Spiritual leaders and self proclaimed self development gurus and experts all claim that they have the secret on “how to be happy“. I have always wondered what a learned scientific evolutionary psychiatrists viewpoint on happiness would be. Well we found the answer from a presentation by Professor Raj Persuad. You can watch the video below or skip to get our quick summary.
Raj Persuad is professor of psychiatry at Gresham College. We summarized a few of Raj’s main ideas from the video below. However, please watch his video above as he is a very entertaining presenter.
Summary of “How to be Happy” lecture
Aristotle claimed that happiness is always the ultimate purpose of life. Aristotle’s argument is that if you ask anyone “why do you do what you do?”, and you keep asking the question “yes, but why do you do X” to their answer X, then ultimately they will say “because it makes me happy”. It is the only purpose that appears to be an end in itself. You could argue that happiness is the ultimate purpose of life.
Raj illustrates that happiness levels explain how we can achieve happiness. Most people can be categorized as follows:
- Unhappy (small number of people)
- Mildly Content (majority of people)
- Extreme Happiness or Ecstasy (small number of people)
Research shows that for “Mildly Content” people their happiness is relatively stable over time. But people who experience extreme happiness are more likely in a years time to be unhappy. Intensely happy people often have a roller coaster ride to happiness with intense highs and intense lows.
Based on this understanding Raj points out the first secret to happiness.
The first secret to happiness
“Is not to pursue intense happiness but to pursue mild contentment”
Advertising and the media want to promote intense happy experiences to get our attention. They are encouraging us to be extremely happy and are ultimately causing our unhappiness.
There are two main types of happiness
- Hedonistic based happiness
(type 1 happiness)
For example the feeling you get after a class of wine, or after watching a great movie. Its relatively short lived and roughly lasts about 15 minutes - Satisfaction/Accomplishment based happiness
(type 2 happiness)
For example looking back over your accomplishments and getting that feeling of satisfaction. e.g. People who devote their lives to a cause. It is a more long lasting type of happiness in general.
People who struggle with happiness have often concentrated on type 1 or type 2 happiness at the expense of the other e.g. heroin addict (type 1) or the ambitions workaholic (type 2). The trick is to strive for balance.
The second secret to happiness
“Is to pursue experiential happiness and also accomplishment based happiness at the same time”
Happiness also has a lot to do with who we compare ourselves with. Some research at the Barcelona Olympic games found that bronze medal winners were more happy on average than the silver medal winners. It is explained by who the medal winners were comparing themselves to. Bronze medal winners compare themselves with the people who didn’t get medals. Whereas the silver medal winners were comparing themselves with the gold winners. Therefore the bronze winners felt happier than the silver winners.
A lot of advertising is directed at getting us to compare our possessions with the possessions of others e.g. Your neighbor has a Porsche but you don’t.
The study also noticed that the medal winners who won by a “close shave” were generally more happier than those who “won by a mile”. The “close shave” focuses your thinking into “what might of been” thinking i.e. a comparison. Psychologists called this “counter factual thinking”. It’s is another form of comparison to others.
The third secret to happiness
“Beware and mindful of your ‘what might have been’ thinking as it will impact your happiness”
Imagination is one of the things that probably separates us from animals e.g. we can think “what might have been”. Imagination is something we probably inherited as the result of evolution, because happiness motivates us to do all the things that ensure our survival. It’s a reward mechanism for survival behaviors that have an evolutionary purpose e.g. eating, sex, competing with others for survival. It also explains why there is a point to “unhappiness”. Anxiety, fear and other “unhappy” emotions actually made a lot of evolutionary sense in the past when we were also prey.
Evolution effectively says that the continuation of life itself is the purpose of life. So both happiness and unhappiness are both useful emotions to ensure life prevails.
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About Danny Sheehan
Danny lives in Hong Kong but is originally from Australia. He is Married to Maggie and together they have two children with whom they enjoy sharing and enjoying an exciting life with daily. Danny's passions are freedom, adventure and discovery, mainly in nature and science but also spiritually. He is a great believer in living in the NOW.
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