What Makes Us Happy

The TED motto is “Ideas Worth Spreading”. At the TED.com site you’ll find speakers who in all of 18 minutes to thrill, inspire, intrigue and leave you mesmerized with their views and arguments. The talks are all sans any commercial, religious or political agenda.I could list many – but one that I have gone back to watch more than a few times is the talk by JK Rowling on The Fringe Benefits of Failure. There is hardly anyone who has not been amazed by Pranav Mistry’s demo of the Sixth Sense Technology . Closer home when TED was hosted in Mysore, I regretted not being able to hear Shashi Tharoor (among others) explain the value of Soft Power and be there to hear so many thinkers and achievers explain their opinion in all of 18 minutes. TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. The TEDxGurgaon gave me a chance to articulate my view on What Makes Us Happy? The mysterious state of being that we all seek to experience as often as possible. This post is based on the ideas shared in the talk.Here is the curtain raiser that I used.I floated this question on Twitter and Facebook and asked the to send me a list of what makes you happy. I got a deluge of responses. Here are a few, “To catch a smile from a complete stranger in the street, on a train, in the crowd, on a bus, in a shop. To be able to pass that smile on to another stranger passing by. that is happiness.”, “Toys”, “Happiness is being greeted by a dog wagging his tail, jumping all over you and licking your face.”; “A swim in the ocean”; “Sitting by a warm fire on a cold night”; “The smell of the earth being soaked in the first rain” …A lot of respondents said that money made them happy. Ergo having more money would make them happier. There is enough and more research that shows that silver medal winners at Olympics are less happy than those who won the bronze. Yes. The silver medalists are unhappy about losing the gold. The bronze medal winners feel happy that they missed fading into oblivion. So it is all about the meaning. Dan Gilbert gives people a choice, ” Which future would you prefer? One in which you win the lottery? Or one in which you become paraplegic? Which would make you happier?”  Research shows that a year after losing their legs, and a year after winning the lotto, lottery winners and paraplegics are equally happy with their lives.In fact as nations get richer, they are less happy says Shankar Vedantam in the Washington Post. The irony is that health and the quality of personal relationships are among the most potent predictors of whether people report they are happy — and they are often the two things people sacrifice in their pursuit of greater wealth.My premise is very simple. There are three states that we experience:(i) Contentment – when we feed the body(ii) Joy when we feed the mind and(iii) Happiness when we feed our soul.The thing about contentment is that it only gets you from a negative state to a state which is best described as zero. So if you are hungry, good food gets you to experience contentment. Just after you eat the meal, eating again does not take you to a higher level of contentment – In fact it is just the reverse.You experience joy when do something that is mentally satisfying. Solving that sudoku puzzle or crossword; listening to music, reading, taking up a challenge eg an arduous trek, getting over a physical or mental disability. There are many things we can do to experience joy. Happiness is all about the meaning we create of the world around us. As Nietzsche said, “He who has a WHY to live for can survive almost any HOW”. There is no such thing as a permanent state of happiness, but just moments of happiness we experience when we find a larger meaning in what we do. As Father Hathaway says to Abbey in Married But Available, “If you want success, think of yourself. If you want happiness, think of others.” When we help others overcome their existential challenges, we help them find meaning. In that process we find meaning for ourselves. I once saw a beggar buy six pieces of bread and have one slice himself and give five to a street dog who is his companion. Clearly, even though someone may not experience contentment and joy, it is still possible to experience happiness.TEDxGurgaon talk on What Makes Us HappySo what makes you happy? Is your definition different?————-Photos courtesy: Vairamani Pandiyan see his photos on Flickr at  http://www.flickr.com/photos/pandiyan/More talks on happiness at TED.comRead about this interesting work on happiness levels of lottery winners and paraplegics