by Arthur Brooks of Harvard
as posted by Codie Sanchez on X (nee Twitter) – @Codie_Sanchez
The macronutrients of happiness are enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning.
Main dishes are faith, family, and friends.
1. Lack of love
The currency of enterprise is $$$. But the currency of your life is love & happiness.
2. Lack of faith
Your nature says YOU are most important. But that leads to unhappiness.
Happiness comes not just from religion, but from “transcendence”:
Things that remind you of the grandeur of the universe & the smallness of you.
Stoicism, nature walks, Mass, meditation…
3. Lack of friends
We need more useless people in our life.
“You need real friends who are useless, not just deal friends who are useful.”
4. Being around unhappy people
Obvious, but we miss it.
Humans mimic each other’s behavior, like monkeys. When you see happy people do happy things, you tend to do the same.
The opposite is true as well.
5. Our highly politicized society
We’ve lost the art of having a common cause. We hate the other group and trust only “our own.”
And we underestimate how much this impacts our personal happiness.
6. Loneliness
As a culture, it’s been exacerbated by:
– the pandemic
– social media
– the erosion of institutions like faith, family, and friendship
7. Contempt
As Arthur put it,
“You’ll never say to yourself, ‘you know, my only regret is I wasn’t more of a jerk.’”
Yet we troll online, insult strangers… and then we wonder why we’re unhappy?
8. Resentful rather than grateful
He said, “You can raise your happiness 10-25% in the next 10 weeks by just writing down and paying attention to the fact that you should be more grateful.”
Be realistic, present, grateful.
9. Lack of hope
Which is different than optimism:
Optimism is predicting things will be okay. …Then feeling crushed when they aren’t.
Hope is empowerment — what can I DO today to make things more okay?
10. Workaholism
Work isn’t inherently unhappy.
So what about it makes people unhappy?
Arthur says it’s, “a relationship with work that crowds out other relationships that bring more happiness.”
Know Thyself 