Happiness is something we can all manage individually if we apply the right practices to our lives, says social scientist Arthur C Brooks.
Enjoyment, satisfaction and purpose are what he calls the "macronutrients" - or essentials - for a happy outlook.
Photo: Clay Banks / Unsplash
Arthur C Brooks Photo: Supplied
Arthur C Brooks is a Harvard professor who writes The Atlantic column How To Build A Life and hosts the podcast How To Build A Happy Life.
Learn to manage your feelings
Over the past year and half, Brooks says he's been hearing a lot from people about feelings of loneliness, uncertainty, fear, disappointment and insecurity about the future.
Metacognition - the practice of observing our feelings - is an "unbelievable source of power" when it comes to not getting overwhelmed by these challenging feelings, Brooks tells Kim Hill.
"There are all kinds of good reasons to be in touch with your feelings, but mostly so you can manage those feelings.
"If you're reactive, if you let your feelings happen to you, your feelings will manage you. And your good feelings will make you feel happy and your bad feelings will make you feel sad or angry.
"Paying attention to your emotions and learning to consciously manage them takes time and effort, but eventually your feelings won't manage you and you can learn to manage them, he says.
Stop chasing 'the next thing'
The attachment to stuff is a common barrier to happiness for people who actually have more than 'enough', Brooks says.
On the "hedonic treadmill", we chase the next achievement or possession or success, honestly but mistakenly believing "the next thing" is what will give us satisfaction.
No specific system is to blame for this state of affairs, he says, the bigger problem is our lack of "fundamental happiness hygiene".
"The biggest problem our society is not an economic system that doesn't work, it's that we've created moral systems that don't work well. We've alienated ourselves from one another. We can blame the economy if we want but the truth is the problem starts with our own human hearts."
It's futile to try and stop economic growth as innovation and growth in the developing world are the only way climate change can be successfully addressed, Brooks says.
Most entrepreneurs get a huge sense of achievement from doing things and making things, and we need more who are equally enthusiastic about the greater good.
"The point of the free enterprise system should be the freedom to earn our success and serve others."
Be more in the moment
The power of the human brain gives us an uncanny ability to time-travel into the past or future, Brooks says, but not experiencing and enjoying life in the moment has a big impact on our happiness.
Because of something called the 'fading effect bias', we tend to look on the past and believe it was better than the present. As a result, we underappreciate progress and feel dissatisfied and ungrateful about the present.
Brooks still feels hopeful about humanity - if we can pull together.
'We've gotten out of worse fixes than this ... There are big problems but in big problems like big opportunities and those opportunities almost always revolve around a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood."
Find a serious pursuit
To ensure greed and consumption are not the motivating force in each of our individual lives, people need some kind of spiritual pursuit, Brooks says.
"The data say that having a serious commitment to a faith or life philosophy is critically important and really irreplaceable. This could be atheism or a serious interest in existential philosophy - something that explains consciousness, something that explains the transcendence in our lives."
