Happiness Week Day 3: Pleasure and Meaning

Welcome to our third of seven days of Happiness Week -- LifeTwo's series of articles and quick exercises to help you improve your level of happiness. If you are just joining us, then read this post first. It contains links to all of our happiness posts and puts these articles in context.

In the first two days, we defined happiness and asked ourselves to think about what makes us happy. We also talked about immediate versus long-term benefits, and the trap of trading off one against the other. Now we are going to add a new dimension to our happiness discussion: the concept of "meaning".

In his book "Happier", Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar refers to happiness as "the overall experience of pleasure and meaning." He goes further to say that "a happy person enjoys positive emotions while perceiving his life as purposeful." By adding purpose and meaning we now move beyond where happiness is a single moment in time to it being a more generalized aggregation of experiences. Using this definition it is possible for a happy person to experience lows along with their highs, but with their overall state being positive.

The Role of Meaning and Purpose in Happiness:

Let's look at happiness when meaning and purpose are absent. Certainly when we encounter something we like that is devoid of meaning we can still enjoy it (that is, it can still bring us pleasure). But what would happen if your life was one pleasurable yet meaningless experience after another? For example, if someone developed a drug that had no side effects and allowed you to just lie on the beach and feel ecstatic all of the time? Would this be happiness? Is a psychotic who experiences delusions of euphoria happy? What if you had no aspirations and no goals but through some artificial means you could be made to always feel good ... would you be happy? For most people the answer to all of these questions is no. Deep down inside, people want the cause of their emotions to be meaningful and can't be truly content by just feeling good.

From "Happier":

When speaking of a meaningful life, we often talk of having a sense of purpose, but what we sometimes fail to recognize is that finding this sense of purpose entails more than simply setting goals. Having goals or even reaching them does not guarantee that we are leading a purposeful existence. To experience a sense of purpose, the goals we set for ourselves need to be intrinsically meaningful. We could set ourselves the goal of scoring top grades in college or owning a large house, yet still feel empty. To live a meaningful life, we must have a self-generated purpose that possesses personal significance rather than one that is dictated by society's standards and expectations. When we do experience this sense of purpose, we often feel as though we have found our calling.

Because people all have different values and passions, they will have different callings. It is important to understand that the fit between the person and their calling is more important than the calling itself. Dr. Ben-Shahar's example is that an investment banker who finds meaning and pleasure in their career is living a more spiritual and fulfilling life than a monk who is in his field for the wrong reasons.

We do not have the time or space in this series to properly cover the subject of purpose and meaning. Briefly, the concept of purpose also includes satisfying an individual's need to realize their potential capacities. We have an inborn need to do things that challenge us and tap our potential. We also have a need to do different things and a limited capacity to do the same thing even if is something that we like. "Happier" cites the lasagna principal whereby even the biggest fan of lasagna would not want to eat it all day every day. Among the many things hard-wired into our brains is the need for variety.

Finally, while meaning and purpose are tantamount to happiness, they alone are not enough. The prospect of a brighter future will only sustain us for a certain amount of time. In addition to meaning we need the experience of positive emotions. This circles us back to yesterday's Happiness Archetype -- the ideal path that involves activities that give us happiness both now and in the future.

Exercise 3A: Enlightenment

Take out the list of things that bring you pleasure that we have been working on over the past two days. We are now going to rework it into two columns: things that just bring you pleasure (we'll call simple pleasures), and those that bring you pleasure and meaning. After you are done take a moment to reflect about what you have down on paper. Is there enough variety? Are there things that challenge you and/or tap your potential?

Exercise 3B: Implementation

This exercise is called the "Integrity Mirror". We now take our pleasurable/meaningful activities list and write down how much time that we spend doing them over a week or month. This list can be for your eyes only -- so don't succumb to writing what you think it should be. Instead be completely honest about how you spend your time. This exercise raises a mirror to the discrepancy between what we say is important in our lives and we actually spend our time. The fewer discrepancies we have between what we believe and what we do, the happier we will be.

Note that the amount of time that we have to spend on our values is a factor not just of its importance to us but also of our available time. From "Happier:" "Just because family is my highest value does not imply that to increase my integrity and therefore happiness I need to reallocate all the time I currently spend on my hobbies to my family (remember the lasagna principle). A person who must work two jobs to get enough food on the table for their family is living in accordance with their highest values even though they get to spend little time playing with their children."

Also given that time is a limited resource, some activities might need to be given up. In addition to just saying no, this is where time efficiency intersects the happiness. By itself, reading a book (or a blog) on productivity won't necessarily make you happier (despite the claims of certain self-help books). However if it frees up time for you to spend on things that you find pleasurable (or better pleasurable and meaningful) then the productivity gains can absolutely lead to increased happiness. It's all what you do with the time. (Click here for a list of productivity resources).

What can be learned from these exercises?

LifeTwo contributor "Dating Goddess" worked through these exercises, and she shares how she tries to combine activities on her list:

I’d say all the things I’ve listed on the pleasure and meaning list challenge me and tap my potential. I keep striving to get even better, or make more of a difference. It energizes me to try something new, especially if I can see the impact on someone else.

I am pretty happy with the amount of time I spend on my meaningful activities and simple pleasures. And I’ve begun combining them, so I may coach a friend (who’s asked for coaching) while we walk along a hiking trail. Or I may read a book on some spiritual topic while sitting in my garden. Or purposefully wear suede or cashmere because I know these are hug magnets to my friends who will hug me even more when I wear yummy fabrics. Or work in my garden while listening to R&B music.

Tomorrow we explore the relationship between goals and happiness.

The centerpiece of LifeTwo's Happiness Week is Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar's book "Happier." For our summary, click here ... or go straight to its Amazon page.