Some time ago I read the book The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt. I liked it so much that it is one of those books that stuck with me for life. I could summarize it as a compendium of scientific studies dealing with happiness and how to increase it in the long term.
According to these studies, we are all born with an inherent happiness index. Let’s put some examples from 1 to 10 to be able to count it. Let’s say Carlos is born with a happiness of 5, that would make him a not very happy person daily. On the other hand, let’s say Maria is born with a happiness of 8, in her daily life she could be considered a happy person. It is rare for a person to be born at the extremes, 2 down or 9 up.
Of course this can be changed. The things that Carlos and Maria do or happen to them increase or decrease their happiness index. For example, if it is Carlos’s birthday it could be that that day his happiness increases to 7, while if Maria missed the bus her happiness could decrease to 6. But something interesting the book says is that in the long run happiness will return to the “normal” index of the person. Once Carlos’s birthday is over and maybe a couple of days pass, his happiness will return to 5, while once Maria takes the next bus she will forget the stumbling block and her happiness will return to 8. According to the book, this happens even with extreme events, for example if Carlos wins the lottery, that day his happiness can be up to 10, but at some point it will return to 5, or if Maria has an accident and loses a leg, her happiness will go down to 1 and maybe last years to recover, but eventually it will return to her 8.
The small pleasures of life (and many that we consider great pleasures), increase our happiness, but this increase is not lasting. So how do we make our happiness increase in the long term and not go down again as long as we continue doing it? The book presents studies and concludes that there are three ways to do it and whose results are visible even after leaving it[1].
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Medicated therapy: This is the least surprising of the three, medicated therapy with a professional helps raise the happiness index and maintain it while we are taking it. It seems that being medicated is not the best in the long term, but of the three methods, this is where its effects are noticed fastest.
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Religion: Religion is also a factor that increases happiness in the long term. People who practice it are happier and this state can be maintained for a time after having left it. It seems that the function of this has not been only to find an answer to what we do not know.
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Meditation: It would seem like a fad, but meditation in any of its forms helps increase happiness in the long term, also with lasting effects even after quitting.
Now, here a personal note, a question I have asked myself about this is: are you really happy if what makes you happy are pills that alter your brain chemistry? Wouldn’t it be like living deceived in the style of “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley? An atheist might think the same in the case of religion or a skeptic in the case of meditation, but well, this is already a question that goes beyond the scope of the book, this is in charge of proposing scientific facts and it will be up to each one to apply them or not according to their opinion. Personally, I believe that in these three cases the end justifies the means, if these three things help you and make you happy, they are totally worth it.
[1] This does not mean that there are others as I will show in a future post about studies on gratitude. This is not my opinion, it is what the book says.