#5 Being happy requires unlearning
On the heritability of happiness, impact bias and hedonic adaptation.
Being happy is not really my forté.
This might come across as silly. Being happy is not meant to be a strength or a weakness. Yet, being happy is about your mindset. And maintaining a strong, healthy, positive mindset is hard because … oh well, life happens.
Or so we’d like to think.
In reality, only 10 per cent of life circumstances affect our general happiness, according to Sonja Lyubomirsky’s famous happiness pie chart, whilst 40 per cent is dependent on our thoughts and intentional activities. The shocking discovery for me was that the other 50 per cent is influenced by our genes.
The original research paper was published in 2005 and updated in 2019 with Lyubomirsky admitting that the aforementioned factors aren’t isolated and they can influence each other, as well as agreeing that, in terms of the heritability of happiness, it can reach 70 to 80 per cent. Isn’t it insane? The thought of being less happy than your peers because of, let’s say, a genetic predisposition to anxiety or depression?
What if I’m like that, too? And I haven’t even added my overthinking ‘ritual’! What does this say about my overall happiness score? Being sad sounds easier!
This tendency to overestimate the emotional impact of a future situation is called “impact bias.” We think that certain situations are going to last and they're going to affect us way longer than they actually do. What we don’t realise is that our brains are able to adapt and cope with negative events.
Our brains just get used to stuff. Both good and bad.
You’ve just got a new job and you’re excited. Yay. But for how long? In a few months’ time, it will be the “new normal.” Then, you think you deserve a promotion. You ask for it and get it. Yay again. After some time, your new salary won’t be enough and you’ll look for a higher position within the company or maybe for another job, and so on. This is called hedonic adaptation, the process of becoming accustomed to a positive or negative stimulus over time.
***
By and large, we’ve come to understand that happiness is not solely reliant on us. But this doesn’t mean you can’t pursue happiness. For some, it might be more difficult than for others. But this doesn’t mean we should miss out on a happiness boost. Like everything else in life, it’s about putting in the effort, finding new habits, adding variety and meaning to our activities - and not in a hedonistic way. It’s also about unlearning and fighting the monsters in your head (read the issue on the imposter syndrome).
✨ How committed are you to unlearn in order to be happy(-er)? ✨
Before diving into this week’s recommendations, I’ll leave you with this quote from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.
“The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing ones. The best moments really occur when a person's body and mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”
Happy reading, happy learning,
Teodora x
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🥁 📚 The latest in the literary world
Brace yourselves: another celebrity self-help book coming our way this October! 📢 It’s Holly Willoughby’s memoir, “Reflections,”(what a suggestive name! 🙄) that will apparently untangle “topical and emotional issues such as body-image, burnout and control with candour, nuance and hard-won insight.” I mean, what else is there to do in life other than adding “author” to your Twitter bio? 🤷♀️ 🤐
In the meantime, a powerful memoir - “I Am a Girl From Africa” - by Elizabeth Nyamayaro, a Zimbabwean-born political scientist and former senior adviser at the United Nations, is out now! The New York Times has described it as “a memoir of humanitarianism,” and to be fair, I am already sold. In terms of marketing, chapeau! 🤠👏 I just hope the story is as good as it sounds. If not, rest assured, the gorgeous yellow cover will top it up! 💛
The Woman’s Prize for Fiction 2021 shortlist has just been announced! 🏆 Six fabulous female novelists compete for the £30,000 book award. 👀 💸 My money’s on “The Vanishing Half” by Brit Bennett (disclaimer: a favourite of former US President Barack Obama) but we’ll have to wait until July 7th for the winner!
🎧 📰 👀 My media diet this week
Hope there’s room for you to digest another article about the Oscars! 👀 🏆 Here’s an interview with (practical) tips on how to live like a legend with the 2021 Best Supporting Actress, Youn Yuh-jung. Why read it? It involves wine, Neil Diamond and staying in bed all day. (Didn’t know I’m a legend already?) 🍷 🛏️
Are you a tea connoisseur? Perhaps you’ll consider working for Tetley and having your taste buds insured for £1m? Here’s an article from The Economist's sister magazine about human tasters and the value of flavour. Why read it? You’ll learn what it takes to grasp the aromatic properties of a tea leaf, how black tea is rated on categories such as zing, body, sparkle and colour, and a biotech startup’s efforts to replicate the 400 olfactory receptors in the human nose. Spoiler alert: a computer still can’t process the taste of a cup of tea! Yet. ☕ 🫖
Pregnancy isn’t something that I’ve given much thought to (yet?), but Nell Frizzell’s conversation with Freddy McConnell in “The Panic Years” podcast is interesting, to say the least. 👶 Why listen? McConnell is not necessarily known for his profession as a multimedia journalist, but for being “the dad who gave birth.” His journey to give birth as a trans man is detailed in the 2019 documentary Seahorse that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. In the podcast, McConnell discusses toxic masculinity, the highs and lows of being a single dad and the misinformation around fertility. 🍼 It’s worth mentioning that Frizzell’s “The Panic Years” podcast was inspired after the book with the same title. I happened to read it and as usual, I shared my (too) honest thoughts on Goodreads. Disclaimer: it was average. Stick to the podcast! 🤭
Jordan Shapiro’s essay on how to be a feminist dad published in Nautilus complements the parenthood topic above perfectly. Why read it? You’ll learn about the impact of gender stereotypes aka “locker-room gender essentialism,” why the rhetoric around cisgender men needing to express vulnerable emotions is oversimplified and how fatherhood must be reimagined as less dominant and less paternalistic. 💡
I don’t think I’ve been so excited about a podcast since Jamie Bartlett’s “The Missing Cryptoqueen”, the inside story of the world’s biggest crypto scam and the woman who got away with it (and is still on the run)! If there’s one thing you decide to click on today’s recommendations list, make it this one. From the BBC World Service, this is “The Lazarus Heist,” an investigation of the attempted $1 billion hack story that started in Hollywood with Sony Pictures Entertainment. Why listen? Because it’s madly intriguing! 😍 🤯
📌 Random news in brief
The Queen has honoured UK’s biggest sex toy company, Lovehoney, with a top award for “outstanding continuous growth.” They can now use the Queen’s Award emblem on packaging for five years! All hail the Queen?! 👑 🙇♀️
No good deed remains unpunished. A woman who returned Lady Gaga’s dogs was arrested with four others in French bulldogs theft. 🐶 🐾
Martin Scorsese’s debut on TikTok with his daughter, Francesca, goes viral after he thinks the menstrual cup is “an eye cup” or “a flagon.” The filmmaker also said the two nipple pasties were “earbuds.” Funny, cute, both? 🙊
Let’s end the week with some positive news: we live in a world where “Paddington 2” is the greatest film of all time! Faith in humanity restored? “Paddington 2” became the top-rated film on Rotten Tomatoes after someone dug up and submitted an 80-year-old negative review of “Citizen Kane” from the Chicago Tribune. 🐻 🎉
Before we say goodbye… 🥺
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