Where is happiness? If you're also looking for answers, I can share some clues with you first.
In the pause lab, there's a writing exercise like this: Make a list of 10 things you can do in life that will make you happy.
This exercise may seem a bit difficult, but once you settle down and start making lists, you'll soon find that 10 things simply aren't enough to write (you can try it right now).
More than 30,000 people have completed this exercise, and we made a "happy list" based on the frequency of event nominations. In this list, the top 10 things are, in order:
Eat, chat with friends, buy, listen to nice sounds, play, see nice things, drink, walk, family, pet cats.
To sum up, the most influential things in our daily experience of happiness are the following types of things:
The first category is eating, drinking, resting, sleeping, and everything else that makes us relax and feel safe and comfortable. It's a purely physiological pleasure that almost no one would deny. It can be understood that in the long history of evolution, because these things guaranteed the survival and reproduction of human ancestors, the human brain gave them higher weight.
The second category, intimate emotional relationships. Friends, lovers, mothers, children, family, cats, dogs and dogs, these are the most mentioned keywords. With the support of these companions, there is room for me in this world, and I am no longer alone, but I am understood and cared for, with my own place of existence and the possibility of connecting all things.
The third category, things related to personal goals that can provide a sense of accomplishment and meaning to our lives, such as reading, studying, working, and running. These kinds of things don't necessarily give us a sense of comfort and ease right away, and require us to make a sustained effort, but they can deepen our understanding of ourselves and our lives. We can organize our lives around these personal goals and make the direction of life clearer.
So, adding these little things together in life can determine our happiness?
not necessarily.
I've heard complaints like, "I have all these things, I can eat anything I want, I have daily entertainment, I have a good relationship with my family, and my work is the envy of many people, but why, I still don't feel happy?"
The point I'm going to share next is not shocking, but often overlooked: happiness is not just about possessing these things that make people happy, happiness is an experience. Experience means that you will be more engaged with these things with an open mind, allowing yourself to be more engaged, and let these feelings enter your consciousness and integrate into your life.
Look closely at the list of happiness in the previous article, there are words in it, which describe not those people, things, and things that make people feel happy, but some actions that trigger happy emotions. These actions are an attempt to describe the relationship between a person and these things. For example, seeing, hearing, drinking, smelling, and feeling, feeling, discovering, and experiencing. These beautiful things, only when you see, hear, and discover, can they truly become a happy experience.
This is also the conclusion of positive psychologists who specialize in happiness: the key to happiness is in the process of experiencing everyday life.
The suspension of the lab's positive psychology practice program begins with the following question:
If, after a few years, you are already very happy, fully living your ideal life, and having everything you want, how will your day be spent?
People who haven't thought about similar questions may find this exercise a bit difficult, but many people will find that it is not much different from their current life after racking their brains to write it out.
That's right, the elements that most people write about "ideal days" include and the list of happiness at the beginning of the article, which are no different.
In the hypothetical perfect ideal of life, what we are willing to do every day is to eat breakfast with our family, drink coffee and chat with friends, and have a quiet space to read, bask in the sun, pet the cat, and do the work we love. Like the choices you can make on any weekend afternoon, you have all the objective conditions to make you happy.
You may also think: This seems to make some sense, and I admit that there is not much dissatisfaction in my life, but I still feel that this is not real happiness. Shouldn't the meaning of happiness be hidden in some of the greater pursuits? It shouldn't be so close, so accessible, but it should be far away so that I have the motivation to keep trying to pursue it.
The word "pursuit," once put together with happiness, constitutes one life goal after another:
If I have a more ideal job, if I find a more perfect partner, if I can have two children, if I can be appreciated by the leader, if I can win the first prize if I buy lottery tickets... My life can be said to be happy.
If you think "happiness = ×× goal," then you may have fallen into the trap of building around goals. Because in this equation, except for a brief moment of achieving your goal, at other times in your life, you will continue to experience anxiety, dissatisfaction, and disappointment.
To get out of this trap, I suggest you shift your attention from the goal itself to the value behind it. Value is our innermost priority of life, which is related to what kind of person we want to be, and it is a personal attitude of what kind of life we want to live.
For example, behind the goal of "finding a better job," the value you value may be a sense of personal accomplishment or the safety of your family, but you don't have to wait to find your ideal job to do that. In fact, whether the goal is achieved or not, you can choose to practice the value you value at this moment. For example, work hard to get into the work at hand and take the initiative to show concern to your family.
These tiny practices are important because they accumulate and pave the way to happiness. Or rather, doing these things is happiness itself. We often mistakenly think that achieving our goal is the end of happiness, but in fact, long-term happiness comes from every day, from continuous action that follows the direction of our own values. Happiness is something you can have at any time now. You can't make yourself happy by memorizing a concept and reading a theory, you can only experience it in the process of action. Happiness is a very small thing, and it is more devoted to doing these small things, such as eating seriously when eating, and concentrating on walking when walking.
When you are aware of your current state and feelings, you are more likely to see and hear the little things that make you happy. When you can experience these little things everywhere in your life, you can feel happy. If you want to try a small thing right now, it is recommended that you schedule a 15-minute walk and choose the environment you are most familiar with. Unlike usual, this time you are just walking, not having to go somewhere, not having to rush to reply to mobile phone messages, and not having to think about the distant goal in your mind while walking.
If you lose your mind, draw your attention back to walking itself.
As simple as possible, all you need to pay attention to is how to step on your feet, swing your hands, pay attention to safety, and avoid cars, pedestrians, and trees. On the way, you encounter things that make you curious, such as the look of a passerby, the fragrance of flowers brought by a gust of wind, the sound of birds coming from nowhere, you can do some exploration by yourself, and then continue walking. Until the end, you don't know how many surprises you'll be able to reap on this journey.
Grasping the present moment is not a simple matter and requires deliberate practice. For example, when you have breakfast with your family, you may receive a phone call that makes you unhappy, and after hanging up, you can pay attention to how your emotions are affected by the phone call at the moment, and then choose to re-engage in eating and chatting, which is the happiness you can grasp now.
The good news is that this ability to engage in the present moment can be improved through conscious, sustained mindfulness training.
At the end of the article, I would like to share with you a quote that I really like, from Joe Kabakin, founder of Mindfulness Decompression Therapy:
We imagine that one or two big things will have a profound impact on our happiness, but happiness is the sum of hundreds of small things... Small things are important.
This article is excerpted from Breathe 4: Cherish it, everyday light. This is a mindful life book founded in the United Kingdom and popular around the world. A mindfulness-inspired book that helps you balance your body and mind. Psychologist Li Songwei is the editor-in-chief of the Chinese edition of Breathing, writing the theme article, published by CITIC Publishing Group. A book that is both light and informative, just right for the moment.
Author: Guo Tingting (Founder of Suspension Lab)
Editor: Xue Weiping
Editor-in-Charge: Zhu Zifen