By Bridget Bentz Sizer
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, June 25, 2006; M01
In the classic "Peanuts" comic strip, the path to finding joy in life seems clear: Happiness is a warm puppy (at least according to Charles M. Schultz's 1962 book.)
But if you're at all familiar with Charlie Brown -- that bald, depressive kid who can't kick a football -- you probably suspect there's more to it than that. After all, if happiness is a warm puppy, then -- good grief! -- why is Charlie Brown such a downer?
Turns out, warm puppies are only one part of happiness. According to positive psychology experts, the formula for happiness can be expressed in, of all things, a mathematical equation.
Got your pencil sharpened? Voila, happiness = S + C + V. Huh? Let us explain.
In this equation, "S" is your biological disposition toward being happy, aka your "happiness set point." "C" represents the conditions in which you live, some of which are fixed (like sex or age) and some of which you can change (like the relationships you establish). Finally, "V" stands for the voluntary activities that you engage in: work, vacations, meditation, exercise -- even playing with warm puppies.
Clear as mud? Let's see if we can break it down even further.
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THE HAPPINESS SET POINT
Which would make you happier: winning millions of dollars in the lottery or becoming paralyzed from the neck down?
Think the answer is obvious? Not so fast: Though the mega-winner's megawatt smile when he picks up his payoff is likely genuine (as are the accident victim's tears), an oft-cited 1978 study detailed in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology about the effects of life-changing events on happiness levels found that within a year, both groups tend to return to their base line level of happiness.
In other words, if you aren't happy right now, don't bother playing Powerball, because the immediate rush of a big-screen TV and a shiny new car only lasts so long.
"We all have a biological set point that predisposes us to happiness," explains Jonathan Haidt, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and author of the book "The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom" (Basic Books, 2005). Studies of twins indicate that the rose-colored glasses we associate with happy people may be as genetically determined as the reading glasses donned by farsighted folks; some people, it seems, are just born happier than others.
You probably already have a sense of what your happiness set point is -- are you a glass half-full or glass half-empty type? -- but to find out how you stack up against others in your age group, education level and Zip code, check out the "authentic happiness inventory" at Authentichappiness.com.
And what if it turns out you've lost what Haidt refers to as the "cortical lottery" and are stuck with a low happiness set point? Big bummer, right? Well, yes and no. Haidt advises thinking of biological happiness as a temperature range, rather than a fixed point; just like a thermostat, the life choices we make can push our happiness levels to the upper threshold of our individual set point. That's where the "C" and the "V" of the equation come into play.
CONDITIONS FOR HAPPINESS
You may not feel it when you pack into a crowded Metro car or battle rush-hour traffic on the Beltway, but studies indicate that other people really do make us happy.
"Good people . . . bring out the best in us," says Haidt, describing one of the important conditions for happiness.
Ruut Veenhoven, professor of sociology at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands and director of the World Database of Happiness, studies happiness as if it were a social science -- which, come to think of it, it is.
His findings? National wealth matters, but on a personal level, "making very big money doesn't really make [the individual] very happy," says Veenhoven. "Investing in good social relationships is a safer bet."
Veenhoven estimates that a person's "social-emotional" relationships account for between 15 and 20 percent of his happiness level, and that married people are more satisfied with their lives than singles.
Enjoy meeting friends for a beer after work? Good news for you: Veenhoven's studies indicate that social drinkers tend to be happier than teetotalers, a fact that may speak more to the social aspect of sharing a drink with friends than to the drink itself.
Unfortunately, if you've ever had to cancel happy-hour plans because of work or traffic, you know that modern society can be a happiness buzz kill.
"Americans move too much, change jobs too much, change partners too much," says Haidt. "Life is not a competition to see who can produce the most stuff." Indeed, in the scramble of modern American life, we seem to ignore the fact that though individuals in the industrialized world have gotten richer and richer over the past 50 years, our happiness levels have remained steady, and incidences of depression have actually increased.
That may be because our transience and hectic schedules work against our basic need for lasting relationships and community. But short of moving back home to live with mom and dad (definitely not a happiness inducer in some people's books), how do we regain connection?
It's simple, really: Treat other people as if they were the key to your happiness -- science tells us that they are.
Of course, how we treat people and how we interact with them -- from eating with your family to introducing yourself to the new neighbors -- is all a matter of choice, which leads us to "V," the final part of our equation.
VOLUNTARY NATURE OF HAPPINESS
"V" is really about the everyday things we do to create happiness. Anyone who has slogged through a dead-end job counting the hours until quittin' time already knows that the right job is a big part of day-to-day happiness. But finding good, meaningful work -- what Haidt refers to as a "calling" -- is easier said than done. (That's why they call it work, Grasshopper.)
"People often think 'I'll be happy when,' " says Pete Cohen, a life coach and co-author of "Feeling Good for No Good Reason" (How To Books, 1999). But then we get whatever it is we're chasing -- a raise, a promotion, a good solid kick of the pigskin -- and it turns out we never really find joie de vivre.
The key is to tap into what Hungarian-born psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes in his book "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience" (Harper & Row, 1990) as the total immersion that happens when "people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter." Instead of focusing on the destination, we'd do better to enjoy the journey -- the work that leads to the raise rather than t he raise itself.
Not a 9-to-5 type? Don't fret. Debbie Gisonni, author of "The Goddess of Happiness (Inner Ocean Publishing, 2005), recommends thinking back to childhood and remembering the things that made you happy then. Maybe your pathway to "flow" is raising kids, painting murals, singing in the church choir -- anything that plays to your strengths and is rewarding for its own sake, rather than for the end goal. (See "Who Is Happiest?" at left for more on child-rearing and happiness -- or the lack thereof.)
"In order to enjoy life, you must do enjoyable things. Read nice books, enjoy sports," says Veenhoven. "Take time for enjoyment; there's nothing wrong with that." It sounds like no-brainer advice, but somehow we forget the happiness of the warm puppy in the scramble of housetraining, heartworm medication and veterinary appointments.
Part of the problem might be our priorities. The Declaration of Independence describes "the pursuit of happiness" as an inalienable right, but how many of us pursue it regularly? (And if we're not chasing happiness, then what are we chasing?) Maybe we could learn a thing or two from the nation of Bhutan, a tiny Buddhist kingdom nestled in the Himalayas. In 1972, the king of Bhutan decided to ditch the gross-domestic-product measurement in favor of policies that promote gross national happiness. Since then, the government has focused on what it calls the "four pillars" of GNH: socio-economic growth, cultural values, environmental conservation and good governance. In the Bhutanese model, good government makes its people happy, not necessarily rich.
Though the U.S. Census has yet to include a line item addressing household happiness, that doesn't mean you can't establish your own pillars of happiness. After all, the equation has been provided for you, and unlike high school math class, there's no wrong answer -- as long as you're happy.