Happiness Week Day 4: The Importance of Goals

Welcome to our fourth of seven days of becoming happier -- LifeTwo's series of articles and quick exercises to help you improve your level of happiness.

If you are just joining us, please read this post first -- it contains links to all of our happiness posts and puts these articles in context.

Why Goals are an Indispensable Component of Happiness

In "Happier," Dr. Ben-Shahar says "...to be happy we need to identify and pursue goals that are both pleasurable and meaningful." At first blush, setting goals sounds too much like work to be part of a happiness program. After all, can't we just have a goal of being happy? But there are good reasons for setting targets:

1. People who set goals are more likely to succeed than those who do not. As any business book will tell you, having explicit goals with timelines and performance criteria will lead to better performance.

2. Goals communicate to ourselves and others that we are capable of overcoming obstacles.

3. Goals focus our attention and often become self-fulfilling prophecies.

At this point, readers of yesterday's Happiness Week post may be wondering if there isn't a flaw in our logic. According to the "rat race" archetype, any happiness that results from achieving goals will be short-lived. So ... why set them?

Our goals will have two differences from 'rat race' goals like "get the promotion." They will be long-term, and they will be focused on what actually makes us happy. The role of these goals isn't so much what happens as you attain them as the happiness you achieve pursuing them. It's the journey more than destination, the means and not the end.

Not All Goals Are Equal in Their Potential to Increase Happiness

Common sense -- and research by positive psychologists -- tells us that not all goals are equal in terms of increasing happiness. Generally the more "meaningful" the goal, the greater the potential increase in happiness. By "meaningful" we mean those goals that we pursue out of deep personal conviction and/or a strong self interest. These are goals that a person, more often than not, has selected on their own -- not ones that were imposed on them. These goals are also generally free of the need to impress others; we pursue them because we find them significant and enjoyable. Dr. Ben-Shahar calls these "self-concordant" goals.

Self-concordant goals are generally not financial in nature but involve personal growth or a sense of connection with others. This is not to say that financial security is unimportant or that having sufficient money for food, shelter, education, etc., isn't essential to our well-being. But if we are seeking to maximize our long-term happiness (and who isn't?) financial goals should not be our sole or central pursuits. That's not to say there's no role for financial security -- if one sees money as a way to achieve other intrinsic goals, for example freeing up time to spend with the family, and not as way to impress or for the material aspects of the wealth, then seemingly financial goals can be self-concordant goals.

Over the past three days we have learned that to maximize our happiness we need to do things that provide both present and future benefit (the "Happiness Archetype"). Pursuing self-concordant goals accomplishes this because we obtain net positive emotions from pursuing these meaningful goals. We have also selected these goals ourselves and feel immense satisfaction (a powerful positive emotion in itself) when we achieve them. We do not have the space to dig into the absorbing nature of self-concordant goals, but if you refer to "Happier" you can read about "flow," "peak performance," and "in the zone." These are all terms the refer to being so focused on a desired activity that you become one with the experience, defined by some as the excellence in life that transcends happiness.

The Importance of Choice in Happiness

The fact that self-concordant goals are freely chosen by the pursuer is an important aspect of their meaningfulness and relevance. The relative freedom to select and pursue one's own goals is one reason why people who live in free countries are generally happier than those living under oppressive regimes. Unfortunately many of us squander our relative freedom. Ben-Shahar observes:

"Many people in enlightened democracies spend much of their time feeling enslaved -- not by the regime but by extrinsic factors that are self-imposed, such as prestige, a desire to please, obligation, or fear. They experience life as more or less a series of chores that they have to carry out rather than activities that they want to engage in. "Have-tos"...are not self-concordant..."

One way to increase happiness is to reduce the "have-tos" and increase the "want-tos". Rearrange your life's activities to achieve your self-concordant goals, and think big -- this could even include a career change.

You may be surprised that some of your have-tos are really want-tos. One of my neighbors felt tied down by all of the driving he had to do with his teenage son shuttling from one activity to the other until the day that his son got his own driver's license. At that point my neighbor realized how much he missed the time together in the car with his son and how much more included he was in his activities. How many have-tos in your life are really want-tos and can be appreciated as such? Could some of the have-tos become want-tos if you just did them differently?

The ratio of have-tos to want-tos is an important factor of happiness, so it's worth the effort to tip the balance in favor of a more positive outlook. Even when have-tos are completed we don't get the same positive feeling that we do from want-tos. When have-tos are completed there may be a sense of relief, but it's not the feeling of satisfaction that we get from want-tos.

Exercise 4A: Enlightenment

Think about goals that you've had in the past. What goals provided you with the most happiness in terms of facilitating both a pleasurable and meaningful journey?

Exercise 4B: Implementation

The above exercise was about thinking about past goals that involved pleasurable and meaningful journeys. Now we are going to step away from the theoretical and have you write out self-concordant goals for you to pursue. Why? Dr. Ben-Shahar's research found that "People who articulate and pursue self-concordant goals are generally both happier and more successful." Since our goal of this week was to help you increase your happiness, this exercise has the greatest potential to help you achieve exactly that.

Write down what you really want to do for each of the key areas of your life (if you are limited for time, then pick the most important area to do now but come back to the others later). Think long-term -- from one to thirty years out. These goals should include concrete objectives that challenge you. Remember, as Dr. Ben-Shahar states in the goal section of "Happier", "whether or not you actually achieve your goals is not the most important factor for long-term happiness; the primary objective of goals is to liberate you to enjoy the here and now, the journey."

What others learned from doing these exercises:

Gretchen Rubin knows a lot about goals and happiness. She now runs the Happiness-Project (which is both a book and a blog) chronicling her exploration into the world of what makes people happy. If there is a theory about happiness improvement she has probably tried it. Below Gretchen talks about one goal in particular that brought her life-changing joy:

Jed Diamond (MenAlive) has written numerous best selling self-improvement books and so knows a lot about externally imposed goals such as deadlines. He is also quite goal-oriented himself. But he has realized that while it is important to possess goals, it is important to not be possess by them. In his words:

As you create your own "self-concordant" goals, in addition to your own experiences think about Gretchen and Jed's. For Gretchen, it was a complete career overhaul, no small task for someone who was clerking for a Supreme Court Justice. For Jed, the lessons were two-fold. First, being driven is good but one can be hostage to even good goals. Second, and related, sometimes it's necessary to slow down if you want to smell the flowers. Don't be so much in the zone that you don't have the opportunity to look around and enjoy the great things happening while they are happening.

Tomorrow we take your goals and show you how to "Just Do It!".

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.