There is a formula for happiness — but it’s highly misunderstood

One of the biggest mistakes that people make is confusing happiness and feelings of happiness

Happiness is the feeling I get when I'm with the people that I love or happiness is how I feel when I'm doing what I enjoy and I say that's beautiful, that's great

that's wrong. Happiness isn't a feeling. Feelings are evidence of happiness like the smell of your

Shirky is evidence of your Thanksgiving dinner. And that's incredibly good news for everybody

because there's all kinds of reasons that you shouldn't just have happy feelings

It's normal that you have negative emotions every single day. And if you didn't

you'd probably be dead in about a week. But if we really want to get at the phenomenon that's

creating the feelings, we need to go underneath those emotions and find out what's actually

driving them in the first place. I'm Arthur Brooks. I'm an author and a professor

and I specialize in the science of happiness. People talk a lot about bad feelings and good feelings, and that's a complete misunderstanding

of emotion itself. Emotion is nothing more than information about the outside world

When there's something outside of you that's a threat, we have negative emotions

Fear, anger, sadness, disgust. And those are incredibly important. They keep us alive

They tell us there's a threat. And when there's something that's an opportunity for us, something that's lovely

something that we really want in our lives, then we have positive emotions of joy and interest or surprise But we can classify them as bad or good We really could I guess classify them as all good because we need them all and they keep us alive

I've looked at data on millions of individuals who have the highest levels of well-being

and they all have three elements in common in their lives. Enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning

Now, enjoyment is something that people think they understand, but often don't

They mistake it for pleasure. Pleasure is kind of an animal phenomenon

It's a signal, like any other feeling, that something can give you calories or mates that can help you survive and pass on your genes

It's not something that actually leads to happiness. Enjoyment is more complex than that, and it's experienced in the prefrontal cortex of the brain, the executive center of the brain

Enjoyment is pleasure plus people plus memory. That's the reason a beer company doesn't have a commercial with a guy pounding a 12-pack in his apartment by himself

The second macronutrient of happiness is satisfaction. Satisfaction is a real mystery because it's the joy we get after we struggle for something

And if we don't struggle enough, it's not sweet. my students they could cheat to get an am i exam but if they did it would give them no satisfaction

last but not least is meaning i can go a long time without satisfaction and and even enjoyment

i'm a pretty self-disciplined person but i can't go an hour without meaning and be happy and neither

can you what the meaning of life that a big question and it really three sub We call them coherence significance and purpose

Coherence is, why do things happen the way they do? Significance is, why does it matter that I'm alive

And purpose is, what's the direction and goals involved in my life

And if you have answers to those questions, you have meaning. But if you don't have answers, or you don't have good answers to your own satisfaction

that's what you need to go looking for. Ancient philosophers, really starting with Aristotle

but most importantly, Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century, classified the worldly rewards that we crave so much into four categories

Money, power, pleasure, and fame. There's a ton of scientific literature out there that says that

Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle and everybody else in between was spot on the money

If those are not the things that you should try to accumulate, what should you be going after

Not money, power, pleasure, and fame. It's faith, family, friendship, and work that serves others

Now, when I say faith, I have to be a little bit careful because people could misinterpret that

They could think it's some specific religious faith. There are many ways where people can find the peace and perspective they need in life

philosophy or meditation or walking in nature without devices or studying the fugues of Johann

Sebastian Bach, but you need to stand in awe of something bigger than you. And that's the first

category Second is family life We evolved as a kin species We have to know our own and take care of them even if we don like them And if you pass on those relationships

if you neglect those relationships, if you create a schism in those relationships

you've sacrificed your happiness. Third is friendship. Real friendship takes time. People my age say

I don't have time to keep up with my high school buddies. I say, you can't afford not to, man

Now, that doesn't mean you have to have 100, but it means you have to have more than one and certainly more than your spouse

Last but not least is work. And that does not mean over-indexing on work and working all day and all night

It turns out there's only two things from work that bring true joy

Earned success and service to others. earned success is creating value with your life for your hard work that's acknowledged and

recognized that's why merit is so important second is serving others even if you're working

in a workplace where you don't know the point of your work but you're doing something that

lessens the load for the person in the next cubicle then it can be a source of real satisfaction for

you. So those are the four. That's your happiness pension plan. Faith, family, friends, and work

Pursue those things and you're pursuing happiness. And this is the big point. Happiness is not a

destination. Happiness is a direction. Getting happier requires knowledge and work. It requires

changing your habits. And you can. And that's the good news