by David Wann
New York City resident Wesley Autrey, who jumped onto the subway tracks to save a stranger. He may have lost a knit cap, smudged from the grease of the train tracks, but he gained a lot of respect. © Tina Fineberg/New York Times
Elaine Oneto, a sixteen-year resident of Diamondhead, Mississippi, who lost her home to Hurricane Katrina, would agree. Everything she valued most highly was in her car when she fled the city before the hurricane. But the loss of her house seemed very insignificant a few days later, when her youngest son Robert was killed on a foot patrol west of Baghdad, Iraq. She says, “Possessions, things—material things—they are just so transitory, so temporary. They really are not that important.”3
Similarly, Czech supermodel Petra Nemkova was used to living the high life—jet-setting everywhere, the finest clothes, money galore. But she happened to be in Phuket, Thailand, when the 2004 tsunami struck. Her boyfriend was swept away forever by the powerful waves, but she survived by clinging to a palm tree for eight hours until she was rescued. Afterward she told reporters the tragedy had transformed her. She cut back on her modeling because her old life of fame, fashion, and fortune felt empty. She funded a school in Thailand to help children affected by the tsunami. What’s important in hard times is also important in good times, but we tend to lose sight of the real wealth when the culture, and our own lives, are in autopilot.
To reduce consumption to moderate, much less catastrophic levels, we’ll have to rely on our instincts now, to guide us back to the real wealth—that’s what our religious mentors have always counseled, and in recent years, many thorough psychological studies concur: An excessively materialistic outlook on life actually gets in the way of true happiness. Psychologist Richard Ryan points out a few reasons why: “Desires to have more and more material goods drive us into an ever more frantic pace of life. Not only must we work harder, but once possessing the goods, we have to maintain, upgrade, replace, insure, and constantly manage them. Thus, materialists end up carrying an ever-heavier load that expends the energy necessary for living, loving, and learning.”4
It’s not that money itself is a bad thing. A person’s skills, talents, and good energies often result in monetary as well as other types of rewards. That’s great. But the real value lies beneath the money—in those things we crave instinctually. What money is worth ultimately depends on how it is earned and how it is spent. When it becomes the central focus in a person’s life, the resulting imbalance may well create poverty in other areas, reducing his or her odds of being truly happy. For example, a person may be poor in available time, or else have lots of time but not know what to do with it. He or she may lack meaningful connections with people, be culturally clueless, or lack vitality and playfulness. Natural systems may be less abundant as a result of that individual’s business decisions and excessive purchases; or the community the person lives in may lose the benefit of his or her creative, civic energy—all because the individual is off-balance—like most of us.
Ryan and psychologist Tim Kasser have compiled convincing evidence that insecurity and materialism can become a vicious cycle. Not only does insecurity often initiate a quest for material wealth, but when even second homes and sports cars fail to satisfy at a deep level, we doggedly try to “fill ourselves up” with more wealth, status, and fame. It’s not easy being a human, is it?
Kasser points out that reaching for objects when we feel insecure has always been a human trait. “We were smaller than many of our predators in our early days as a species,” he says. “When we felt insecure, we reached for a stone or a stick.” Now, we routinely reach for an iPod or a fantasy vacation, but we might do better to reach out to each other. Concludes Kasser, author of The High Price of Materialism, “Our research shows that people who focus on materialistic values tend to report more distress, have poorer relationships, contribute less to the community, and engage in more ecologically damaging behaviors.” In a society that plays up the value of financial success, fame, and image, Kasser has consistently seen a correlation between outward-looking (what he calls “extrinsic”) goals and such negative traits as possessiveness, nongenerosity, and envy.5
One executive who owns a global company with three hundred thousand employees confided that people “at the top” are often extremely lonely because they are suspicious of others. They think anyone who approaches them in friendship does so because of their power and only wants to take advantage of them.6 Another businessman reported that right after closing a big deal, it felt like his life might improve, forever. But, alas, the next deal hovered over his desk, and he calculated that he had “about seven minutes” of elation.
On the other hand, intrinsic goals like personal growth/self-acceptance, community involvement, and a sense of vitality deliver continuing satisfaction. Psychologists such as Kasser and Ryan aren’t suggesting that we live like monks. Kasser, for example, lives on a small, lush farm in central Illinois and has a great quality of life (without a TV!). He told me that what makes him happy are things like teaching his son how to swim and spending quality time with his wife after the kids are in bed. Tim Kasser reminds us that it’s not stuff, stocks and bonds, or the horsepower of one’s vehicle that provides true satisfaction, but how well we meet our psychological and physical needs.
Measuring Happiness
Since the 1970s, despite an economy that keeps expanding and personal incomes that have more than doubled, the number of people who report being “very happy” has actually gone down, according to the General Social Survey (an annual survey funded largely by the National Science Foundation). After reaching a certain level—often estimated to be about $50,000—additional income is not proportional to additional happiness. What matters most about money, according to many psychologists, is not how much of it we have, but whether we have more (or less) than other people.
I admit that I tend to be skeptical about subjective reports of happiness. After all, what does the word “happy” really mean? Isn’t it partly a reflection of the culture and times we live in? If Americans are convinced their country is a happy, optimistic one, won’t that affect the results? Yet remarkably similar results were shown in Europe, Japan, and other countries over roughly the same period. Economist Richard Layard, author of the book Happiness: Lessons from a New Science, was also skeptical about happiness surveys, until he began looking more deeply into the research. “To overcome the problem of subjective definitions,” says Layard, “psychologists asked people’s friends whether they thought the person was happy.” There was a strong correlation between what friends said and the person’s self-assessment. Then they tried asking independent observers to evaluate the person’s smile and manner. Again, there were strong correlations between the observer and the observed.7
“But the big breakthrough for me came about six years ago,” says Layard, “when I learned that neuroscientists have identified the areas in the brain that are active when people feel good and when they feel bad. And this is measurable with MRI technology—you expose the person to some lovely pictures of happy, smiling children and they say they’re feeling cheerful. Lo and behold, the MRI shows that they’re more active in certain sections of the brain. You expose them to some awful pictures of deformed children and other sections of the brain show activity.” It appears, then, that happiness is an objective state, linked up with the endocrine system, the senses, and the brain. We can measure whether or not a person who says he’s happy really is happy.8
More Than Happy
One day back in my college years, I noticed I’d been working for a few hours on a poem and thought it was only a few minutes. As opposed to the schoolwork I was required to do, the writing was something I did because I loved it. It was a fascinating puzzle, and the more I focused, the faster the time flew by. I suspected back then that writing could be something I might do for a “living.” I think my instincts were guiding me toward something that might be of use. (I’ll leave that up to you.)
I’ve had many similar experienc
es before and since then, and a few years ago, I found an explanation for what I often experience in writing, gardening, playing music, or hiking. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (try saying that name three times backward) calls it “flow.” He describes this phenomenon as “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.”9
Csikszentmihalyi’s research indicates that the process of an activity can be more important than the end product. When we are fully in the process, fully focused on a task, we feel alive. The activity becomes its own reward. After a flow experience, we are not only refreshed, but we’ve increased our skills, sensitivity, and self-confidence. We are more “complex,” to use Csikszentmihalyi’s term. (It seems we are hard wired to improve ourselves!) He’s been researching “optimal experience” at the University of Chicago since the 1970s, and has compiled a large data set involving people from all walks of life. Basically his technique, the “experience sampling method” (ESM), catches people in the middle of their daily activities and asks them to record what they are doing and how much they enjoy it. When they are signaled at random a certain number of times during the day, participants record in a workbook if they are in a condition of flow, or something far less.
To be genuinely happy, observes Csikszentmihalyi, we need to actively create our experiences and our lives, rather than passively letting media and marketers create it for us. The pathway to greatest happiness goes beyond mindless consuming to the heightened, enlightened realm of mindful challenge, where we are engaged, connected, and alive. Csikszentmihalyi’s distinction between pleasure and enjoyment suggests that many of us are settling for grade B happiness—a package of mind-dulling pleasures—rather than reaching for more intrinsic flow experiences. His ESM research indicates that when we challenge ourselves to experience or produce something new, to see things in a different light, and in general, to become actively engaged in what we’re doing, true enjoyment transforms moments of our lives from the routine to the extraordinary. The great news is that anyone can do it, with activities that are self-determined.
Conditions that Encourage and Define Flow
1. Clear goals (Expectations and rules are discernable.)
2. Concentrating and focusing, a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention (A person engaged in the activity will have the opportunity to focus and to delve deeply into it.)
3. A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness
4. Distorted sense of time (our subjective experience of time is altered.)
5. Direct and immediate feedback (Successes and failures in the course of the activity are apparent, so that behavior can be adjusted as needed.)
6. Balance between ability level and challenge (The activity is not too easy or too difficult.)
7. A sense of control and mastery over the situation or activity (as when a golfer’s concentration results in a great shot).
8. The activity is intrinsically rewarding, so there is an effortlessness of action. Adapted from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Seligman also prefers a deeper, more resonant definition of the word “happy.” The author of Authentic Happiness divides the happiness continuum into pleasure (gratification, social compliance), engagement (depth of involvement with people, work, and hobbies) and meaning (such as using personal strengths for the good of society). Says Seligman, “Many Americans build their lives around pursuing pleasure, but it turns out that engagement and meaning are much more important.” While most psychological theories focus on an “end product,” such as the alleviation of anxiety, Csikszentmihalyi and Seligman come from a more positive perspective, asking, “What makes us feel glad to be alive?”10
Many of these psychological insights relate directly to the underlying theme of this book—how to create a more productive, less consumptive lifestyle. When we learn how to routinely experience flow, we can sidestep a lot of consumption and never miss it! In a very real sense, consumption is often just a detour that doesn’t deliver the real wealth.
Optimal experiences make our doubts and hesitations disappear. We aren’t absorbed in ourselves and directed by our egos, but rather by spontaneity, a sense of challenge, and connection with others. Despite the greatest cumulative ad campaign in the history of the universe, many of us still have original thoughts, and memories of peak experiences in which consumption played no role: skating on a late afternoon in January, learning to skate backward on a large pond at the edge of the neighborhood, hardly noticing that it’s almost pitch dark. Standing at an overlook of a trail in total silence except the occasional chirp of a wren; gazing out over a valley covered with vineyards. Standing small and amazed beneath a starry sky lit up with shooting stars. Slurping a sweet, blushing organic peach seconds after it was picked. Making love in a huge, cozy hammock in the heart of a rain forest. Many have realized that humans cherish moments when we are active participants in life. We’re becoming saturated by images that offer fantasies for sale, and we are realizing, at last, that we are such obedient consumers partly because we’re afraid to follow our instincts.
If only life could remain as uncomplicated as it was in the crib! As Adam Phillips writes in Going Sane, “The infantile pleasures of being loved, adored, stroked … of only sleeping, eating, and playing, these are the truly satisfying pleasures … The idea that material objects or money could be any kind of alternative to these fundamental things is unrealistic.” Phillips believes, with Sigmund Freud, that it’s a form of madness to not know, or to forget, that it’s the essential things that make us happy. Having lost our way, we become frightened that there’s nothing in life that we really have an appetite for—nothing that really turns us on. At that point, we consume. At the heart of affluenza, and all addictions, is a burning desire to want something. 11
Yet Freud’s view of infantile happiness seems incomplete, too. When babies leave the crib, they exist in a wider world—it’s not just about “me!” What about the joys of participating in something bigger than one’s self? Greek and Roman philosophers of a few thousand years ago—and modern thinkers like Csikszentmihalyi, Seligman, and Abraham Maslow—regard happiness as a goal that requires effort—which begins when we unclutter our heads and ask ourselves if our lives really make sense. For the ancients, happiness was a function of rational development; a reward for leading a virtuous, balanced life. Aristotle, for example, believed that happiness must be evaluated over a lifetime (not just in the lick of an ice-cream cone, as in our world of instant gratification). Happiness, he wrote, consists of a blend of moderation, gentleness, modesty, friendliness, and self-expression. Happiness is harmony and balance in which desire is tempered through rational restraint. His words sound very much like something an enlightened Zen master might say; and like directions to the sunnier shores that may lie ahead, if we choose moderation and balance.12
Writes Richard Layard, “Our fundamental problem today is a lack of common feeling between people—instead, we have the notion that life is essentially a competitive struggle.” He considers the Scandinavian countries to be among the happiest because they have the clearest concept of the common good. If only a third of our society is “very happy,” what’s preventing the rest of us from getting there? One of the obstacles may be a lack of that wider sense of the common good. Another very large obstacle is that many of our economic and social systems aren’t really designed to make us happy. Really, the world of business would really rather see us dissatisfied and incomplete so we’ll be more faithful customers.
Changing Our Mind
As Daniel Pink explains in the book A Whole New Mind, when we first became preoccupied with logic, sequences, and precise measurements, about the time the industrial revolution began, we constructed a logical
, left-brained world that can now only be maintained with the left brain. He explains what sort of thinking takes place where: the right hemisphere deals with nonlinear concepts (like surfing with great curiosity from one Web site to another); with instinctive, holistic, patterned, nonverbal, and emotional thoughts. The left brain is Spock Central: sequential, literal, functional, textual, and analytic. The left brain is text, the right brain is context; the left side is the single, precise answer, the right is the pattern; the left is abstract and logical, the right is empathetic; the left is the picture, the right is the thousand words. “Use the two together and you have a powerful thinking machine; use either on its own and the result can be bizarre,” writes Pink.
The left side of the body controls the right side of the brain, so in a world that’s 90 percent right handed, movements such as handwriting, eating, and maneuvering a computer mouse are mostly done on the left side. Moving our head from left to right is controlled by the left side of the brain, so the Western alphabet also reinforces left-brain dominance. “It’s no surprise that the left hemisphere has dominated the game,” says Pink, “It’s the only side that knows how to write the rules.”13
The two hemispheres are brilliantly counterbalanced, offering different approaches to solving problems; different ways of understanding the world and reacting to events. To me, the exciting piece is that we are increasingly using the right side of the brain in our day-to-day lives. “Left-brain style thinking used to be the driver and right-brain thinking the passenger,” writes Pink. “Now R-directed thinking is suddenly grabbing the wheel, stepping on the gas, and determining where we’re going and how we’ll get there.” (It feels like Pink is writing directly to me, a right-brained, pattern-perceiving futurist!) He continues, “L-directed aptitudes, the sorts of things measured by the SAT and deployed by CPAs—are still necessary. But they’re no longer sufficient. Instead, the R-directed aptitudes so often disdained and dismissed—artistry, empathy, taking the long view, pursuing the transcendent—will increasingly determine who soars and who stumbles. It’s dizzying—but ultimately inspiring—change.”14
