💫 #004 For Future Reference
The future of happiness | Happiness is science | The Happiness Report | The joy of vax | Higher power
Hello, FFR crew!
Before you start reading this, I wanted to say a big thank you to those who reached out asking why this issue was delayed. Full disclosure - I was out having fun in the sun, but have no fear, we are back and you can all be happy! 😊
Speaking of happiness, the COVID-19 pandemic has cheated us out of all the good times we live for and made us forget (almost) everything we knew about what makes us happy.
This FFR issue is an invitation to take a step back and think about the meaning of happiness while we reflect on some of the lessons of this lamentable year. The good news is that the future of happiness is being discussed by scientists and data collectors, who are now busy studying what intuitively we know already: a happier life is the way to a happier future. Let’s take a look.
The future of happiness
This WSJ article invites you to forget about what happiness is. It places emphasis on life events such as the pandemic as an important factor forcing many to question what makes people happy. The result is a more complex definition of the emotions around happiness!
Watch this TED Talk for an insightful discussion on what makes a good life, by Professor Robert Waldinger, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital, and a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Bringing this to our times, there’s an important message from this 75-year scientific study: good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period.
💫My take: Defining happiness more broadly will definitely change the way we look at ourselves and the environment around us. Times of isolation and less social interaction are here to test one of the strongest predictions for the future of happiness: that emotional wellbeing is way more important than a physical one.
Happiness is science
But the idea of rigorously studying happiness is relatively new. For a long time, psychology was exclusively concerned with helping those who were struggling. It was only recently that a new scientific field called positive psychology emerged and started generating scientific information on what makes humans happier.
One of the most popular studies on this topic is the widely cited happiness pie chart. Originally proposed in a 2005 paper, it paints a neat and clear picture of what contributes to our happiness: 50% of our happiness is determined by our genes, 10% by our life circumstances, and 40% is determined by our daily activities. The main message here is that at least some of your happiness is within your control.
Having a stronger sense of control over what makes us happy, is also the main topic of Yale University Professor Dr. Laurie Santos’ course ‘Psychology and the Good Life’. Launched in 2018, the course focuses both on positive psychology and behavioral change, and it’s considered as Yale’s most popular class in its 319-year history.
In fact, a whopping 3.4 million people have enrolled in Santos’ online course The Science of Wellbeing, available for free on Coursera. The course is a phenomenon and takes an estimated 10 weeks (19 hours total) to complete. Check it out!
Bonus: In this article for Business Insider, Professor Santos shares some advice on how to feel happier. She also has an amazing podcast - the Happiness Lab.
💫My take: The (scientific) pursuit of happiness is helping us rewire our brains toward a happier life. Especially when the world feels like it’s spinning out of control, we should use the science of happiness to focus more on wellbeing in our own personal lives. This will definitely help us understand how our sense of purpose can be influenced by a variety of factors, like going through a global pandemic.
Smile! You’ve been recorded - the Happiness Report
Life under COVID-19 is one of the topics discussed in the World Happiness Report, a landmark annual survey of the state of global happiness that ranks more than 150 countries by how happy their citizens perceive themselves. Published the first time in 2012, the report is developed by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), with support from other institutions.
Each annual World Happiness Report focuses on new issues. This year’s report has special chapters on the effects of COVID-19 on the structure and quality of people’s lives. Other chapter describe and evaluate how governments all over the world have dealt with the pandemic. Check it out!
For the fourth year in a row, Finland takes the top spot as the happiest country in the world according to survey data. But besides looking at the happiest countries in the world, the Report also ranks those places where people feel the most miserable. This year, countries like Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, and Jordan were ranked as some of the unhappiest countries in the world.
💫My take: This year may not seem like a banner moment to release a World Happiness Report. But from a policy perspective, the publication is a timely reminder of the importance of wellbeing and how life evaluations and emotions evolve in such challenging times. With vaccines on the way, it will be interesting to see how the 2022 report will look like when this is finally behind us.
The joy of vax
Speaking of vaccines, right now they are nothing short of a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. And if you have been already #vaxxed you probably had the chance to experience one of the happiest moments this year.
After a long period of stress, fear, and isolation, almost everyone agrees that the vaccine produces way more emotions than just more than a little pinch of sensation in the arm. Some feel relief. Others gratitude. In any case, many people are now flooding our social media with selfies showing COVID vaccine cards as Willy Wonka's golden tickets!
But the feeling of pride and relief is not the same for everyone getting a dose. This article from The Conversation gives some insights on something that is being called the 'vaccine guilt', a feeling associated with getting immunized before others.
💫My take: The feeling of ‘walking on sunshine’ is valid and helps us balance our emotional and mental health especially after a long period of stress. But the end of the pandemic still feels far away for many, as there remain significant barriers to access for some communities and countries. If you got your ‘tickets for holidays’ already, remember to be mindful of those who are waiting their turn for a vaccine.
You’ve got a higher power
We will never stop asking ourselves what makes us happy and how to be happy. But thinking of happiness as a global need, I instantly thought of the latest Coldplay single Higher Power: an uplifting invitation ‘to find in all of us the person that can do amazing things’.
On 6 May, with the help of French astronaut Thomas Pesquet, Coldplay premiered their new single directly from the International Space Station. The song has an important message: this shoot of hope into the stratosphere is a beautiful reminder that everything we need to be happy is already down here!
Watch the video below and try to focus on happier days ahead!
Ah, Higher Power is also part of my playlist on Spotify playlist: What future?
Now that you reached the end of this, I wanted to thank you again for finding your way here. If anything you read here made you feel inspired about tomorrow, please share it with your network, for future reference.
Also, feel free to say hi to me on Linkedin and follow me on Twitter. And let me know whether one of these stories has shifted your perspectives about anything.Â
See you next time,
Rodrigo