The Happiness Spectrum - The Best & Worst Kinds Of Happiness

[Jon_Bundesen]

Notes based on Leo's video: https://youtu.be/pxyJiN4Z2Ds
See image for quick overview

Make a distinction between pleasure and gratification

• hedonic happiness vs. eudaimonic happiness

Hedonic happiness:
The idea that well-being is achieved through maximizing pleasure, enjoyment, and comfort while minimizing pain and displeasure.

Eudaimonic happiness:

Living a virtuous life: embodying your greatest strengths, living up to them, living a life of integrity and noble purpose, living with higher consciousness and wisdom.

 

How much of my happiness is about hedonism and eudaimonia based on the activities I do?

• How can I move the ratio more towards eudaimonia?

 

Eudaimonic happiness cannot be chemically induced. There's no shortcut for it and it requires hard work. It doesn't come naturally and easily to most people.

You cannot buy deeper fulfillment in life which can only happen through inner development towards eudaimonia (a virtuous life).

 

3 factors for screening an activity that provides you with happiness.

How long does the happiness last in duration?

What does this happiness cost to produce? (Does it cost a lot or a little)

What are the consequences of engaging in this form of happiness? - What does it cost me long term if I keep doing it? Does it make my psychology weaker or stronger?

 

Happiness spectrum:

First third of spectrum: Anything in this section can become an addiction and these activities give you a big spike in excitement but then leave you lower so you're left with a feeling of emptiness.

• Drugs
• Food, partying and drinking
• Beauty - Trying to make yourself physically look better/look more attractive. People that obsess about beauty are more miserable. People who are more physically attractive objectively speaking are no happier than the average or even below average attractiveness levels of other people. 
• Money/shopping. People who primarily have money-based goals in their career and in their life are the most frustrated people. Even if they achieve their money goals, they're still not happy. All money can do is buy you more hedonic happiness.
• Media and entertainment. It creates a opportunity cost which means that if you're heavily engaged in entertainment you're using so much time that could otherwise be used on eudaimonic activities. If you take a person watching TV for a long period of time and you measure his mood it's mild depression.
• Gossip/idle socialization. Mindlessly hanging out with your friends.
• Fame, public image, success (external signs of accomplishment). It's hard to believe initially before you have it that these things would not make your life better. But once you get it and get acclimated to it doesn't do much for your internal levels of fulfillment.
• Validation from other people - Getting people to like you, to approve of you, to give you compliments etc.
• Porn/sex
• Romantic infatuation - Around the first 6 months of a new intimate relationship where you're falling in love etc. Romantic infatuation is not sustainable it always dies off.

Middle third of spectrum:

• Hobbies
• Physical exercise/physical growth. Don't confuse this with beauty, a lot of guys do physical exercise because they're obsessing over their beauty.
• Friendships and strong relationships. You can have shallow gossipy type friendships and you can have deeper, stronger and more intimate friendships, you want the later. Also family relationships that you strengthen.
• Companionate love. The deeper bond and rapport you build with a partner after the first 6 months of excitement wears off.

Last third of spectrum:

• Learning and education (Especially after college).
• Excellent work and flow states. Does your work produce flow states for you? If not you need to create that.
• Inner development and self-acceptance.
  • Any kind of personal growth activities like: Coaching, exercises, journaling, meditating, seminars/workshops etc.
  • Any work you do to ACCEPT yourself exactly as you are. Not worrying about your beauty and trying to be different or worrying about who you should be as an ideal but instead just accepting yourself exactly as you are. You can't really be fulfilled in life if you're not accepting of yourself no matter what kind of external circumstances you can create for yourself
• Kindness. Most of us haven't figured out how to integrate this kindness in a consistent systematic way into our own lives since it's not really part of our daily routine and also not really natural to some our work. Create an alignment to become more kind daily.
• Gratitude. If you're not grateful for what you've already got then you're not going to be satisfied because you tell yourself you'll be grateful when you get or accomplish a certain thing but when you then get the thing you're not going to be grateful for that either because hedonic adaptation will happen and you will be chasing the next thing. (Create a gratitude practice)
• Integrity. Are you living up to your greatest values? Are you doing the things that are actually meaningful to you in life? Are you honoring commitments to others and to yourself? This means not lying, cheating, stealing or harming others but also are you keeping your own commitments to yourself?
• Contribution. Contribution is what your work does for the betterment of humanity and the world. Is your work contributing in a meaningful way that you believe is meaningful?
• Being/to be/existing. The best way to practice this is through meditation because it teaches you how "to be" and enjoy the moment of being. This should be your greatest source of satisfaction in life which means you should not need any stimulation of any sort. All the other ways to reach happiness/fulfillment are fundamentally activities that create stimulation which create a kick. 

Ask yourself:

What are your top goals for the next year? Are they hedonic goals or eudaimonic goals? Re-engineer your hedonic goals into eudaimonic goals.