My happiness list
I am married to my soulmate, have a meaningful job in an NGO that I co-created, and with enough flexibility to accompany Tainá (the soulmate) around the world (which sometimes involves spending half a year in the Atlantic Rainforest in Brazil!). When not in Brazil, we live in our own cozy apartment in Norway, rated the best country to live in. I truly have no reason to be unhappy. Yet, of lately, I have been.
To understand why, I looked at what has changed in my life the last few years, and this is where it becomes truly weird!
Over the last four years, I:
Became a minimalist and got rid of most my stuff
The aforementioned NGO took off, and I was decently paid
Met my soulmate, Tainá
Married Tainá
Gained an amazing Brazilian second family
Bought and reformed our first apartment
Started psychoanalysis
Launched a YouTube channel
Lived in Brazil for nearly a year
Overcame a 12 years headache and could exercise again
Became vegan
Gained a lot of flexibility with home office
Started this blog
These changes are all really good, and have made me much happier. At times. Other times, I have felt more lost, stressed and unhappy than ever before.
And counterintuitive as that is, it really got me thinking.
Could it be that it is not the huge things in life that make us happy, but all the smaller ones?
Yes and no.
The big things; having met Tainá, being healthier than ever, and having a safe and comfortable home, certainly contribute a lot to my happiness. However, due to a concept called hedonic adaptation, they don’t contribute nearly as much as they should.
Hedonic adaptation is your brain’s ability (or curse) to normalise almost any change in emotion, be that negative of positive. This makes your feeling of happiness return to base levels within a few days, weeks or months of the event that made you momentarily much happier or sadder. This means that your new car, job or partner, beyond that initial excitement, are going to give you little of the expected boost in long-term happiness. Hedonic adaptation affects most of the big events in life (money, status, relationships), along with most points on my list of recent life changes.
This brings us to the smaller things in life. Like a cup of tea enjoyed at dawn, the fresh air against your face as you leave the house, or a laugh shared with a friend. These moments are too brief for your brain to normalise the happiness they bring. They are also less obvious, and their importance to our happiness is easily overlooked.
To identify and understand those tiny happiness-promoting habits, I started asking myself three things over the last few months:
Why did I feel good today?
Why do I feel _____ (insert negative emotion) now?
What did I do (or didn’t do) to feel this way?
These answers lead to some very clear observations, such as:
I feel physically bad if I don’t leave the house the whole day
I feel energized when I write
I feel less stressed if I spend 30 minutes ticking obligations off my to-do list
These, and countless similar observations, have led me to my current (but certainly not final) list of the most important things I should do every day, in order to feel happier:
I must exercise every day
I must be in nature every day
I must surprise Tainá every day
I must do my obligations every day
I must enjoy my work every day
I must interact with family or friends every day
I must write every day
I must finish one task every day
I must be present every day
I must express gratitude every day
I must deaccelerate every evening
I must read every day
Now, try removing the “musts” and see what happens.
For me, removing the “musts” transforms the list from a to-do list to a who-I-am list. This might seem like an insignificant difference, but it has a real impact. Exercising not because I have to, but because I am a person who exercises, roots my new habits in my very core. Executing them becomes my identity.
Nevertheless, a reminder comes in handy. Therefore, my last step is to turn this list into a daily checklist, so that I can remind myself, track, and evaluate, my daily happiness work.
