest critics. Enabling people to find a sense of worth, independent of social position, income, medals and honours, is significant.

Our personal values, philosophy of life and our inner self: We are happier if we can appreciate what we have, avoid constant comparison with others and are able to control our moods and feelings. Understanding our values and putting these values into practice is a core aspect of living a happier life.⁴⁰

Across a range of disciplines, these factors are viewed as core to wellbeing, motivation and happiness. To sustain a state of being happy, there seem to be two routes. First, for a measure of success it is essential to focus on more than income and the material experiences. Second, pay attention to how you engage in and appreciate each moment of your life.

“The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance. The wise grows it under his feet.”

James Oppenheim⁴¹

Unhooking ourselves from the hedonic treadmill may do more than enable individual happiness. President Mujica⁴² of Uruguay accuses most world leaders of having a “blind obsession to achieve growth with consumption, as if the contrary would mean the end of the world”. Whereas, blind obsession with growth and consumption is a zero sum game – that will lead to the end of the world… for human beings at least.

HAPPINESS AND 31PRACTICES

Fostering well-being and happiness among employees can be rather paradoxical for organizations. People come to work in order to get paid, and it is important for organizations to get comparative rates of pay right. Employees will also focus on how much they are paid in comparison to others, and whether those rates are fair. It’s part of being human – it is unavoidable. At the same time, rates of pay alone do not determine happiness and being overly focused on pay at the expense of all other aspects of work is not likely to lead to an engaged workforce.

From the brief overview of what makes us happy, it’s easy to see that there are many other ways to enable happiness and well-being in organizations.

The 31Practices approach is closely aligned with many of the factors listed above that promote greater happiness and well-being: employees choose how they interpret the Practice of the day, giving them control and choice; we have found that the clear direction provided by the vision, values and Practices establishes a stronger sense of belonging, purpose and positive relationships; when linked to a recognition programme, stories are captured and publicized, creating a feeling of competence and personal growth; finally, 31Practices is a very practical approach and a journey where it is understood that sometimes things will not go as well as they might have done, providing an environment of self-acceptance.

“There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way”

Thich Nhat Hanh⁴³