Ask someone what happiness is, and they will most likely respond that it’s a feeling. But, according to Dr. Arthur Brooks, a New York Times best-selling author, Harvard professor and researcher and nationally-recognized happiness expert, happiness is no more a feeling than a Thanksgiving dinner is the smell of turkey.
Instead, Brooks said, Thanksgiving dinner is a combination of macronutrients like proteins, fat, and carbohydrates, and happiness is a science and a practice that we can all work on every day.
Brooks, who is also the first-ever Impact Scholar at the David Eccles School of Business’ Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, shared some key insights and advice for developing and practicing happiness at the 34th annual Spencer Fox Eccles Convocation, held at the Eccles School earlier this month.
Addressing a standing-room-only crowd of students, alums and campus and community partners, Brooks started his keynote by reminding the audience that they are responsible for their own happiness—not other people and not other pursuits like more money or more recognition.
“Your life is your enterprise, and you are the founder and CEO. Love and happiness are your currency. Do you know how to accumulate more of them?” Brooks asked.
He also shared that business leaders – and aspiring business leaders – are in a unique position to be “happiness teachers,” by bringing the passion and pursuit of happiness to their companies and communities.
“Your education matters because you will get happier and lift up the world,” Brooks said. “But don’t get stuck halfway.”
Brooks then shared the three key macronutrients of happiness: enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning.
Enjoyment, Brooks said, comes when the three main parts of our brain are working together to collect data, identify emotions, and then make decisions based on those inputs. A simple formula to remember, Brooks said, is pleasure + people + memory = enjoyment. And one more key to enjoyment?
“If you are doing it alone, you are probably doing it wrong,” Brooks said.
The next happiness macronutrient, satisfaction, can be defined as the struggle towards achievement, Brooks said. When we are disciplined in our deferral of gratification, we experience greater satisfaction. Stable satisfaction also means wanting less, Brooks said, and focusing more on what we already have.
The final essential macronutrient for happiness, meaning, is the “why” of your life – and can be the hardest to develop. According to Brooks, “We have a meaning crisis.”
To find personal meaning that drives happiness, Brooks recommended thinking about two questions: Why are you alive? And, for what would you give your life happily right now?
“We need to experience our life to find our answers,” Brooks said.
And then when we have them, we need to determine whether all the parts of our life are aligned with our answers, he said.
To close his remarks, Brooks left the audience with four key takeaways:
- To get happier, we need to share happiness
- We should each have an enjoyment strategy, not a pleasure strategy
- Make sure you are managing your haves and your wants
- Ask yourself, do you have the answers to the two big questions? And if not, are you willing to find them?
“The world says, use people, love things, and you are the center of everything. But the right formula is to love people, use things, and worship the divine, whatever that is to you,” Brooks said. “The ultimate truth is that happiness is love.”