Happiness Formula

Thesis: Happiness is a function of love of life and love of self.

• Love of life is a function of our gratitudes and grievances.

• Love of self is a function of self-like and self-loathing.

• Love of self is dominate, without it there is no happiness just more or less unhappiness.

• Often, we confuse less unhappy with life for happy.

I became happy just a few years ago. Prior to that I had been exercising my unalienable right to pursue happiness. Four marriages and divorces later I still didn’t know what happy was. Until it found me.

Mick Brown among others has said: Happiness cannot be pursued. You do not find happiness. Happiness finds you… Often arriving when it is least expected.

Since then, I have studied happiness. Three college courses, several books, workshops and videos later this is what I’ve found:

Many consider the goal in this pursuit is to have happiness. That Happy is having what you want or as Fred Luskin, Stanford professor on forgiveness say: Wanting what you have.

Winter of 1967, I was in Moscow. There I saw lines of citizens in dark heavy coats standing in the cold. Shortages were a way of life then. I found out when people there saw a line they would get in it. It meant a store had something to sell. Didn’t matter what they were eager to get what they could. That’s a level of wanting what you have unknown to me and hardly sounds happy.

What’s it mean to be happy?

Ira Israel, west coast psychotherapist and author of A Beginner’s Guide to Happiness, says:

Happy = When What You Have > What You Want. In other words, having more than you want.

In positive psychology, happiness is PERMA, having:

1.    Positive emotions,

2.    Engagement (Flow),

3.    Personal Relationships,

4.    Meaningful life

5.    Accomplishments

There is an issue however with having: hedonic adaptation. The enjoyment we get from having dissipates fairly rapidly. The cool new car quickly becomes the car.

Perhaps then: happiness is wanting what you have more than wanting what you don’t have. Regrettably, it turns out the wanting that was satisfied is quickly replaced by new wantings that, oh by the way, are stronger than what it turns out the having will ever deliver. An endless treadmill to dissatisfaction.

Worse yet all these havings can and all too often will eventually be taken away. For example, Brene Brown says all relationships end badly.

We only rarely meet expectations: having what we want. And, only for a while. Instead, we grieve our past, present, and future. The hopes for a more perfect past, present, and future. Sorrow for what was and wasn’t. For what was lost. Longing for what isn’t. Regret for what is. Anxiety for what might or might not be, fearing what will never be again.

All three courses I have taken encourage Gratitude. It’s not enough to want what you have but rather to be appreciative for it. Further, we are encouraged to expand our Gratitude with Awe. Awe for what benevolence has provided. Unearned having. Just because we are.

Having gratitudes greater than our grievances explains feeling happy with our lives.

What if happiness is the combination of feeling happy and being happy. Feeling happy for the goodness in our lives and being happy for our own goodness.

The challenge in being happy is any and all self-loathing baggage we carry with us. All the shame, guilt, sorrow, humiliation, rejection. All the I am my story from my past as opposed to I am what I stand for today which is helping good happen.

The How of Happiness says happy is 50% genetic, 10% circumstance, and 40% self-control. It’s not our circumstances that matter so much, not all the having. But rather the story we make up about our life and ourselves.

At the start, I said I became happy. It happened when I rid myself of that baggage: forgiving myself for everything I had ever done. Being forgiven unconditionally. And, then, did the same for everyone else. Letting go of grievances as the author of my story. Instead making benevolence the author. Appreciating all the good that has happened. Then, my life’s view is to steadily maintain my goodness and out of gratitude for all the goodness that has happened for me, paying it forward by helping good happen. It isn’t unconditional. There is discernment. My abilities are limited. Each day has many, many opportunities. Slowly, I learn generosity especially to those endeavoring to do the same.

Finally, then let’s consider happiness to be feeling happy with my life and being happy with me. The happiness formula becomes:

Happy (H) = (Love-Life/Grievances) * (Self-Love/Self-Loathing)

Where Adult > Martyr and Happy = Love/Don’t Like:

• Love Life = Awe * Fun * Generosity * Gratitudes

• Self-Love = Self-Care * Self-Like

Conclusions:

1.     I can’t be happy (H) unless I am happy with myself (Self-Love)

2.     Nothing can take it away. However, I give it away whenever I dive into self-loathing (e.g. “I am so not enough”). “So” condemns me to living in and repeating my past. “I am” means I identify with not enough. I let not enough be the author of my story. It is what I am. It’s when I take on martyr as my role instead of adult.

3.     Trying to feel happier with more life enjoyment (G/G) only works if one is first happy with oneself (S.L.-S.L.).

4.     There is a difference between love and like. Love is a gift. Like is what we get. So, G/G can also represent giving/getting. Loving life involves giving more than getting.

5.     Loving oneself is about giving oneself more self-like and less self-loath in the story we tell ourselves.

6.     If not happy with me, not self-loving, then it’s better to have more grievances like a martyr or entitled narcissist for examples.

7.     Really liking oneself can overcome great adversity.

8.     Barely liking oneself leads to looking for happiness elsewhere.