April 24, 2022

“How to Build a Life” is a weekly column by Arthur Brooks, tackling questions of meaning and happiness. Click here to listen to his podcast series on all things happiness, How to Build a Happy Life.

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Here’s some very bad happiness advice based on very solid happiness research: Feel important. Be happily married. Be Danish.

Depending on how happiness is measured, all of these things really are associated with a happier life. But they’re unhelpful because they are not actionable in any practical way. Very few people slap their foreheads and say, “It all makes sense now—I thought a tense, angry marriage was the secret to happiness, but it isn’t!”

This is the big weakness of a lot of the social-science research to which I have dedicated my academic life. Much of it is descriptive and explanatory, but doesn’t necessarily help us live better lives. It can even drag us down when the secret to happiness is unattainable. I am very unlikely to become a Dane, for example (although my grandfather was one, so maybe I have a little hygge sitting somewhere in my genome).

Every once in a while, people in my profession need to get practical. Based on what they see in the data from experiments and surveys, what should we do that is both effective and feasible for increasing our happiness, starting today?

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In 2020, an international team of scholars tried to find out. They came up with 68 ways that people are commonly counseled to raise their own happiness, then asked 18 of the most distinguished and prolific academic experts on the science of happiness to rate them in terms of effectiveness and feasibility. In other words, according to the experts, these ways to get happier both work and are workable.

Here are the top 10, in order, with my own assessments as a happiness researcher added in for good measure.

1. Invest in family and friends. The research is clear that though our natural impulse may be to buy stuff, we should invest instead in improving our closest relationships by sharing experiences and freeing up time to spend together.

Read: How to buy happiness

2. Join a club. The “social capital” you get from voluntarily and regularly associating with other people, whether or not you do so through a formal club, has long been known to foster a sense of belonging and protect against loneliness and isolation.

3. Be active both mentally and physically. You can make this advice as complicated and expensive as you want. But if you like to keep things simple, just try to walk for an hour and read for an hour (not for work!) each day.

Read: Go for a walk

4. Practice your religion. This might sound impractical if you don’t have a traditional faith or practice it traditionally. However, for the purposes of happiness, religion can be understood more broadly, as a spiritual or philosophical path in life. Search for transcendent truths beyond your narrow day-to-day life.

5. Get physical exercise. This is a slightly souped-up version of No. 3 above: Your daily walk should be supplemented with a purposive exercise plan. This is consistent with the research showing that regular exercise of all different types enhances mood and social functioning.

Read: Sedentary pandemic life is bad for our happiness

6. Act nicely. Agreeableness is consistently found to be highly and positively correlated with happiness, and it can be increased relatively easily.

7. Be generous. Behaving altruistically toward others rewards the brain with happiness-enhancing boosts of dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin.

8. Check your health. Of all health issues, those that create the greatest unhappiness are typically chronic pain and anxiety. Don’t neglect your visits to the doctor and the dentist, and seek mental-health assistance if your emotions are interfering with your work, relationships, or social activities.

9. Experience nature. Studies have shown that, compared with urban walking, walking in a woodland setting more dramatically lowers stress, increases positive mood, and enhances working memory.

Read: How microdosing on nature can help with stress

10. Socialize with colleagues outside of work. Data have shown that work friendships increase employee engagement, which is associated with both happiness and productivity for workers. I believe that the move to remote work during the pandemic has inadvertently lowered the true compensation of work for millions, explaining in part the so-called Great Resignation. Bonding with your co-workers is a way to take it back.

This list is quite similar to the advice routinely dispensed by top academics writing for popular audiences, such as the UC Riverside psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky (who was also one of the 18 experts in the study), and by nonacademics who write about the science of happiness, such as Gretchen Rubin. “These ideas are terrific—and familiar,” Rubin told me recently. What impressed her wasn’t their originality (your grandmother might’ve told you most of them); rather, it was the fact that they were both effective and practical. “For many of us, the bigger challenge isn’t knowing what actions would make us happier, but actually doing those things,” she said.

Other common happiness advice is ineffective, infeasible, or both. In the 2020 study, the lowest-ranked ideas included working part-time (infeasible for many people) and building wealth (wealth explains only about 1 percent of happiness differences). The 18 experts also weren’t fans of creating a “pride shrine”—an area of your home devoted to mementos to your successes and accomplishments. That isn’t surprising: As I show in my recent book From Strength to Strength, reminding yourself of your own past greatness is actually a very good way to lower your current satisfaction.

Read: How to succeed at failure

Debunking common-but-bad happiness guidelines could be a full-time job. Beyond those mentioned above, my favorites are “If it feels good, do it” (which can lure us toward bad habits and away from deep purpose) and “Let your anger out” (which research clearly shows leads to more anger, not relief). In my experience as a researcher, nearly all advice to let yourself be managed by your emotions and desires is bad.

If one thing bothers me about the list of happiness ideas above, it is that they are incomplete, insofar as they are disconnected tactics. If you really want to get happier, you need a full-on integrated strategy.

A happiness strategy has three parts to it. First, you need to commit yourself to understanding happiness. That can mean many things, whether it’s learning about the science of happiness, studying philosophy, or immersing yourself in a faith practice. Second, you need to practice good happiness hygiene. That’s where the ideas on the list above come in. Treat them as systematic habits, not occasional hacks, and think consciously about whether each action is consistent with your understanding of happiness. Finally, share your knowledge and progress with others. Beyond being an ethical thing to do, teaching will cement your philosophy and habits into your consciousness.

Read: Don’t wish for happiness. Work for it.

The most important thing to remember is this: You don’t have to leave your happiness up to chance. No matter where you live or what you do, you can manage your own joy and share it with others.Arthur C. Brooks is a contributing writer at The Atlantic, the William Henry Bloomberg Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School, and a professor of management practice at the Harvard Business School. He’s the host of the podcast seriesHow to Build a Happy Life and the author of From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life.

Reference From: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/04/happiness-research-how-to-be-happy-advice/629559/

Loneliness dissolves during the flow-inducing pursuit of challenging activities.

KEY POINTS

• In the 1970s, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi identified a sweet spot between “boredom and anxiety” that facilitates flow state experiences.
• During COVID-19 lockdowns, people who pursued flow-inducing challenges during their free time experienced less loneliness.
• Flow is elusive. People tend to experience flow during hard-but-not-too-hard daily challenges that are meaningful and require concentration.

In the mid-1970s, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi published “Beyond Boredom and Anxiety: Experiencing Flow in Work and Play.” In this book, he identifies a blissful “flow channel” that’s created when someone steadily increases the level of challenge as skill levels improve.Source: Duppydupdup/Shutterstock

New research suggests that international students studying abroad who were isolated and alone during COVID-19 lockdowns experienced less loneliness and more happiness if they could lose themselves in meaningful activities that required focus and created flow states. These findings (Chang, Dattilo, & Huang, 2022) were published on April 4 in the peer-reviewed journal Leisure Sciences.

“Loneliness is associated with depression and other mental health challenges. By engaging in meaningful activities that demand focus, people can reduce loneliness and increase momentary happiness,” co-author John Dattilo of Penn State said in a news release.

Anecdotally, I know that when I was a lonely student, pouring my energy into skill-based challenges—such as dedicating my free time to marathon training—was a remedy for the severe perceived social isolation I felt during the loneliest period of my life, which occurred during another global pandemic (HIV/AIDS) that first took hold when I was in high school.

Want to Create Flow? Gradually Increase Challenge Levels to Match Improving Skill Levels

As a gay teen in the early 1980s, I found myself isolated and alone at a homophobic boarding school in Wallingford, Connecticut. During my first and second years at prep school, I struggled with crippling anxiety, depression, and not self-determined solitude (NSDS). I also developed a substance use disorder during adolescence, which made me feel even more “sad and hollow” inside.

Luckily, just as the spring semester of my junior year was ending, I stumbled on the power of flow to dissolve loneliness and stopped self-medicating with recreational drugs and alcohol. It was June 1983 when I accidentally discovered that pouring myself into something challenging that required laser-like focus and skill was a way to reduce feelings of loneliness.

For me, the motivation to start pursuing what I now know as “flow” by becoming a long-distance runner was sparked by seeing a matinee of the ’80s pop culture phenomenon known as Flashdance on a big cinematic screen. The grit, gutsiness, and joie de vivre of that movie’s protagonist—who was a Pittsburgh welder turned world-class dancer—were contagious.article continues after advertisementhttps://665cfd5f3d208dd5c9dabbcbef789c43.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

“First, when there’s nothing but a slow glowing dream that your fear seems to hide deep inside your mind. All alone, I have cried silent tears full of pride. In a world made of steel, made of stone.” —”Flashdance…What a Feeling” by Giorgio Moroder, Irene Cara, and Keith Forsey (1983)

I know it’s cliché, but watching Jennifer Beals’ character metamorphosize and break free from a bleak steel town by “taking her passion and making it happen” inspired me. Armed with a mixtape of the Flashdance soundtrack blasting on my Walkman, I cut off my t-shirt sleeves and romanticized the grueling challenge of becoming an ultra-distance runner.

All I wanted to do with my leisure time in the summer of ’83 (when the AIDS pandemic started decimating people in the LGBTQ community) was sweat like a “Maniac” while visualizing myself breaking free and experiencing eudaimonia in an MTV-inspired version of my otherwise fear-filled and socially isolated daily life.

Through trial and error, I figured out that the key to creating this euphoric feeling was constantly pushing against my limits by upping the challenge and running a little bit faster and farther as my endurance and stamina gradually increased.

As a teenager in the early ’80s, I didn’t know about the concept of “flow.” Nor did I know that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi had figured out in the 1970s that the secret to dialing up this elusive state and losing oneself in what he called the “flow channel” is to constantly nudge up against one’s skill level by slightly increasing the degree of challenge and finding a sweet spot between boredom and anxiety (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975).

I did know that losing myself in a so-called “flow channel” made me feel less lonely. Creating flow states on my own also made my solitude feel self-determined (SDS). I wanted to be alone in “the zone” and chose to spend solitary time pursuing flow states every day because it made me feel good. (See, “Motivations for Solitude Explain Why Loners Love Being Alone.”)

Source: Chris Bergland

In 2004, my lifelong pursuit of “frictionless flow” state experiences and what I call superfluidity led to breaking a Guinness World Record by running six back-to-back marathons during a 24-hour fundraiser for an HIV/AIDS nonprofit organization.

Flow State Experiences Helped People Reduce Loneliness During COVID-19 Lockdowns

The latest (2022) research by Chang, Dattilo, and Huang found that international students studying abroad who weren’t able to maintain face-to-face contact with their social support networks during pandemic lockdowns experienced less loneliness if they pursued a daily activity that created flow during their free time.article continues after advertisementhttps://665cfd5f3d208dd5c9dabbcbef789c43.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

The researchers discovered that those who experienced less loneliness during the pandemic tended to spend their leisure time pursuing relatively challenging activities that required both concentration and skill.

“Flow can be achieved by engaging in mental or physical activities that we value and that require us to concentrate fully to use our skills,” Dattilo said in a news release. He adds that the best way for people to achieve a state of flow during their leisure time is to find an activity they enjoy that requires a good deal of skill and demands concentration but isn’t so difficult that it seems overwhelming or impossible.

According to Dattilo, “Some activities never induce flow, while other activities may or may not, depending on the individual.” He notes that there’s nothing wrong with surfing the internet or watching television during one’s free time. However, these activities typically don’t induce a state of flow because they don’t involve a meaningful challenge that requires focused attention or mastering a skill.

“Learning which activities might enable someone to enter a state of flow requires asking questions and listening,” Dattilo concludes. “People tend to thrive on healthy engagement and challenge. My collaborators and I hope this research will help people live fuller, happier, healthier lives.”

Reference From: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/202204/want-less-loneliness-lose-yourself-in-the-pursuit-flow