Happiness Hints

I recently finished taking an online course (a MOOC—massive online open course), presented by Dan Ariely, a professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University. The course is titled “A Beginner's Guide to Irrational Behavior.” It was a fascinating (and entertaining) course on how so many of our choices in life—that we'd like to think are rational and smart—are, in fact, often irrational and impulsive. When we become aware of the underlying forces that drive us to make irrational choices, we can learn how to make better, more logical decisions—which, interestingly, does not necessarily imply that rational decisions are always best.

Along the way, Professor Arliey offers many psychological insights into how we look at our lives and feel about ourselves. In a recent lecture he offered a simple definition of one way we can come to feel happy about ourselves, or, alternatively, become depressed and dispirited—depending on how we weigh what's going on in our lives.

Ariely says to ponder how your life could have taken a different path—how past choices led you to follow the path you did, rather than another one. Then consider some realistic alternatives. What if you'd chosen another job? Another mate? Had more self-control? Think about an equally-likely direction that you could have taken. What might have happened, if that other choice had been made? Would you have been better off, or worse?

We tend to feel happier with our life, if we think the other choice would have led to more problems than we're now facing. If, on the other hand, we think the other path would have been more fun, our actual life could seem less happy, we'd have some regret, and maybe even feel a little depressed.

This is an interesting idea. I think it's common for us to imagine how different our lives could have been, if we'd chosen a different fork in the road. If we don't feel very happy now, we can lean towards regretting the fact that we made an unfortunate choice. We can even deepen the regret, if we externalize the reason for our choice—feeling that someone prevented me from making that better choice. If so, we even turn our disappointment into resentment of others.

There's another problematic response we can have, when we feel good about our life: we can convince ourselves that the fortunate choices we made were due to our superior intelligence; that we deserve our happiness, because we are special. Both of these reactions are not helpful.

If I think realistically about the past, I can realize that many of my choices could have been much worse, or even that I took a better path through grace. Whew! I'm sure happy that I didn't go that way!

It all makes me realize how complex life is. There are, of course, many other ways to feel happy or allow myself to sink into a depression because life sucks. But it seems to me to be helpful to ponder, now and then, how my life could have been far less pleasant, had I taken that other path.