Can happiness be boiled down to a number?
Happiness can mean a lot of different things for everyone, but I’ve come to think it generally consists of three things.
- Health [fitness, exercise, food]
- Relationships [god, family, friends, clients, animals even]
- Freedom [doing what you want, when you want, free will]
These three things pretty much include everything I would argue most people on the planet put importance on in some shape or form.
While those things are what happiness is derived from, working for money is what we spend most of our lives doing.
Work is wrapped up in freedom, but work isn’t something we do that makes us happy. The definition of work precludes it from it being a source of happiness.
We work, to get freedom, which we spend on health, relationships and doing what we want.
Wait, you’re one of those people who says they love work?!
I am too.
Work can build relationships and provide freedoms, and not be horrible, but it’s not often-rarely-ever, the source of happiness. You can be happy at work, you can get satisfaction from doing work actions, but the happiness comes from doing what you want, then feeling mastery over it, you needed to choose to do work, that choice, which is freedom, is the source of the fulfillment. If you didn’t choose it, you’re not happy about it, that’s slavery.
Many don’t feel like they have a choice, hence the supreme lack of happiness many claim at work.
If you think about it though, you do have a choice, and bending your mind to choose to go to work, or change your situation, may give you an increased sense of freedom, increasing your happiness. Even if nothing physically changes, but you recognize it’s a choice, and you choose it, you can still claim that freedom.
I didn’t think this was true at first, but I’ve been challenged to find anything contradictory about these three things being the source of happiness. I’m sure there are arguments and semantics that add elements to it, but more or less, I find it to be true.
Further arguing the point, if you remove work, [somehow all your financial wants are met] you will do things you want to do, which might be work, it might be play, but that’s freedom.
When you ask someone what would they do if they had a million dollars, they tell you things like travel, buy all my friends a Ferrari, buy an island. These things demonstrate freedom, and when the novelty of having lots of money to spend wears off, you’re probably going to pay off your families debts, hang out with friends, and get yourself in better shape.
You can’t really remove harship in life though, in biblical terms, that’s called “the fall”, and it not being a source of happiness I think was the point.
Regardless, we want to be happy, but we are constantly working. So how can we be more happy?
Recognizing what causes happiness is really powerful
Most people naturally, once they’ve worked what’s required to survive, do things that make them happy. Duh, that makes sense.
We work on our health, relationships, and do things we want without thinking about them, but recognizing they are the source of what makes us feel good is empowering
I guess that’s the whole point here.
Imbalance become obvious, and “being” more happy seems actionable when you see the sources of happiness.
Tangible happiness, I like that.
Who doesn’t want to be more happy?
SO… now that there’s a somewhat quantifiable thought process to happiness, how happy am I on a scale of 1-10?
How healthy am I?
7
I’m in great overall shape, but have calf pain, regular back aches, and my hands are dry.
How are my relationships?
6
I ignore relationships to try and do tasks, projects, and other stuff. I should call my friends more, my mom, and continue to get to know people at six-eight and the big guy upstairs. [there’s a relationship that provides real happiness.]
How much freedom do I have?
4
I trade 5 days of work for 2 days of doing whatever I want. When you think about it, it’s nuts. The 5 days of work are more flexible that other situations, but time and place are still mandated. I arguably work more than 5 days by choice, I work as much as I can to create more freedom in bursts and before I’m too old to enjoy it, that’s called escaping the rat race. Debt also controls freedom, requiring a certain level of work be maintained consistently, this isn’t abnormal, but it’s not freedom.
17 out of 30
Balance
I see correlations of how I spend my time in these numbers, constantly trying to finagle more freedom by moving closer to work, negotiating working from home, building businesses, products, etc. to have events of wealth, getting involved at church and holding weekly hangouts with friends, staying fit.
I also see places I put too much time and others I neglect by stepping back and looking at it.
People are all different, certain things are going to impact their happiness more than others in reference to health, relationships and freedom, if I had to choose one, I’d say we we’re made for relationship over all else, and putting time into relationships will make the biggest impact on how happy you are.
What are your numbers? Where can you add a few actions to bump your happiness, or find balance? What do you think? Is it all nonsense?