Happiness is the lot of those who are curious about everything and laugh at the futility of the soul’s worries
Introduction
How can one become happy? A good question, one I spent many years trying to answer. And I found it—more than that, it turned out that over thousands of years humanity has invented a great many recipes for happiness. The frustrating thing is that knowing what state a happy person is in, how they should think and act, did not make me happy. It turned out that knowing what a happy person should be like is like knowing what democracy should be like. It all seems clear, but how do you actually reach that good and eternal thing?
The problems of happiness, of defining the best and most correct way to live, have always been the professional domain of philosophers. And they solved the main problem of such a life repeatedly and successfully. However, not all of them—at least in my opinion—gave clear, practical instructions for achieving this wonderful state. And even those who did give such advice, the Stoics for example, still could not do so with the precision of modern science.
Yes, the main goal of this work is to provide universal, modern, scientifically verified tools for achieving happiness. Let the classics set the direction, the ideal goal, and I will offer what I so sorely lacked on this twisted path. I’ll start with a short list of “recipes” for happiness. If you already know what kind of happiness you want to achieve, or are simply tired of reading about something you just can’t seem to reach—feel free to skip this part and scroll straight to the section “Happiness Despite Chaos, or How to Master Your Turbulent Mind.” There I will talk about what I consider the first and greatest obstacle on the path to happiness: a disobedient mind, overexcited by the chaos of the external world, and ways to control and direct it.
Classic Recipes for Happiness
Let’s start with Democritus. Although he was more of an investigator of nature, by the traditions of his time he could not leave his teaching without moral precepts. In particular, he believed that moderation and balance in everything could lead a person to happiness. From his viewpoint, both excess and deficiency are bad. Happiness, according to Democritus, does not arise from absolute pleasure. On the contrary, the pursuit of ever-greater pleasures is merely superfluous, pointless worry. Experiences only chafe the soul, therefore, in Democritus’s view, on the path to balance and tranquility it is better to avoid any kind of excess. Neither private nor public activity will give a person peace if they engage in it too vigorously. The same happens when a person undertakes an activity for which they have no aptitude.
However, one should not think Democritus was really so measured and boring. Cicero criticized his ethics as unfinished: supposedly not enough was said about virtue, leaving the system incomplete. But perhaps Cicero was looking for a single coherent system where there wasn’t one. Democritus also spoke of fanatical inspiration—enthusiasm, obsession—and that without divine madness there can be no great poet. Perhaps that is not a gap in the system, but another path: calm and moderation for the majority, divine obsession for those whom it chooses. And Democritus himself, in my opinion, fully corresponds to the latter image. He traveled to Egypt and Persia, wrote about everything under the sun—from atoms to poetry. A calm and measured life could only have been a dream for him.
If you are intrigued by that part of Democritus’s philosophy concerning calm and balance, I advise you to read Epicurus. He developed, with varying success, many ideas of Democritus within physics and the study of nature, yet his ideas on achieving happiness are highly useful. In his teaching, he analyzes in detail what is necessary for a happy life, what is natural but not necessary, and what is unnatural and superfluous. To put it very briefly: the necessary is already available to most people—the possibility of eating, a place to sleep. The natural but not necessary includes sexual relations—available to fewer people, but not uncommon. Epicurus considered wealth, the pursuit of power, and vanity as unnatural and superfluous. Essentially, these are the detailed ideas of Democritus: secure your basic needs and learn to be content with that; do not worry about the senseless pursuit of fame, power, or money, because that will only make you unhappy through constant anxiety.
But there is also a philosopher for those who are more interested in following the path of fanatical passion for a cause. A full, uniquely happy life according to Nietzsche is a flight with inevitable ups and downs. He completely departs from the concept of a calm, balanced existence. Instead, he proposes enjoying life in its absolutes. Yes, the higher you rise, the longer and more painful the fall—that’s clear. The point is not to be at the peak forever—that’s impossible, everyone falls sooner or later. The idea is not to hide from life, but to experience it to the maximum and the minimum, in its highest and lowest manifestations. Nietzsche urges us to reject a moderate and measured life, because it does not allow us to live truly. And there is sense in this as well. The very awareness that falling is also part of life is inspiring: without the risk of falling, the ascent would not be an ascent.
Personally, in old age it would be more pleasant for me to realize that throughout life I took risks, tasted both defeats and victories, than to understand that my whole life passed calmly, generally happily, but rather greyly. However—to each their own, and every philosopher has weighty arguments in favor of their own ideas. But in order to be able to use this advice, one must first learn to govern oneself, one’s mind, more precisely.
Happiness Despite Chaos, or How to Master Your Turbulent Mind
I consider the first obstacle on the path to a happy life to be the disobedient mind. A mind that constantly tries to impose old, unwanted behavior, can’t get rid of obsessive, unpleasant thoughts, and generally refuses to follow the rules that should make life better. Fortunately, modern science has found and tested optimal ways to overcome these problems, even in cases where chaos reigns both outside and within.
Strangely enough, in order to change life for the better, you won’t have to train willpower (or self-control) or even think about it. I realize that may sound odd, as for many years it served as a plug for any behavioral gap, but it turns out that willpower is not at all what it is commonly thought to be.
The main myth about willpower: that it can run out, so you must use it sparingly. According to a 2012 paper⁴ and a large-scale 2016 study involving 23 laboratories³, the situation is exactly the opposite.
Inzlicht and Schmeichel⁴ in their 2012 study note that if self-control truly depleted some specific resource in the organism (it was initially assumed to be glucose), then restoring it by watching a short funny video would clearly be impossible, yet experiments show it is entirely possible. Moreover, this resource restored itself just as magically when a person wrote about their values or repeatedly reassured themselves that they were not engaged in what they were doing in vain. If that wasn’t enough, the very belief that willpower cannot run out allowed participants to rid themselves of the effects of its “depletion.” Interestingly, a person who believed the opposite later began to feel that mysterious “depletion.” And needless to say, various rewards for completing tasks, including money and similar incentives—as you can guess, easily turned willpower from a finite resource into an infinite one.
In the 2016 study, Hagger³ conducted a unique experiment, and not only because it used results from as many as 23 laboratories. The fact is that it involved both Michael Inzlicht and Brandon Schmeichel (the same 2012 study), and also the creator of the ego-depletion theory—Roy Baumeister. Moreover, Baumeister did not just observe the experiment—he was one of the three people who reviewed and approved the research protocol before it began. That is, he agreed with the methods used to test his own theory.
Well, the result for that theory turned out to be disappointing. The study showed that if using willpower does consume some resource, the effect is close to zero. Of course, the authors try to be very cautious and do not rule out the possibility of this elusive resource existing despite all the obtained information. But from a practical standpoint, for us this means only one thing: there is no point in conserving willpower. This resource is either so vast that we are unable to deplete it, or it truly is infinite.
In any case, oddly enough, talking about willpower actually makes no sense. And don’t look at Democritus, the creator of determinism, laughing in the corner. First, he does that constantly anyway. Second, we are already radically rethinking the concept of willpower, and also trying to figure out why it cannot exist according to cosmic order would be clear overkill. So, if talking about conserving willpower is as absurd as saying you should breathe less so as not to use up all the oxygen, then let’s indeed forget about it, at least within this work.
But what else is there to talk about in the context of mastering your mind? I have an interesting option: executive functions. In this case I will rely on the eponymous study by Diamond¹. First of all, she notes that executive functions are also called executive control or cognitive control. This refers to the set of cognitive processes necessary for concentrating on something specific. She contrasts them with functions used when it is appropriate to act automatically or rely on instinct or intuition. In short: executive functions are needed when you can’t work on autopilot.
Essentially, this is a general name for three core cognitive abilities:
- inhibitory control: the ability to “hit the brakes” in time, not to do what you shouldn’t;
- working memory: the ability to hold information in mind and actively manipulate it;
- cognitive flexibility: the ability to quickly switch between tasks, to look at problems from different points of view.
There is no doubt that executive functions is an extremely important, and I would even risk saying—necessary, fundamental ingredient of the potion of happiness. Let’s take the study Diamond herself relied on¹. In 2011, Moffitt and colleagues published the results of 32 years of observation of 1,000 children. Yes, it’s hard to believe, but the researchers actually followed a group of people for over 30 years (at the start of the experiment, participants were between 3 and 11 years old). By some miracle, the researchers managed to see almost all of them through to the end of the experiment—the retention rate was a stunning 96%.
It turned out that the level of inhibitory control affects life more strongly than IQ, gender, social class, and family circumstances. You can talk a lot about luck or innate intelligence, but those are momentary advantages. The most important thing over the distance of an entire lifetime remains the ability to control yourself. People with better inhibitory control are more likely to stay in school during adolescence, less likely to use drugs. They find it easier to wait their turn or sustain attention, they are more persistent, less impulsive. It’s no surprise that all of the above results in better physical and mental health.
Notice: this is only one of the three main elements of executive functions, yet it alone is enough to make achieving and maintaining happiness a radically harder or easier task in the long term.
Another critically important reason to talk specifically about executive functions is that, unlike the foggy “willpower,” they can be actively interacted with and adjusted. Let’s start with basic lifestyle advice: Diamond draws attention to the fact that these functions suffer disproportionately due to a number of factors:
- stress;
- sadness;
- loneliness;
- lack of sleep;
- lack of physical activity (exercise).
Of course, some of these problems are quite hard to solve, but it is possible. You can start by getting enough hours of sleep, and then the stress might lessen a little, maybe even the energy to exercise will appear. In short, the advice isn’t new, but there are even more reasons to follow it.
I anticipate that some might be upset by such simple advice. Don’t worry, the work on executive functions is not limited to that. It turns out they can and even should be trained. Diamond lists the following exercises:
- computerized training (e.g., CogMed, a company specializing in creating digital products to improve working memory and attention);
- training the skill of switching between tasks;
- traditional martial arts (e.g., Taekwondo);
- school curricula (e.g., Tools of the Mind, PATHS, CSRP).
The conditions and specifics of such training are no different from ordinary training: it’s best when difficulty increases gradually; it’s beneficial for everyone, but most beneficial for those who are lagging behind; it’s important to train methodically and steadily.
In principle, this is very reminiscent of what I would think if someone asked me how to train willpower. Perhaps the main problem wasn’t the idea of willpower itself, but what we invested into it?
In any case, we’ve established that to become a consistent, disciplined person, to achieve desired results and not stumble, you need—imagine—to cultivate these skills by performing all sorts of difficult, tedious tasks such as martial arts, specialized tasks, and programs.
It might seem that everything has been said and we should move on to the next part, but from my side that would be criminal. It would come out as if I’m proposing to solve problems of discipline and habit formation… with discipline and habit formation. But the goal of this work is to break that vicious circle, not to find a new variation of it.
Gollwitzer and Sheeran² will help with this. In 2006 study, they clearly outlined the problem: wanting to do something and actually doing it are completely different things. A few striking examples from the studies the researchers drew on:
- 70% of women who intended to perform a breast self-exam but didn’t said they simply forgot to do it;
- 37% of participants who set themselves the goal of visiting a website successfully did so within a limited timeframe.
So how do you do what you need and even want to do? Fortunately, the answer is in this same study. It is necessary to create clear instructions. A simple “script” is enough: if-then. The variations of use can be most diverse, depending on your needs:
- “If I feel anger starting to rise, I will tell myself to remain calm.”
- “If I receive discouraging feedback, I will switch to another strategy” (to avoid over-investment).
- “If it’s Saturday, 10 a.m., then I will sit down at the computer and outline my essay.”
The study showed that creating such instructions significantly increases the likelihood of achieving a goal compared to simple intentions to achieve it.
And what if we supplement these simple instructions with game theory? If even the simplest instructions affect us so well, why not take advantage of the achievements of applied mathematics?
Say you are walking down the street and see a person you might know. The problem is that you’re not entirely sure whether you know them. What should you do? If you greet them and they are a stranger, it’s an awkward situation; if you don’t greet them and the person turns out to be an acquaintance, they may be offended. At this stage a small panic should begin, because a decision must be made quickly, there’s no time to deliberate, yet you also don’t want to make a mistake. So what to do?
I propose an option that is both elegant and lazy: solve this situation once and for all without leaving your couch. That is, make an instruction for yourself:
- Assess the type of game: sequential, simultaneous, or mixed?
- Assess the possible developments—how might the other person react, what can they do?
- Construct an optimal strategy or several strategies if you’re unsure exactly how the situation will unfold.
Of course, this system can be elaborated on; game theory is not limited to these three steps, but for many situations this system will be more than enough.
So how to solve the situation with the familiar stranger? Let’s say it’s a sequential game, where you make the first move and your, conditionally speaking, opponent makes the second move, reacting to you. What options do you have? Only two: greet (simple nod) or not greet. What can happen if you greet? You either hit or miss. If you hit, great, you can conditionally add +1 point to the relationship with that person; if not, nothing happens. I’ve never seen anyone hate or beat someone up for an inappropriate greeting. Let’s say it’s 0, the person might feel slightly awkward that they supposedly should have known you, and that’s it, you part ways.
If you greet, the result is either +1 or 0.
And what happens in the alternative reality where you didn’t greet? Well, here it’s worse. If you don’t greet a stranger, nothing happens, so that’s also a 0. But if you don’t greet someone who expected you to, they might feel unpleasant, someone might be offended. So I’ll rate it -5 points.
Thus we have:
If you greet — +1 or 0.
If you don’t greet — -5 or 0.
The conclusion is obvious: if you see someone and doubt whether you know them—always greet them; this is the dominant, i.e., the best, strategy.
This extremely simple instruction can forever rid you of the need to think, worry, and then recall and relive awkward situations again. As you understand, such “if-then” instructions are also useful to create when you are trying to get used to reacting in a certain way to various situations. This will be useful both for developing habits that strengthen your executive functions, and for better adapting to a new lifestyle that should lead you to happiness or literally is a happy life.
That is, this system will support you from the beginning of your path in search of happiness to the moment when the main problem is not achieving, but maintaining this way of life.
By the way, game theory itself says a lot about how to live correctly, and finally I can write this word without quotation marks, because its approaches are not subjective; it talks about maximally objective, literally mathematical approaches to life. I wrote about this in the essay “The Childishness of Evil and the Productiveness of Good.” In it, I break down how game theory beautifully synchronizes with Plato’s four cardinal virtues. If you’re interested in how applied mathematics connects with and complements ancient philosophy, I invite you to read it.
Curiosity — an Unobvious Requirement for a Happy Life
Something the classic inventors of ways to live rightly and happily never lacked, and at the same time something that is becoming increasingly scarce in our lives. A burning desire to know or learn something—something educational institutions from schools to universities have been fighting for years and, unfortunately, winning. So why, without it, does day pass and night pass, yet happiness never comes?
To begin with, I propose to rethink curiosity as something inherent more to children than to adults. Park, Peterson, and Seligman⁵ in their 2004 study identified the feelings and moods most stably and closely linked to the level of life satisfaction:
- Hope — the strongest correlation, explained as the expectation of something good in the future.
- “Zest” — vitality, vigor, energy. When a person lives their life with inspiration, fully.
- Gratitude — the ability to remember and appreciate the good in the past.
- Curiosity — interest, the pursuit of novelty, openness to new experience. An interest in everything happening around, a desire to explore and discover.
- Love — the ability to value close relationships with others, especially those where reciprocity in communication and care is evident.
Of course, the list is not complete, but it’s enough to realize how important it is to be curious about the surrounding world. Even love takes second place to the desire to explore. So think about whether one can be a happy person without the fourth most important component of a “good” life.
Von Stumm, Hell, and Chamorro-Premuzic⁷ in a 2011 study argue that academic success rests not only on intelligence (cognitive abilities) and conscientiousness (effort and persistence), but also on intellectual curiosity (the “hungry mind”). Yes, intelligence influences the most, but persistence and curiosity are not far behind. Moreover, curiosity does not take third place—it ties for second place with persistence. And together, their influence on academic outcomes equals the influence of intelligence.
The main problem is highlighted in the same study: curiosity is not that hard to “kill.” There is a whole set of tools for this: frivolity, indifference, negligence. But these are all internal, personal; someone may bypass such traits, so what to do in that case? Don’t worry, along with forest, water, mineral, and who knows what other resources, the state guarantees unhappiness to all those in need. The fact is that the trap of rigid dogmatism is no less destructive to curiosity than any personal, internal flaws. As you understand, schools, universities, and indeed all state institutions are nothing other than the apotheosis of dogmatism. To be fair, it must be said that this priceless resource is also included in the standard policy of most companies. It may even seem that both the former and the latter are created by approximately the same creatures according to roughly the same principles. Such things are also useful to think about if you have a desire not to arrive at happiness.
For responsible citizens who have already forgotten (or never knew) what the state of curiosity looks and feels like, the researchers add a description: “The curious mind [is] constantly alert and exploring [and] seeking material for thought, as a vigorous and healthy body is on the qui vive for nutriment… ”.
The authors of the study draw the following conclusions:
- schools should nurture curiosity; one must not reward only “obedient application of intellect and effort”;
- “It is not only the diligent class winner who writes an excellent term paper but also the one who asks annoyingly challenging questions during the seminar (a habit that is, unfortunately, not appreciated by all teachers)”;
- curiosity is both a character trait and a state; the surrounding environment can stimulate it.
I cannot help but recall in this context the 2000 study by Ryan and Deci⁶. They claim that people have three innate psychological needs:
- autonomy — a sense of volitional independence, self-regulation, of being the author of one’s actions;
- competence — a sense of effectiveness, ability, capacity to overcome challenges;
- relatedness — a sense of connection, care from others.
When these needs are met—a person flourishes: the desire to do something, to develop appears, life in general becomes brighter and more pleasant.
When these needs are not met—motivation decreases, a sense of alienation arises, the risk of developing psychopathological disorders grows.
“Perhaps no single phenomenon reflects the positive potential of human nature as much as intrinsic motivation… From the time of birth, children, in their healthiest states, are active, inquisitive, curious, and playful, even in the absence of specific rewards”.
“…the evidence is now clear that the maintenance and enhancement of this inherent propensity [intrinsic motivation] requires supportive conditions, as it can be fairly readily disrupted by various nonsupportive conditions”.
In short, additional confirmation of what was said in previous studies, only this time we have a more detailed list of problematic practices that kill the “spark in the eyes”: external rewards (contingent only on results), threats, deadlines, directives, pressured evaluation, imposed goals, controlling teachers/parents, surveillance.
Why? All these factors shift the perceived causality from internal to external. A person stops feeling that they are doing something of their own will—only a sense of control remains, that they are being directed.
“Students taught with a more controlling approach not only lose initiative but learn less effectively, especially when learning requires conceptual, creative processing”.
At the same time, the opportunity to choose, acknowledgment of feelings, the possibility of self-regulation, teachers who support autonomy, optimally challenging tasks, positive feedback (without control), a secure relational base—all this supports, strengthens, develops intrinsic motivation.
In this part, the main conclusion is that external norms can be turned into internal ones through their internalization and integration. That is how people begin to sincerely value what was initially imposed from outside.
And for the correct integration of these norms, we return to the three main, innate psychological needs: autonomy, competence, relatedness.
We internalize the values of those with whom we feel a connection. “…internalization is more likely to be in evidence when there are ambient supports for feelings of relatedness ”. We choose activities in which we feel effective, competent. For example, children who are forced to perform tasks before they are developmentally ready internalize them only partially. Autonomy is crucial for full integration. “…contexts can yield autonomous regulation only if they are autonomy supportive, thus allowing the person to feel competent, related, and autonomous”.
Even boring activities (those in which a person sees no meaning) can be integrated if the three conditions listed above are met. Moreover, these basic psychological needs are somewhat akin to water, sleep, and food—take one away and the person, to put it mildly, will be miserable.
It is also important to understand which things are primary for the human psyche and which are secondary. For example, relatedness/close relationships, personal growth, the opportunity to make positive contributions to community life—these are primary, the most important requirements; they directly provide for basic needs. At the same time, wealth, fame, image—these are secondary; at best, they indirectly satisfy our psychological needs.
And a few clarifications regarding autonomy: “The concept of autonomy has often been portrayed as being antagonistic to relatedness or community… But, within SDT [self-determination theory], autonomy refers not to being independent, detached, or selfish but rather to the feeling of volition that can accompany any act, whether dependent or independent, collectivist or individualist”.
I would like to separately draw your attention to what curiosity can yield, using this very essay as an example. After all, what, if not curiosity, was the impetus for its creation? As a result, I understood how to learn to govern myself, to make my life “compatible” with the happiness that the classics so actively promote in their works. Is that not an additional, extremely practical reason to start developing it? I am certain that everyone has at least a couple of important questions that curiosity could resolve, at the same time making life at least a little better and bringing it one step closer to that very coveted happiness.
In summary, I can say that these studies reveal nothing incredible. On the contrary, it is disheartening that nothing magical and amazingly counterintuitive separates us from happiness. Precepts of a Biblical level of triteness: you need to eat properly, sleep, love and be loved, socialize and help society, surround yourself with those and that which support and inspire, avoid excessive stress, and so on. Even more sadly, many of the studies cited were aimed not at adults but at children, and what we call civilization does not even meet the basic psychological (and sometimes physical) needs of the most important and entirely innocent beings.
Perhaps happiness was never too far away; perhaps it’s just that our way of life does not allow for its presence?
References
1. Diamond, Adele. (2012). Executive Functions. Annual Review of Psychology. 64. 10.1146/annurev-psych-113011-143750.
2. Gollwitzer, Peter & Sheeran, Paschal. (2006). Implementation Intentions and Goal Achievement: A Meta-Analysis of Effects and Processes. First publ. in: Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 38 (2006), pp. 69-119. 38. 10.1016/S0065-2601(06)38002-1.
3. Hagger, Martin & Chatzisarantis, Nikos & Alberts, Hugo & Anggono, Calvin & Batailler, Cédric & Birt, Angie & Brand, Ralf & Brandt, Mark & Brewer, Gene & Bruyneel, Sabrina & Calvillo, Dustin & Campbell, D. & Cannon, Peter & Carlucci, Marianna & Carruth, Nicholas & Cheung, Tracy & Crowell, Adrienne & Ridder, Denise & Dewitte, Siegfried & Zwienenberg, Maria. (2016). A Multilab Preregistered Replication of the Ego-Depletion Effect. Perspectives on Psychological Science. 11. Advance online publication. 10.1177/1745691616652873.
4. Inzlicht, Michael & Schmeichel, Brandon. (2012). What Is Ego Depletion? Toward a Mechanistic Revision of the Resource Model of Self-Control. Perspectives on Psychological Science. 7. 450-463. 10.1177/1745691612454134.
5. Peterson, Christopher & Seligman, Martin. (2004). Strengths of Character and Well-Being. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology — J SOC CLIN PSYCHOL. 23. 603-619. 10.1521/jscp.23.5.603.50748.
6. Ryan, Richard & Deci, Edward. (2000). Self-Determination Theory and the Facilitation of Intrinsic Motivation, Social Development, and Well-Being. American Psychologist. 55. 68-78. 10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.68.
7. Stumm, Sophie & Hell, Benedikt & Chamorro-Premuzic, Tomas. (2011). The Hungry Mind — Intellectual Curiosity Is the Third Pillar of Academic Performance. Perspectives on Psychological Science. 6. 574-588. 10.1177/1745691611421204.
