The 5 pillars to a well-lived life: Happiness

This is part 2 of a 5 part series looking into the 5 pillars of a well-lived life.

In the 2006 Will Smith film, The Pursuit of Happyness, he, as Chris Gardner, went through a tough time in his life, together with his toddler son (portrayed in the film as a 5 year old by Will Smith’s real life son, Jaden), and endured a duration of being broke and of homelessness. Throughout his ordeal, he never gave up on Life, and grinding past his hardship, emerged on the other side as a successful stockbroker, and eventually having his own multimillion dollar brokerage firm.

We all want happiness in our lives. In fact, “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” is a phrase decreed in the United States Declaration of Independence.

Hell, I want happiness! But, what is happiness? I think that’s something a lot of us want, instinctively, but we don’t give it a lot of thought, or at least, deliberate thought.

What is Happiness?

Happiness, much like personal finance, is a very personal aspect to your life. Happiness is not an end state. There is no playbook or step-by-step guide to finding, retrieving and holding on to happiness.

For me, I think happiness is about identifying a series of things, people, ideas, actions and activities that make you smile. And, on a day to day basis, as long as the sum of those actions are more than the sum of events that made you unhappy on any given day, then, you are nett happy for the day.

So the trick is to optimise for those events, and minimise events that make you unhappy.

What is the formula for Happiness?

Yes, you math geeks. It turns out, there is a formula, or a way of thinking about happiness.

In his 2012 book, Chip Conley laid out his equations for emotions, and how we can look at then adding elements we need or subtracting elements we don’t to add to a certain emotion.

What then, is the formula for happiness?

According to Chip, the formula for Happiness = Wanting what you have / Having what you want.

Many people are in the action of pursuing their goals and wants, that they fail to stop and look at what they have already amassed, and pause for a moment to celebrate them.

An alternative way of looking at this equation is this: Happiness = Practicing Gratitude / Pursuing Gratification

What makes me happy?

Hey, I’m a people pleaser, so let me just get this out of the way: Happy wife, Happy life, amirite?

Amassing wealth makes me happy, but not in the way that most other people think. Not having to think about money, gives us so much more freedom to then think about and pursue, and really do the things that do make us happy.

I saw this tweet the other day asking if money was the root of all evil. My reply was: “Not having enough money is the root of most evil“.

If you had enough money and didn’t have to worry about it (attaining FI), why in hell would you even think about committing crime or doing evil shit?

Being financially independent makes me happy, because it means I have the time to travel, be with my family, watch my kids grow and develop, read, write, pause on the streets and really take in the sights and smell without being in a hurry to be somewhere else.

I guess the phrase “in pursuit of happiness” in itself implies that we do not yet possess said happiness, and propels us forward in search, rather than inward in search. Maybe there needs to be a change in phrasing to put us in a better frame of mind to search, whether inward or outward, for happiness.

What do you think of the equation, and what makes you happy?