If you find yourself frequently pondering the nature and source of happiness, this equation in professor Julian Simon’s book Good Mood (which he wrote in the process of addressing his own depression) may be a revelation for you:
Mood = (Perceived state of oneself) / (Hypothetical benchmark state)
Most human beings pursue happiness by “sweetening the numerator” as Simon puts it, or in other words, by trying to improve their their lives — wealth, spouses, jobs, houses, cars — to match their expectations, or their benchmark states.
We can take this equation a bit further and show that this approach will not work in the long run:
Happiness = Reality / Expectation
Happiness = What you have / What you want
Happiness = What you have / f(What others have)
Your expectations are not absolute. They are a function of what you think you should have. And that is usually a function of what you observe others as having. The “others” you usually compare yourself against are those you consider your peers.
However, your peers change as you rise up the social ladder. Perhaps you thought you’d finally be happy when you get into a management position. But when you finally do, the peers you compare yourself against will be other managers. Suddenly your house, car and other things that you have, must be compared against what they have. You keep on striving and get into a C-suite position. Now you’re comparing yourself against other CEOs and CTOs who are millionaires (or billionaires) with holiday homes, yachts and personal jets. You have stepped onto the Hedonic Treadmill and cannot get off. You keep running harder and harder, achieving more and more, just to maintain your current level of happiness.
This is often backed up by research that shows most human beings have a set happiness point over the long term. People who win the lottery or suffer a massive loss have temporary spikes or dips in their happiness level, but usually plateau back to their set points over time. Anecdotally, the person whom journalists have dubbed “the happiest man in the world” (based on a 12-year brain wave study) is a French scientist who now lives as a Tibetan monk in Nepal. He seems to have found a path to happiness beyond sweetening the numerator.
The bottom line is: it is the denominator that we need to work on. We need to modulate our expectations. And in order to do that, we need to be mindful about who we compare ourselves against, or if possible, avoid comparison entirely.
After all, it is more efficient to improve a ratio by reducing the denominator than by increasing the numerator.
