№ 784. 2 Small Happy Habits

Wilder Thoughts

 

2 Small ‘Habit Changes’ For A Noticeably Happier Life, By A Psychologist
By Mark Travers,
Contributor. Mark Travers writes about the world of psychology.


A recent study published in the Journal of Macromarketing found that people who practice voluntary simplicity, deliberately consuming less and relying more on their own skills, report higher levels of both happiness and life purpose.

After analyzing a sample of New Zealander consumers, the study found that those who opted for simpler lives reported greater happiness and a stronger sense of purpose. Notice here the usage of the word “simple” instead of “easy” or “convenient.”

This tells us the opposite story from what’s being peddled to us today. Well-being might only take root in a lack of comfort, through the deliberate act of making space for what matters. But here’s the problem: we live in a culture that sells ease as the highest good. Faster shipping, one-click purchases and all such digital shortcuts are serving the same end of smoothening the harsh edges of daily life.

The study, therefore, comes bearing a warning for our AI-powered lives: the more convenient our lives become, the less content many of us actually feel. The good news is, it also comes bearing solutions, suggesting that the route to happiness may lie not in streamlining everything, but in consciously choosing a little inconvenience.

This isn’t about austerity or giving everything up. It’s about deciding that “enough” can feel better than “more.” And when people make that decision, they tend to redirect their time and energy into areas that matter far more deeply: connection, growth and meaning.

Why Does ‘Voluntary Simplicity’ Work?

Researchers categorize happiness in two primary ways. The first is hedonic wellbeing, which is the day-to-day experience of pleasure and satisfaction. And then, there’s eudaimonic wellbeing, which is more about living in alignment with your values, feeling that your life has direction and growing as a person. Hedonic well-being is usually experienced in the short-term, while the latter evolves and, when done right, increases over the long-term.

Interestingly, by embracing voluntary simplicity and stepping away from the clutter of constant consumption, people seem freer to invest in what fuels them on both fronts.

Convenience, as helpful as it can be, also may be robbing us of our agency. When every problem is outsourced or solved instantly, we miss out on the small challenges that give us a sense of competence and creativity.

Experiencing self-sufficiency, whether that means fixing a home electrical issue, cooking for a grieving neighbor or even having a meaningful conversation instead of picking up your phone, can remind you how satisfying effort can actually feel. That satisfaction, research shows, is often what often leads to lasting happiness.

But, there’s a caveat. To find happiness, you don’t need to strip away all forms of convenience. Instead, focus on creating space for what adds to your life, whether that’s your relationships, a sense of purpose or the pride of making something with your own hands.

Here are two small, practical changes that capture this spirit of simplicity in everyday life and can make you significantly happier.

№ 774. Destinational Living

Author Annie Dillard wrote that “how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives”. So, how was it that I spent a large portion of my 20s​­ terrified of the big, long life I had before me? After Stanford University, I’d moved to New York to work at Google but I was depressed, anxious.

When I realised that many brilliant and accomplished people were also secretly miserable, just trying to make it through the day, I looked for terminology to describe this, but there was none. So I came up with my own: the underfulfilled overachiever, or UFOA. This describes a constant striver who is living a great‑­on‑­paper life, yet feels disconnected from their work, life and self. UFOAs see success as the organising principle of our lives. We call it by a catchy name: hustle culture. We brag about our intense busyness. Side hustles are a badge of honour. Going “above and beyond” in our jobs is routine. Our primary purpose, unabashedly, is achievement.

Most of us were shaped around expectations from the beginning. We praise kids for being “good students”, by which we don’t mean curious and engaged. We mean high grades and awards. Our education system is built on this principle. This means prioritising productivity – achievement’s codependent ­partner – above almost all else. The central question becomes: “How can I be the most productive today?”

The way we’ve been taught to “do” life is all wrong. “Destinational living”, by which we pursue recognisable outcomes based on the lie that these will guarantee security and happiness, is an “end justifies the means” philosophy. Destinational living says: “Decide what you want your life to look like, come up with a 10-​­year plan, and then work backward to determine the most advantageous place to start.” In the abstract, this is a lovely idea. There’s a reason why it’s the dominant cultural paradigm. It’s comforting to believe that the world is so predictable that we can plot it all out in­ advance. If only it were true.

But if this is supposed to guarantee our happiness, why do almost 50% of millennials report symptoms of depression and/or anxiety disorders and ­84% report burnout? And why are these numbers rising? Those are not metrics of success by anyone’s definition. Clearly, our system is broken. The problem is the expectation that with achievement comes fulfilment. It’s not about the most enjoyable way to get to work or being and feeling well during your day; it’s about what each choice can earn you.

Destinational Living means outsourcing our decision-making. What is impressive, what is ­valuable, is defined not by what matters to us personally but, rather, by what matters to others. In effect, we’re “life plagiarising”. It’s asking, “what did that person do to achieve such success?” and then turning around and saying, “OK, got it. Copy, paste”.

What most UFOAs eventually learn the hard way is that being, or appearing, successful (becoming a CEO, parent, spouse, homeowner) is a different experience from being fulfilled. Fulfilment is a deep sense of belonging to yourself.

№ 750. Bill Watterson's Speech

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE REAL WORLD BY ONE WHO GLIMPSED IT AND FLED

Bill Watterson
Kenyon College Commencement
May 20, 1990

№ 749. Meaning v. Happiness

Meaning

Yet another relatively uncontroversial element of the concept of meaningfulness in respect of individual persons is that it is logically distinct from happiness or rightness (emphasized in Wolf 2010, 2016). First, to ask whether someone’s life is meaningful is not one and the same as asking whether her life is pleasant or she is subjectively well off. A life in an experience machine or virtual reality device would surely be a happy one, but very few take it to be a prima facie candidate for meaningfulness (Nozick 1974: 42–45). Indeed, a number would say that one’s life logically could become meaningful precisely by sacrificing one’s well-being, e.g., by helping others at the expense of one’s self-interest. Second, asking whether a person’s existence over time is meaningful is not identical to considering whether she has been morally upright; there are intuitively ways to enhance meaning that have nothing to do with right action or moral virtue, such as making a scientific discovery or becoming an excellent dancer. Now, one might argue that a life would be meaningless if, or even because, it were unhappy or immoral, but that would be to posit a synthetic, substantive relationship between the concepts, far from indicating that speaking of “meaningfulness” is analytically a matter of connoting ideas regarding happiness or rightness. The question of what (if anything) makes a person’s life meaningful is conceptually distinct from the questions of what makes a life happy or moral, although it could turn out that the best answer to the former question appeals to an answer to one of the latter questions.

№ 740. Money = Happiness?!

X

№ 692. Trust in the Process

Cracked

“You can have flaws, be anxious and even be angry, but just remember that your life is the world’s biggest enterprise. Only you can stop it from failing. You are appreciated, admired, and loved by so many. 

 

Remember that happiness is not having a sky without storms, a road without accidents, a job without effort, a relationship without disappointments.

 

№ 666. Friendships 2

Preview

 

From the Friendship Files: Milton and Mike

Every Saturday morning for decades, Milton Ehrlich and his best friend, Mike, scoured garage sales near their homes in New Jersey, searching for books, records and antique bottles. But when Mike was in his 70s, he started losing his memory. Once, he wandered off from a garage sale and got lost. The police had to find him.

 

Determined not to lose their weekly date, Milton, who is now 91, began to call his friend every Saturday instead, playing for him their favorite music from the 1940s, including Duke Ellington and Sarah Vaughn. “Even though, by that time, Mike was having a hard time remembering what happened yesterday, the music always transported him,” Milton said. “He could sing along with lyrics and remember melodies from music that was 75 years old.”

The calls buoyed them both. When Milton’s wife passed away in 2021, after 67 years of “happy marriage,” the weekly ritual with Mike “became one of the last close personal connections in my life,” he said. His brothers died long ago, as did most of his friends. Milton and Mike exchanged only a few words between songs. For the most part, they just listened.

“It was a way of remaining tethered to my old buddy,” Milton said. “We would sit there, our houses about a mile apart in a small suburban town, each of us in our rocking chairs, staying connected to each other through the music of our teenage years.”

Mike died in October and, with him, a library of stories — about the best places to eat in Little Italy, about the clarinetist Mezz Mezzrow and the cornetist Bix Beiderbecke and about the things you could buy for a nickel at Coney Island, Milton said. He was 90 years old. — Catherine Pearson

№ 665. Friendships

12 Ideas to Boost Your Happiness

 

Amy Pechukas met her friend Al in 2018 when she rented the apartment under his in Northampton, Mass. They didn’t connect immediately. Amy, now 42, worked four jobs and thought Al, 76, was a curmudgeon with questionable boundaries. He helped look after their two-family home and would frequently enter her apartment to check on her two cats and two dogs.

But Al’s peculiar brand of kindness grew on her. “He often pops in for a conversation spontaneously, at times when I need a lift, and we end up talking for hours,” she said. “We go for evening walks and argue about the route.”

Covid brought them even closer. During lockdown, they would meet in the driveway to talk about the virus or politics. Amy made a Thanksgiving meal, which they ate outside on their porch with electric blankets on their laps. They have celebrated the holiday together ever since.

Al can still be overbearing. He has firm ideas about the way things should be done around the home, like the “right” way to rake the leaves. Every summer, he frets that Amy’s elderly cat, who grows lazy in the heat, is on the verge of death.

But Amy feels deep gratitude for their unexpected friendship, and for the constant, unselfish care Al has shown her and her pets. “When my dog got very sick a year ago and needed me to do round-the-clock care for her, I would come home on occasion to find Al in my kitchen doing my dishes,” she recalled. “‘You can’t do everything, Amy,’ he’d say. ‘You’re doing a great job.’”

Though Al does not say it outright, Amy knows he worries she might move out. She recently interviewed for a position out of state, and Al told her several times that it sounded terrible — reminding her that there were other jobs closer by.

“We just have a lot of fun,” she said. “We like to quote movie lines endlessly, we’ll do that for, like, two hours straight. Last winter we went ice skating in the cemetery because it was flooded. Al’s just a good person.” — Catherine Pearson

№ 630. Time to Live More

 

Someone who lives to age 80 gets far fewer—close to the number in the title of Burkeman’s book, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. 

№ 622. Lent

 

№ 535. I for Ikigai

For a State of Happiness

№ 518. Happiness Sunday

 

I realize that one could easily read this column as a jeremiad against modern life. That isn’t my intention. (Indeed, I am a very public proponent of democratic capitalism with a modern welfare state.) Rather, I mean to appeal to all of us to remember that material prosperity has both benefits and costs. The costs come when we allow our hunger for the fruits of prosperity to blind us to the timeless sources of true human happiness: faith, family, friendship, and work in which we earn our success and serve others. Regardless of how the world might change, those have always been, and will always be, the things that deliver the satisfaction we crave.

 

№ 353. Meaning versus Happiness

"Some researchers have taken to doing that by looking at what they call “eudaimonic happiness,” or the happiness that comes from meaningful pursuits, and “hedonic happiness”—the happiness that comes from pleasure or goal fulfillment."

№ 237. Dark Night of the Soul 2

Ramen House intallation

"Many people think that the point in life is to solve their problems and be happy. But happiness is usually a fleeting sensation, and you never get rid of problems. Your purpose in life may be to become more who you are and more engaged with the people and the life around you, to really live your life. That may sound obvious, yet many people spend their time avoiding life. They are afraid to let it flow through them, and so their vitality gets channeled into ambitions, addictions, and preoccupations that don’t give them anything worth having. A dark night may appear, paradoxically, as a way to return to living. It pares life down to its essentials and helps you get a new start.

№ 223. Happy 7th, Sophia

Let wisdom be your shadow:

At sunrise, yellow,
Like omelettes and jams from mom;

At midday, white,
Like lace, linens and lunch breaks;

At sunset, orange,

Like tickles and pups to walk you home;

At nighttime, grey,
Like warm cloaks of dad's goodnight tuck.

№ 136. Day 3 of Monsoons: Harvest Moon Festival

A bald shrink lights bulbs.
Moon slices on storm fetters.
Sweet balms for ghost month.