It’s Not In The Stars: Happiness Is A Choice

The Intro

I started this blog because I ask questions (sometimes aloud, by myself, in front of strangers in cafes) about how things work, particularly about the science of happy. Happiness is the main goal here (philosophically, mentally, daily, etc.), and this first question is about how much we can actually influence this within ourselves. Are we stuck with the way we are? Can we ever get to the greener grass where happiness lives? How much choice is there when it comes to inner joy? I did some amateur reading, and the below is what I found.

The Science

There's nothing like a pie chart to put things into perspective. Plus, it looks science-y. During my digging (like I'm the Indiana Jones of mirth or something) I unearthed this and it really made me smile. No, really it did—I'm not being a wordplay twat.

What's the breakdown? I know you can suss it out, but indulge me.

The pie chart suggests your set point of happy stands at 50%—the immovable, genetic, scripted blue print of joyous you. (I guess you can legitimately blame your parents here.) The circumstantial 10% would be the outside-influencing-in, non-intentional, where-you-happen-to-be fixing of happy—if you were born in Norway that 10% is gonna look a lot sweeter than most places, for they are a happy folk. (Even though the beer is wallet-rupturingly exorbitant—perhaps this correlates.)

Here's the meaty bit: the pie chart (H/T to Sonja Lyumbomirksy for her research) suggests you have 40%—more than a third of the pie there—to play with. Fake it till you make it, you are what you eat, the happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts, and so on. This 40% potential of happiness is increased or decreased with intentional activity—it is not in the stars, friends. Well, just over a third of it isn't. Without getting overly philosophical, that's a fat slice of free will to eat right up.

Now, at this point, I've got disappointing news. Well, sort of. I like to make sure I'm looking at as much of the coin as possible and, for the sake of balance, I've got to point out how much pop psychology loves a pie chart... or an easy stat... or a black and white. It's been argued that this is the case here, with these figures being rather misunderstood. What's the rub?

Ed Batista does a pretty sound job of dissecting the thing. He explains the pie chart should be understood as the "variance in happiness among individuals in Lyubomirsky's research that can be predicted by heritable traits, life circumstances, and intentional activities." So, those figures apply to the study, specifically—it's not that the "chart represents the relative amounts of happiness that are derived from these sources for individuals in the population at large." Basically, the 40% in the chart applies to those in the study, and shouldn't be wantonly applied to the whole human race. He borrows these three points from Ed Diener, Christopher Peterson, and Razib Kahn, respectively:

• "The percents might be interpreted to mean that if one were to improve one's demographics from terrible to great, one's happiness might increase by 12%, but this is a misunderstanding of what the figures mean." (As in, if your circumstances improved 100%—which would be impossible to measure anyway—you'd only get 10–12% extra happiness because that's the circumstantial piece of the pie. Sounds stupid that way, right?)

• "It is thoroughly unreasonable to think that we can parse the happiness of an individual, in the moment or in general, in the same way that we can parse the happiness of samples of individuals."

• "When someone tells you that height is 80% heritable, does that mean:

a) 80% of the reason you are the height you are is due to genes

b) 80% of the variation within the population on the trait of height is due to variation of the genes

The answer is of course b. Unfortunately in the 5 years I’ve been blogging the conception of heritability has been rather difficult to get across... Heritability is addressing the population level correlation between phenotypic variation and genotypic variation."

For clarity, I have a couple of easy-to-eat metaphors that might help in following this: think of genotype as half lion, half tiger and phenotype as the liger. Or, the genotype is like a recipe for a cake, while the phenotype is like the cake made from the recipe. Make sense?

Point being, whilst we all do have a set point of happiness, influenced by our genes, even this can be budged because our phenotype is influenced beyond our genes—you can't account for the weather, yo. Monozygotic twins share their DNA code, but that does not mean they're the same. You get the picture now I’m sure.

The Anecdotal

So what does it all mean? If you're wondering whether you are or aren't involved in your own happiness destiny, fret not. Just because you can't neatly apply the pie chart to your life, doesn't mean it isn't important. Circumstance isn't the main player—yes, it's definitely good to pay the bills, but making better life choices might do more for you than dreaming about "if I only had another 5k a year". (And, obvs, better life choices could lead to circumstantial change.) Taking an intentional approach to being happier—from the small things to the big stuff—is often overlooked and can make quite a difference.

The point: Rather than believing misfortune was bad luck, I double check if I directed it my way. If you miss the bus, chances are you just didn't organise your time well. The minute I decided to make better choices and paid attention to what made me happy, things perked up.

Tackling life admin that I'd put off for ages meant carrying less stress—like going to the dentist and realising it wasn't that bad. (Kind of. I still hate having fillings. Who loves that? No one.) Paying more attention, minding the little things, not putting off stressful tasks, and choosing good company all make a big difference. (You can't change them, but you can change you.) Just thinking—even casually—about what really makes you happy/unhappy, and working around that, is helpful.

The Implementation

Basically, what I'm saying is: brush your teeth before bed, floss after meals, pack your bag the night before, and if you don't like how someone makes you feel, you're in control of that. You are in charge of your pie. Whether that's a whopper 40% or not, things start looking more than half full when you take control.