13 Insights into Happiness for 2013 (pt. 2)

As promised, the eagerly awaited follow up to last week's post.

7. Thinking strategically about happiness

If several years back someone had told me that I should apply insights from the world of work to how I live my life, I would have probably replied "go back to management school or America or your self-help blog and leave me alone". However, I am now about to advocate the very same insight. Working in finance / investment over the past three years has given me some exposure to what makes a good investment and some of that, for better or worse, pervades my thoughts on life and happiness. In particular, I now try to apply the following:

(i) Work learning: Using data and research to inform your budgets, plans and forecasts. 

Life lesson: Using data and research to inform how you plan and conduct your life to sustain happiness.

Budgeting, planning and forecasting are very time consuming activities, and often require either a prerequisite level of experience or technical expertise. When it comes to happiness,   there is no good reason not to apply the wisdom acquired through the ages and now, more excitingly, we have actual data on well-being and brain science. These reports by nef amalgamate some of the academic literature that analyses well-being statistics and summarise findings from the UK in the last year. Findings that have helped for me, for instance, are the near universal correlation between commute times and unhappiness (LH has since changed jobs in part due to this) and the U-shaped relationship between age and happiness - we tend to hit a trough in our 30s and 40s which is usually linked to raising children, taking care of parents and peak stress levels at work (it might help to start thinking about such things early!).

Other great sources of insight are the Action for Happiness website and understanding your own genetic dispositions - as they can determine up to 50% of your base level of happiness. In 2013 I am going to continue to analyse genetic studies that and see what they mean for my genetic material at 23andme.com.

(ii) Work learning: Think about risks as much as you think about your base case. 

Life lesson: Mitigate risks that are in your control, and build resilience so you can deal with things that aren't.

Risk-return is a bit of paradigm in the investment world, but it may seem a little boring / overly practical in the real world - I mean who really wants to do a risk assessment on their life and happiness levels? Thankfully, in the developed world, there are a lot of things that "automatically" protect us from bad external events (such as natural disasters, economic crises and decline, violence, illness) impacting our hedonistic happiness (remember this includes the absence of pain too). Examples of these automatic protections include property rights and policing (stopping people from taking our stuff), welfare, health insurance, the family unit, charity (e.g. Red Cross), democratic institutions (including a free press that allows us to highlight pain and suffering), environmental agencies and insurance markets. There are benefits to be had if you can force yourself to do a bit of planning in this regard too, e.g. making sure you have adequate contingencies, savings, insurance etc. As boring as they may seem, they probably do make your happiness more sustainable in the long run.

There are, of course, always things you cannot control - for consideration on that issue see my point on resilience below.

(iii) Work learning: Returns can be delayed - the amount you are prepared to wait is in part determined about how you value time. 

Life lesson: Understand what your time preferences are.

Some people can delay gratification for long periods of time in order to get a big chunk of gratification at the end (e.g. a medical student going through many years of training in order to obtain a job as a doctor). Others have shorter time horizons after which they need gratification. To some extent, you are who you are and you should explore what your preferences are but, at the same time, improving your will power can benefit you without causing you to be unhappy in the short run. Either way explore! This talk on willpower by Roy F Baumeister provides some really interesting insights.

8. The importance of being resilient

2012 cemented in my mind something I had being doing for many years but had never formalised - namely building emotional and mental resilience. Some would refer to this as the application of Stoic philosophy. In simple terms, I deem it the preparation of your mind for a variety of unexpected scenarios. In doing so you figure out, in advance, how you would derive happiness in an unexpected world (e.g. after the loss of a loved one, losing a job, winning the lottery, becoming disabled, being misunderstood). In 2012, I came across the work of ancient greek philosopher Epictetus and two quotes continue to stick with me (i) "It's not the [bad] event, but the belief ascribed to the [bad] event that troubles man" and (ii) the advice that man should be "sick and yet happy, in peril and yet happy, dying and yet happy, in exile and happy, in disgrace and happy". The difficulty is, of course, in doing these mental preparedness exercises and, for me, there are no hard and fast rules of success, except perhaps the willingness to indulge in some pretty morbid feats of imagination!

For me, the importance of the above is to prepare without allowing preparation to get in the way of progress. Yes you can adapt to being slightly cold, or slightly hungry, or slightly disillusioned, but you should still aim to correct all these in the long run. If misfortune means you end up in these situations then, and only then, take it into your stride.

9. Should well-being be taught in schools?

In 2012, I learnt that Wellington College (an independent, boarding school in Berkshire) has been teaching its pupils about well-being. This is a fantastic idea, and I would like to see it spread right across the education spectrum (especially the state sector). Education's purpose, in my mind, is simply to (i) give people the aptitudes required to take part in the productive economy and (ii) give people the knowledge and skills to lead a happy life. Somehow, we seem to fail at both and, even though this blog is mainly interested in (ii), for now I will be exploring how this can be improved only alongside (i).

In 2013, I will learn more about what Wellington has achieved by going through their course online, will read Learning to Ride Elephants by Wellington well-being teacher Ian Morris and hopefully I'll be placed as a school governor.

10. The Existential Crisis - and why society seems to do nothing about it

A thought hit me in 2012. I can occasionally lurch into a full blown fit of existential crisis - usually a bout of apathy and soul-searching brought on by a series of questions / revelations: "what's the point?" "why am I here?" "death is the only thing we have certainty over" etc etc. I have got better at dealing with these, but they still exist. For all the wonderful improvements in society, however, this seems like a universal problem that secular society has decided to universally ignore (or at least say it is the problem only for the individual). Libertarians would argue that's right, because philosophy and spirituality are personal pursuits in the West. 

However, I believe that the state or other parts of society have good reason to act where it can be shown to improve well-being. Examples of this, as yet unproven, are the introduction of rights to optional sabaticals / mid-career breaks and the beginnings of well-being education in schools (for more inspiration I would suggest Norwegian philosopher's Zapffe's "Last Messiah"). Further argument on this is provided by Alain de Botton in his book Religion for Atheists (or listen to the TED talk here). The central question explored is that, in a world where organised religion is retreating, where do we get our rituals and our spaces for connection and exploring the "big" questions from?

In 2013 I will be exploring whether policies or solutions could work - ideas welcome!

11. Development as Happiness

In 2012, I revisited Amartya Sen's seminal work on how we should frame international development, "Development as Freedom". One strand of the argument is that we should frame development as the increasing of individual freedoms and removal of societal unfreedoms whether they are economic (e.g. poverty), political (e.g. state control) or social (e.g. women's rights). As a book and theory I find it very hard to poke any holes in Sen's work as it is well researched and for a predominantly economics-based book, steeped in humanity and human values. However, at times (day-to-day) I do struggle with the way the argument is framed - I cannot relate to the idea of lack of freedom because I've never experienced it. But I can relate to happiness - and I think this is how we should frame development. At first reading, this may seem very woolly and western - what has happiness got to do with a starving child or torture. But, as my definition of happiness goes, it is all one spectrum; from pain, to comfort to release of anxiety to pleasure, self-realising and flourishing. Indeed, I previously used to think of happiness as a problem faced by only the developed world and other issues, e.g. poverty and repression, as problems of the South. Now I think we should see it all as part of the same issue.

And why? It's not exactly going to solve the issues is it? My answer is this - how issues are framed can have very profound effects on how people engage (as argued by Kahneman for instance). Understanding development as a universal search for happiness (more tangible than freedom) may be a more effective way to engage with the issue and to, therefore, go on to develop solutions.

12. Solitude and Mindfulness

In 2012, I took a great 3 day retreat to the Gladstone Library in Hawarden, Wales. My lesson learnt was simple: time away for reflection and solitude can be very important for de-cluttering your thoughts and reducing anxiety - so do it!

And I would recommend a stay in a library to anyone who is similar minded!

13. There's no such thing as a selfless gift..

.. and there's nothing wrong with that! It is shown that giving increases the happiness of the giver and receiver (if effective). I won't go into the evidence of why, as this resource is already a pretty good starting point: action for happiness on giving. Whilst we all tend to know this, one thing that stops us giving is that we are mentally unprepared - to the Big Issue salesman or to a friend or family who's indicated they have some difficulty coming up. Recently, LH changed jobs from the for profit sector to a not-for-profit (in fundraising). When asked what she learnt from this at a personal level, it was that most people tend to start with the mentality of "no" when asked for help and then try to justify why "yes". This can be taxing and means that we give less often than we expect we would. In 2013, as per this TED talk from the Acumen Fund, I will start with the mentality of "yes" when asked to help!