TEDxSalford

How To Be Happy

It’s a promising title, isn’t it? Sorry for getting your hopes up. I can’t tell you how to be happy. We might as well get that out of the way to begin with. And anyone who says they have the answer is probably either deluded, a liar, or wants to sell you something.

Plenty of people have tried figuring it out, though. This writer has been struggling to find it for a quarter of a century, but won’t stop looking. Philosophers through the centuries have theorised about it. Marcus Aurelius, my classical emperor-philosopher-self-help-guru of choice, reckoned that the only way to be happy was to live a virtuous life, accepting that you will never be happy 100% of the time. It’s not easy following his advice, but I say it’s worth trying:

“If you work at that which is before you, following right reason seriously, vigorously, calmly, without allowing anything else to distract you, but keeping your divine part pure, as if you were bound to give it back immediately; if you hold to this, expecting nothing, but satisfied to live now according to nature, speaking heroic truth in every word that you utter, you will live happy. And there is no man able to prevent this.”

What if we look into the brain to find the solutions to happiness?

As humans, we are unique in the animal kingdom, in that once we satisfy our basic needs for survival (food, shelter, etc.), we then start using our frontal lobes for abstract thought processes. This part of the brain allows us to imagine the future, and think about ways we can affect it for ourselves. It’s different to primitive instinct in the sense that we can imagine a scenario in which we’d be more comfortable, and then consider our path to reaching it. The frontal lobe is particularly receptive to dopamine, one of the chemicals in the brain most responsible for feelings of achievement and reward. Clicking interesting links in articles, getting a high score in a video game, and finding a £10 note in an old coat in your cupboard all come with a pleasant little shot of dopamine to help you feel satisfied.

The trouble with this, in the modern technological age, is that it’s addictive, and as I mentioned in my last post, can be responsible for your brain turning to mush.

This is just one chemical amongst many that affect how we perceive happiness (Don’t even get me started on serotonin). Where does one even begin to attempt to understand the complex biochemistry that underpins our sense of satisfaction with our lives?

How about looking outwards instead, on a wider scale?

The Kingdom of Bhutan has tried measuring happiness as key indicator of the country’s overall health, measuring Gross National Happiness since 1972 as an alternative to Gross Domestic Product. Criticisms were fired at it for being too subjective, and not having a standardized measuring system to apply to all countries – true, and in an economist’s eyes, happiness is far too difficult to quantify – but I wish I lived in a country that considered it as important as money. (David Cameron made a valiant attempt to bring it to the nation’s attention – which fizzled out as quickly as it appeared, never to be spoken of again…)

Or how about we look into the vaults of TED? It’s a fascinating subject which has been explored from so many angles – which I hope to return to in future articles – here are a few talks to inspire you.

• Dan Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, in one of the most well-known TED talks on happiness, explores the ways in which we delude ourselves in our strive towards the unattainable.
• Onic V. Palandjian returns to his homeland of Greece to talk about the ancient ideal of eudaimonia.
• An entire TEDx event devoted to the pursuit of happiness was held at TEDxNTU at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. I’d suggest searching for “TEDxNTU” on YouTube for the full series of talks – and share in the comments below if you find any insights.

In my eyes, happiness is where sanity, health, love, peace and excitement come together. Not an easy balance to achieve, but it’s worth striving for.

-Michael Metcalf