Well, this may not be what you intended, but this is a serious call to action for me to finally look into whether or not I have bipolar disorder and, if so, start untangling that whole mess for myself. I'm terrified to journey down this rabbit hole, but it seems to connect a lot of dots -- and if getting medicated has helped you enough that it's worth listing here, that's a good push for me.
This is very much me. Except I didn't really pull myself out of it. It was the pandemic. Prior to the pandemic I was done with life. Basically my feeling was "Wait until my mom and dog die, then evaluate whether and how to end it."
Then the pandemic happened and it was insanely awesome. I loved working from home. I loved everyone being outside a lot. I loved that the drive ins re-opened. I loved my favorite bands having a Friday afternoon livestream I could watch as I finished up working (at home!) And then continue listening as I walked the dog. I loved every goddam thing.
And now Im.....a happy person. I literally never thought I'd say that. I've had that same feeling you and about the bridges. If the reaper came I'd no longer say "Thank God I hate it here." Now I'd say "That actually ended ok. I'm good. I'll come with you, Mr. D"
Im still WFH which is provably the biggest single plus. I miss some of the other stuff. No more packed tuesday night drive ins. But thats ok.
The fact that it wasn't me that did it is what terrifies me. The luck of the world gave this to me and could take it away. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. And I think I'll find some way to manage it. Even if it might mean an income cut or whatever.
Also combat sports were insanely important. Kudos. What do you do?
I lost 50 pounds and got an amateur title during the pandemic. (Actually I have a fight tomorrow, Friday 3/15. Wish me luck)
The satisfaction of "a really good, honest, connective, unpredictable conversation, of the kind that I would’ve been lucky to have three times a year previously,” is so hard to articulate, but I know exactly what you mean.
Really interesting points. I also wonder if for some, their definition of happiness is skewed with what is status quo, even when that’s not aligned with their own personal version of happiness. In those situations a huge increase in happiness can be possible, but the person has to overcome a social barrier of contradiction and discover what their true happiness is and then work against the tide to achieve it.
Very thought-inspiring piece! To the list of things that make me happier I would add “drastically reduce my consumption of social media”. It has really helped, especially these past few months. So much less toxic noise in my daily life! I’d like to say “drastically reduce consumption of news” as well, but alas, I haven’t yet pulled that off. Also, can I add that doing something to make someone else happier also makes me happier.
There is one way in which the 'set-point happiness' theory seems helpful or accurate to me and that is the idea that once you're fairly solidly happy or content within yourself, it is hard for external circumstances to make you permanently miserable again. This is the finding that people who lose limbs (for instance) later on rate themselves as similarly happy as they were before.
I've always been a fairly optimistic person but I still became vastly happier in my thirties by becoming less self-hating/self-critical, more confident, more financially secure/capable, more able to deal with difficult emotions. Once you have these skills you don't really ever lose them, despite later difficult or traumatic experiences (perhaps this is what people mean by resilience).
I've had some objectively terrible stuff happen in the last couple of months, which is not resolved yet, but I woke up this morning not feeling scared anymore but rather kind of settled and thinking, 'well, we'll deal with this whatever comes'. Also, I'm in love and engaged and very happy in that, and I would be heartbroken if I lost my partner, but I am also pretty sure I would have the social support and resources to *eventually* recover from the grief and be happy again.
So I think the idea of a set point has some usefulness in the sense that once you've securely reached a point, you're at much less risk of slipping back down to previous levels.
Another issue here is that the research focuses on events that are easy to describe or measure. Studies that turned me on to the set point being legit focused on "does [not getting tenure/losing a limb/initiating a divorce] make you less happy" and the answer was "for a bit, then no because you return to your set point." but the experiences you point to here, which very much jive with my own, aren't happening to college kids or those otherwise accessible to researchers. If there was a study of happiness levels in people who had no concept of, then later sought, non dualistic experiences, it consistently failed to come up in my keyword searches.
ram dass liked to tell the story of the drunk looking for his keys under the streetlight. didn't you lose them in the alley, goes the joke. yeah, he says, but the light is better over here. turns out peer review happens in the streetlight too.
''In my experience, happiness translates into capacity. Happy people tend to make other people happy, tend to have more emotional endurance and more flexibility, et cetera—the effects are prosocial.''. That rings so true.
At the same time, the time spent ''working/developping for happiness'' is not necessarily prosocial or immediately making one more prosocial in all respects. I'd be interested to hear / read about balancing between reaping and sharing effects of efforts at happiness, on one hand, vs engaging time and energy into developing one's own happiness, say (as is my case) through meditation and meditation-related activities.
For a time at least, and for me at least, meditation related effects can present as very much not prosocial, in the sense that if I was previously fundamentally motivated by, say, fear, I might disengage from a social commitment if fear is no longer moving me like it did. That might well be ultimately positive, and in the long term lead to making better overall decisions in commitments, and it does feel subjectively 10x better to not be gripped by fear, but in the short term it is probably very disagreeable to the people I'm not reliably showing up for.
Interested to read how other people are navigating this. :)
I often think about moving away from a small grey city to somewhere sunnier or more cycle-friendly, and then I think about how I'd miss my friends and scene. Any thoughts or experiences on this?
You write: “In my experience, happiness translates into capacity.” How do you square this with the fact that your favorite writers are or were sadness specialists? Do you think you would have enjoyed their works if they weren’t, on the whole, unhappy?
Well, this may not be what you intended, but this is a serious call to action for me to finally look into whether or not I have bipolar disorder and, if so, start untangling that whole mess for myself. I'm terrified to journey down this rabbit hole, but it seems to connect a lot of dots -- and if getting medicated has helped you enough that it's worth listing here, that's a good push for me.
This is very much me. Except I didn't really pull myself out of it. It was the pandemic. Prior to the pandemic I was done with life. Basically my feeling was "Wait until my mom and dog die, then evaluate whether and how to end it."
Then the pandemic happened and it was insanely awesome. I loved working from home. I loved everyone being outside a lot. I loved that the drive ins re-opened. I loved my favorite bands having a Friday afternoon livestream I could watch as I finished up working (at home!) And then continue listening as I walked the dog. I loved every goddam thing.
And now Im.....a happy person. I literally never thought I'd say that. I've had that same feeling you and about the bridges. If the reaper came I'd no longer say "Thank God I hate it here." Now I'd say "That actually ended ok. I'm good. I'll come with you, Mr. D"
Im still WFH which is provably the biggest single plus. I miss some of the other stuff. No more packed tuesday night drive ins. But thats ok.
The fact that it wasn't me that did it is what terrifies me. The luck of the world gave this to me and could take it away. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. And I think I'll find some way to manage it. Even if it might mean an income cut or whatever.
Also combat sports were insanely important. Kudos. What do you do?
I lost 50 pounds and got an amateur title during the pandemic. (Actually I have a fight tomorrow, Friday 3/15. Wish me luck)
Love this, thanks for writing, and for helping argue against the lazy automatic connection people make between intelligence and misery
The satisfaction of "a really good, honest, connective, unpredictable conversation, of the kind that I would’ve been lucky to have three times a year previously,” is so hard to articulate, but I know exactly what you mean.
Really interesting points. I also wonder if for some, their definition of happiness is skewed with what is status quo, even when that’s not aligned with their own personal version of happiness. In those situations a huge increase in happiness can be possible, but the person has to overcome a social barrier of contradiction and discover what their true happiness is and then work against the tide to achieve it.
Very thought-inspiring piece! To the list of things that make me happier I would add “drastically reduce my consumption of social media”. It has really helped, especially these past few months. So much less toxic noise in my daily life! I’d like to say “drastically reduce consumption of news” as well, but alas, I haven’t yet pulled that off. Also, can I add that doing something to make someone else happier also makes me happier.
There is one way in which the 'set-point happiness' theory seems helpful or accurate to me and that is the idea that once you're fairly solidly happy or content within yourself, it is hard for external circumstances to make you permanently miserable again. This is the finding that people who lose limbs (for instance) later on rate themselves as similarly happy as they were before.
I've always been a fairly optimistic person but I still became vastly happier in my thirties by becoming less self-hating/self-critical, more confident, more financially secure/capable, more able to deal with difficult emotions. Once you have these skills you don't really ever lose them, despite later difficult or traumatic experiences (perhaps this is what people mean by resilience).
I've had some objectively terrible stuff happen in the last couple of months, which is not resolved yet, but I woke up this morning not feeling scared anymore but rather kind of settled and thinking, 'well, we'll deal with this whatever comes'. Also, I'm in love and engaged and very happy in that, and I would be heartbroken if I lost my partner, but I am also pretty sure I would have the social support and resources to *eventually* recover from the grief and be happy again.
So I think the idea of a set point has some usefulness in the sense that once you've securely reached a point, you're at much less risk of slipping back down to previous levels.
Another issue here is that the research focuses on events that are easy to describe or measure. Studies that turned me on to the set point being legit focused on "does [not getting tenure/losing a limb/initiating a divorce] make you less happy" and the answer was "for a bit, then no because you return to your set point." but the experiences you point to here, which very much jive with my own, aren't happening to college kids or those otherwise accessible to researchers. If there was a study of happiness levels in people who had no concept of, then later sought, non dualistic experiences, it consistently failed to come up in my keyword searches.
ram dass liked to tell the story of the drunk looking for his keys under the streetlight. didn't you lose them in the alley, goes the joke. yeah, he says, but the light is better over here. turns out peer review happens in the streetlight too.
Adding one more data point (not me):
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZbgCx2ntD5eu8Cno9/how-to-be-happy
Thanks for writing this, Sasha!
''In my experience, happiness translates into capacity. Happy people tend to make other people happy, tend to have more emotional endurance and more flexibility, et cetera—the effects are prosocial.''. That rings so true.
At the same time, the time spent ''working/developping for happiness'' is not necessarily prosocial or immediately making one more prosocial in all respects. I'd be interested to hear / read about balancing between reaping and sharing effects of efforts at happiness, on one hand, vs engaging time and energy into developing one's own happiness, say (as is my case) through meditation and meditation-related activities.
For a time at least, and for me at least, meditation related effects can present as very much not prosocial, in the sense that if I was previously fundamentally motivated by, say, fear, I might disengage from a social commitment if fear is no longer moving me like it did. That might well be ultimately positive, and in the long term lead to making better overall decisions in commitments, and it does feel subjectively 10x better to not be gripped by fear, but in the short term it is probably very disagreeable to the people I'm not reliably showing up for.
Interested to read how other people are navigating this. :)
I often think about moving away from a small grey city to somewhere sunnier or more cycle-friendly, and then I think about how I'd miss my friends and scene. Any thoughts or experiences on this?
Moving out of Toronto was probably the main factor - source: former Torontonian
Positive therapeutic experiences are something I could relate to. Such a wonderful tool for many!
Hi Sasha,
You write: “In my experience, happiness translates into capacity.” How do you square this with the fact that your favorite writers are or were sadness specialists? Do you think you would have enjoyed their works if they weren’t, on the whole, unhappy?
Great Inspirational Post! Love to see poeple walking their talk. Thank you.
I too frequently consider that I might be about to die while crossing a bridge 😅