In Pursuit of Happiness

I had a daughter recently (my first child) and it's led me to do a huge amount of thinking about education. In Cape Town if you want your children to attend a private school it is recommended that you get them listed within a couple of months of birth, such is the excess of demand over supply for good education.

We haven't made any decisions about our daughter's education, and I'm not even sure that traditional education will be relevant in the next 10 years, but the process of having to pick schools and go through application procedures led me down the path of trying to figure out which school would suit us best.

I did a lot of canvassing of friends, and thinking myself, to try to determine what outcome I was looking for from an education. I asked the question "What trait would you like education to impart on your child if you could select only one?" Many different answers came out, including:

• the ability to learn
• determination
• confidence
• rounded personality
• understanding of a place within society
• sociability
• etc

Although all of the above are good and important qualities to have, the answer that resonated best with me was "the ability to be happy".

Our society teaches us that happiness is the result of the outcomes in our lives. So the more things that happen the way we would like them to (get the job, marry the girl, win the lottery etc), the more likely we are to be happy. Happiness isn't a skill, it is a result.

But if you spend some time looking into the science of it (start by Googling "positive psychology") there is a huge body of work that says that our circumstances (wealth, health etc) only account for approximately 10% of our happiness. And even then your brain cannot distinguish between authentic happiness (when things worked out as you wanted) and synthetic happiness (when you tell yourself it is for the best).

Of the remaining 90%, 50% is your "base hapiness" (determined by genetic factors and upbringing I'm guessing), and the other 40% is determined by intentional acts. The long and the short of it is that a huge proportion of our happiness is related to our actions, but most of us are taking the wrong actions.

So how do you maximise happiness? The following themes seem to be consistent:

• be optimistic. This is a skill and like all skills it can be developed with practice. Actively search out the good. It doesn't mean you have to be naive or an ostrich with your head in the sand. You can keep on planning for the worst, but make sure you are hoping for the best and looking for good wherever you can.
• increase dopamine. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in the brain. It has many different functions, but ever type of reward increases dopamine transmission in the brain. So do many addictive drugs like cocaine. How do you increase it without staying permanently high? Regular exercise; preferably something novel and fun. So beach bats is better than treadmill and surfing is better than gym.
• increase flow. Flow is that feeling of being "in the zone". It can come at work, during sport, cooking, fishing, gardening etc. It's when you are concentrating hard on an activity, losing all track of time, using skills to try to achieve a known objective, but without too much stress associated with the outcome of that objective.
• be social. Human's are not solitary animals. Living in communes, regular visits with family, time with friends, knowing your neighbours and being active in your community have a dramatic impact on happiness. Bigger homes in wealthier neighbourhoods can have the unintended consequence of driving people further away from the neighbours and, ironically, often make their new owners less happy, not more happy. I haven't really looked into digital vs real world interaction, but my gut feel is that Facebook is a poor substitute for real world interaction.
• do good. Contributing to something bigger than yourself is important. Whether that is working actively in a charity or doing random acts of kindness, there is a great joy in working for results that don't benefit the individual, but the world as a whole. 
• be grateful. Actively being grateful for what you have is one of the best ways of being happy. It sounds trite, but it is real.

Some excellent resources if you're interested in more are "The Happy Movie" (watch it) and the really interesting TED talk below.