As we close out 2023, I remain hopeful for a happier 2024. When it comes to finding “Happiness,” Arthur Brooks has the formula. Laurie and I recently learned “The Science of Happiness” at a stimulating lecture by this best-selling author of 12 books. Brooks just released yet another book, this one co-authored with Oprah Winfrey, entitled Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier. Brooks’ Harvard business school course on Happiness is always jam-packed with a long waiting list. In his lecture, Brooks identified a mathematical path to finding happiness. Let’s go back to algebra class and learn the happiness formula from Professor Brooks.
To define happiness, Brooks starts with this equation: Happiness = Enjoyment + Satisfaction + Purpose.
Happiness is not just a “feeling” you get; it is more lasting than that. Enjoyment includes a conscious awareness of pleasure in your life. Satisfaction is the joy of accomplishing a goal with effort. Purpose comes from living a life with meaning. There is so much more to happiness than just feeling joy.
Brooks takes issue with Mick Jagger’s song lyrics, “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.” With work, you can get it, but the problem is, you can’t keep it. Once you find satisfaction, your body soon returns to equilibrium, and you lose the buzz. To sustain satisfaction, the answer isn’t to increase what you have. Instead, preserving satisfaction comes from increasing this fraction: Satisfaction = Haves ÷ Wants.
Back to math class, there are two ways to increase a fraction. One way is to increase the numerator. The other way is to decrease the denominator. Brooks favors the second way. To increase satisfaction, don’t try to increase your “haves;” better to decrease your “wants.”
Now to the third element of happiness: purpose. To achieve purpose, you must find meaning in your life. Per Brooks, “you can’t get along for even one day without meaning; you will be depressed.” To discover meaning, you need to know that you are alive for a reason. Your life matters. You have significance. To learn your “why,” Brooks poses two questions:
- Why are you alive?
- For what are you willing to die?
To illustrate, Brooks tells his son’s story. Not a strong student, he found his “why” in the military as a sniper. Brooks is justifiably proud of his son’s answer to question two: “my faith, my family, and the United States of America.”
Why are some people happier than others? Yet again, Brooks resorts to math: Happiness = 50% Genes + 25% Circumstances + 25% Habits.
Even if your genetics predispose you to being unhappy, you can counteract it with good habits. The next component depends on your circumstances at the time, which of course, isn’t permanent. So, the key to fighting challenging genetics and circumstances comes down to the one component you can control: habits.
My greatest takeaway from Brooks’ lecture is to actively pursue four good habits. Here’s his final equation: Faith + Family + Friends + Work = Habits for a Meaningful Happy Life.
Faith: Faith provides a way to “zoom out of yourself,” transcending your reality into a realm of spirituality. To Brooks, it is his Roman Catholic faith, but the path to spirituality doesn’t have to be through religion.
Family: This is a love you didn’t choose. It was chosen for you. Don’t disconnect from your family (except in cases of abuse). Brooks laments that one in six people in the U.S. don’t talk to their family because of politics.
Friends: There are two kinds of friends: “real” friends and “deal” friends. A deal friendship is transactional: “What can you do for me?” Deal friends are “useful.” However, the goal is to cultivate real friends—those whom you love even though they are “useless” to you.
Work: Work is essential to happiness, but only if it checks two boxes: (1) Your success was earned, not given to you; and (2) Your work serves the needs of others.
In my work of holistic (“head and heart”) estate planning, I take a much broader view of helping families. I’m still driven to help families save tax and protect assets, but I get great satisfaction from also helping families live fulfilling lives, connected with each other. I’m honored to share Arthur Brooks’ math lesson for happiness, so we need not live a life where we “can’t get no satisfaction.” Now that Professor Brooks has taught us how, here’s to getting happier in 2024!
Marvin E. Blum
Marvin and Laure Blum went back to math class and learned the key to happiness from Harvard professor and author Arthur Brooks.