Your Habitual Emotions Determine The Quality of Your Life.
And not the other way around. Winning the lottery or losing your limbs, happiness is synthesized!
Your Habitual Emotions
The way you habitually feel about your life — your relationships, career, finances, and health-effects your overall sense of well-being. I am not referring to temporary feelings that can change.
Here, I’m referring to your habitual emotions- your default emotions. The ones to which you wake up. And the ones that inhabit your body throughout the day. The feelings you may not even be aware of.
Winning The Lottery vs. Losing Your Limbs
Research has consistently shown that peoples’ habitual emotions are not determined by their circumstances. A study compared the level of happiness among people a year after they had become paraplegic to that of people within a year of winning the lottery.
Six months after winning the lottery people were of the same level of happiness as those who had only six months ago become paraplegic. Over time lottery winners were not happier than paraplegics.
In fact, lottery winners had significantly less pleasure from mundane, everyday life events. They were no longer in awe at the daily mundane events in their lives.
Happiness can be synthesized. It is not a thing to be found. Winning the lottery makes people happy temporarily, but not over the long term. And becoming a paraplegic, while is devastating, will not, over the long term affect your level of happiness. Because, as Dan Gilbert says, “Your happiness is not about your ability to walk, it ‘s your soul.”
If your circumstances do not determine your emotions, what does?
- Your genetics. Yes, science has found that your predisposition to happiness is determined by your genetics 48% of the time. Science has found that women are also generally happier than men.
- Big life events. Having a purpose and achieving your life-long goals gives you a sense of satisfaction and elevates your sense of well-being.
- You get to decide. Yes, your level of happiness is determined by you deciding to be happy.
What Adds To Your Happiness?
Faith, family, community, and work. You need healthy habits to nurture your happiness. Spending time with family and friends. And making a difference in the lives of others through your work. Meaningful work will make you happy. This is within your control.
You can change the way you feel and so change your overall sense of well-being. Your habitual emotions affect the quality of your life.
What Next?
Don’t chase the big things — the big house, the fast car, or all the money you want. Because the big things never last.
For the next seven days, observe your emotions. Which ones dominate your day? Fear, sadness, confusion, annoyance. Or calm, joy, awe, and contentment.
If you catch yourself wallowing in negative self-talk, ruminating on an unhappy past, or discontented with your current situation, pivot to a different state of emotions.
The best strategies to pivot: list things you are grateful for. And list healthy activities you can engage in to change your current state of emotions — walk in nature, call a friend, journal.
Be aware of what robs your joy. If your job is not satisfying, find work that gives your life meaning. If you want more reasons to be happy, you need to be happy even if there appears little reason right now to be happy.
