We now know that our genes play a part in how happy we are. We have a genetic predisposition to look at things in a positive light or a negative light, or somewhere in the middle. We have a default level of happiness. A landmark and often- quoted study found that people who won the lottery and those who became paraplegic within a year, on average, returned most of the way to their baseline levels of happiness.
The reason for this is the “Adaptation Principle” which states that humans are susceptible to changes in certain life conditions, but not to their absolute levels. To explain – a person who suddenly has an increase in wealth will be excited by the change, but in time will become used to having a bigger house, more expensive car and other luxuries which have become the new “norm”.
Now the notion of increased life satisfaction is of course more complex than this. Gerald Haidt, in his “Happiness Hypothesis” proposes that:
H = S+C+V.
Happiness (H) is a sum of our genetic set point (S), certain conditions (C) of our life that are relatively stable (ie level of wealth) and those voluntary activities (V) that we choose to do that we know will increase our levels of wellbeing.
But what is interesting is the fact that there are exceptions to the “Adaptation Principle” which again, suggests that we will adjust and become used to certain conditions that are relatively fixed in our lives. For example, living in a cold climate, having physical disability or a level of power, are things that we simply get used to and adapt to. They do not continue to influence our levels of life satisfaction.
Interestingly though, Haidt states that there are five changes you can make that are not subject to the adaptation principles and may well make you happier in the long term. These are:
Living with noise – people generally do not adapt to chronic noise – particularly if it is intermittent or variable.
Commuting – traffic causes stress hormones and they do not reduce with time.
Lack of control – the human drive to be self-determining is extremely powerful and we do not adapt well to having it removed or reduced.
Shame in appearance – a person’s appearance may seem trivial in the happiness stakes, however, it has been shown that plastic surgery or other changes that make a person less self conscious or somehow deficient can lead to increases in self confidence and wellbeing.
Quality of relationships – we never adapt to interpersonal conflict and it will eat away at our life satisfaction every day.
So it might be worth considering what voluntary activities we do that make us happier and also whether there are certain “conditions” of our lives that might be worth reviewing.
Voluntary activities are many and varied and include things like exercise, mindfulness, spending time with loved ones, any time that positive emotions are experienced and things that really give us a sense of purpose of meaning. And of course, the cream of the crop, those that give us a sense of flow.
So our genetic make up does play a part, however, with study in epigenetics receiving more attention, who knows, perhaps we can also change our genetic make up and find ourselves looking at life with more of a positive frame!
Worth a thought?
