Happiness summary

Being happy doesn’t just put a smile on your face – it’s also beneficial to your physical health.

Whenever we experience positive emotions, our brains release certain neurotransmitters – also known as “happiness hormones” – which have been shown to have a positive effect on many of our bodily functions.

Think back to the last time you made a decision. Now ask yourself: What led me to make that particular choice?

Like most people, whenever you have to make a decision, you tend to choose the option that leads to your greatest happiness and well-being – whether that decision concerns what to eat for dinner, which job to take or your next holiday destination.

We tend to believe that, as Western societies have progressed in many ways, our happiness has increased too. Yet, since the 1950s, most people in the Western world have not gotten any happier.

In fact, the average income in the United States has doubled since the 1950s and, with it, the average standard of living. However, surveys have not found that more people describe themselves as happy. Clearly, the increase in wealth did not automatically lead to an increase in happiness.

Would you rather live in a world where you earn more than you do today but less than everyone else, or one where you earn less than today but more than everyone else?

Given the choice, most people would prefer to live in the latter world.

Like every other animal, humans quickly become accustomed to new stimuli, environments and circumstances. We get used to the new people in our lives, such as a new spouse; we get used to becoming parents; and, of course, we get used to having a bigger house or a higher income.

For this reason, winning the lottery, receiving a sizeable bonus at work or finding a new job that offers you more money only bring temporary happiness. Even though you achieved something positive in your life, the positive emotions you’re rewarded with fade as you become accustomed to the new status quo.

On average, people living in the wealthier nations of the Western world are happier than those living in poor, developing countries.

This is also evident in countries that were once much poorer, but that gained some wealth in recent decades – like India, Mexico, Brazil and South Korea. In these countries, as the average wealth increased, so did people’s reported levels of happiness.

Since 1981, the World Values Survey has asked more than 350,000 people in fifty countries about their general happiness. The resulting data show that the following five factors, in descending order, have the strongest influence on our overall well-being:

As many studies indicate, family is the most important factor in our happiness – much more so than our financial situation.For example, going through a divorce has double the impact on one’s level of happiness as losing 30 percent of one’s income. Moreover, married people have been shown to live far longer and to enjoy much healthier lives.

As we’ve learned, even though material wealth has steadily increased, people haven’t become happier in the last fifty years.

One reason for this might be that our governments are simply pursuing the wrong objective. Economic growth has been the central goal of all Western societies in the past decades, while factors known to be crucial to our happiness – like, family, friends and health – have been left by the wayside. Even though the notion has been obsolete for a very long time, Western governments still seem to believe that if the economy grows, people will be better off.

Would you agree that greater happiness can be reached by increasing taxation? If your answer is no, you’re not alone in that opinion.

However, consider what would happen if taxes were high and got higher the more people earned. The result would be people being discouraged from seeking happiness where it can’t be found!

As we’ve seen, the primary source of happiness is family. But what can governments do in this regard? Quite a lot, it seems. For instance, they could make our working environments more family-friendly by enforcing flexible working hours and parental leave, establishing mandatory child care in offices and so on.

One proven way to encourage people to spend more time with those who make them happy is to reduce commute times and the continual switching of workplaces. Always being on the move makes it harder for people to establish stable relationships and friendships, and to truly belong to a functioning community. Governments could thus offer incentives that encourage working people to remain close to family and friends.

The key message in this book:

While wealth has steadily increased for decades in the Western world, people’s overall happiness hasn’t. Hence, if we want to be truly happy, we should stop focusing on acquiring wealth and start paying attention to the things that actually make us happier: friends, family, meaningful work and health.