I've recently finished reading a book called "Stumbling on Happiness". It was recommended to me by my "Intelligent Systems" professor, a class mainly about mathematics and probabilistic models, but including a chapter on psychological aspects.
What is "Stumbling on Happiness" about?
Despite the third word of the title, this is not an instruction manual that will tell you anything useful about how to be happy. Those books are located in the self-help section two aisles over, and once you've bought one, done everything it says to do, and found yourself miserable anyway, you can always come back here to understand why.
Instead, it gives a concise overview of the latest findings in psychology and neuroscience research. Lots of that was not necessarily new to me, but there were many new angles to look at happiness which I hadn't thought of before. It's very worth thinking about that, in my opinion. I'll present you a few things which stood out to me.
The opportunity to change our minds tomorrow is a freedom not necessarily making you happier.
Imagine you buy a new car. For a small fee you retain the option to return it within one week. Suddenly you are much more likely to evaluate all pros and cons in contrary to just being happy with the thing you committed yourself to.
We have no trouble anticipating the advantages that freedom may provide, but we seem blind to the joys it can undermine. (p203)
The value of writing about experiences and trying to explain them
This is a known therapy for trauma patients.
What's more, the people who experience the greatest benefit from these writing exercises are those whose writing contains an explanation of the trauma. (p205)
But maybe this is also a reason why people like writing diaries?
Someone once told me that "diaries help understanding yourself better". Additionally, they might also directly make you happier, because they help you understand particular aspects of an event as the cause of your experience – and other aspects as irrelevant.
Interestingly enough, this sort of contradicts the next point.
Unexplained events yield greater emotional impact. Clarity and certainty diminish happiness.
Studies have shown that events that are not 100% clear or obvious make us much happier. However, if you ask people to make a choice, they consistently prefer a certain outcome over an uncertain one. As much as we like mystery as it keeps us thinking, if we are to choose most people choose certainty.
This rang especially true to me, since I am a person generally spending a lot of time thinking and explaining events in my head. I already knew that that's not the best behavior in every case, but this gave additional weight to that thought. However, at the same time more often than not I do choose an adventure over a non-adventure, and often these are some of the happiest moments. Now I know why that makes sense.
Our relentless desire to explain everything that happens may well distinguish us from fruit flies, but it can also kill our buzz. (p210)
These were just a few examples which were most striking to me. And even here you can see that it's not as easy as black and white. It goes to show that happiness or our minds in general are much less understood than you might think, but we may learn one or two things from the research going on.
If you have a slight interest in "the human condition" and scientific research, by all means have a look at this book.
Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
published by Vintage Books, 2006
ISBN: 978-1-4000-7742-7
