The purpose of life is the expansion of happiness. Happiness is the goal of every other goal. Most people are under the impression that happiness comes from becoming successful, accumulating wealth, being healthy, and having good relationships. There is certainly enormous social pressure to believe that these accomplishments are the same as achieving happiness. However, this is a mistake. Success, wealth, good health, and nurturing relationships are byproducts of happiness, not the cause.
When you are happy, you are more likely to make choices that lead to all these things. The reverse isn’t true. Everyone has observed people who are deeply unhappy even after they have attained incredible wealth and success. Good health can be taken for granted and abused. And even the happiest family can find its happiness ruined by a sudden crisis. Unhappy people are not successful, and no amount of money and achievement will change the equation.
So let’s shift our gaze beyond external indications to inner happiness, which we all want to attain and yet which remains elusive. In the last few years psychologists and brain researchers have undertaken the first serious research on happiness. Previously, the field of psychology was almost entirely focused on treating unhappiness, much the way internal medicine is based on treating disease. But just as interest in wellness and prevention has dramatically risen in recent years, so has interest in happiness.
Surprisingly, one of the most controversial topics in this new field of positive psychology is whether human beings are actually meant to be happy. Perhaps we are all pursuing an illusion, a fantasy fueled by occasional moments of happiness that can never turn into a permanent state. Or perhaps some people are genetically predisposed to be happy, and they will be the lucky few who escape what the rest of us experience, which is a kind of low-level contentment at best. Some experts contend that happiness occurs by chance, an emotional surprise that quickly comes and goes, like a surprise birthday party, leaving no permanent change once the event is over.
Leading researchers in the new field of positive psychology, in particular professors Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ed Diener, and Martin Seligman, came up with what they call the happiness formula. These researchers found three specific factors that could be quantified in a simple equation:
Since this is one of the leading theories of happiness, we’ll explore it before showing that there is a better way to reach the goal. Although it helps point the way, the happiness formula doesn’t go deep enough to uncover the real secret of happiness.
The first factor, S, is the brain’s set point, which determines how naturally happy you are. Unhappy people have a brain mechanism that interprets situations as problems. Happy people, on the other hand, have a brain mechanism that interprets the very same situations as opportunities. So the “glass half full, glass half empty” phenomenon is rooted in the brain, and is “set” in a way that doesn’t vary much over time. According to the researchers, a person’s set point is responsible for something like 40 percent of the experience of happiness. Apparently, this set point is partly genetic. If your parents were unhappy, you have a higher likelihood of being unhappy as well. But there are also childhood influences to take into account.
Children’s brains have neurons that mirror the brains of adults in their surroundings. These so-called mirror neurons are responsible for the way children learn new behaviors, so the theory goes. As they develop, young children don’t have to imitate their parents in order to learn something new; they only have to observe them, and certain brain cells will fire in a way that mirrors the activity. For example, a baby being weaned from breast-feeding watches how her parents eat. As they reach for food and put it into their mouths, certain areas of their brains light up. Simply watching this activity leads the same areas to light up in the infant’s brain. In this way the newly forming infant brain learns a new behavior without ever having to go through trial and error alone.
This model has already been tested in monkeys and theoretically extended to humans. It provides a physical explanation for something as mysterious as empathy, the ability to feel what someone else is feeling. Some people have this ability; others don’t. A few saintly individuals have so much empathy that they can hardly bear it when someone else is suffering. Research with MRIs and CAT scans suggests that brain function plays a major role in empathy. A child’s neurons mirror the emotions of adults around him, leading the child to actually feel what his parents feel. So if a youngster is surrounded by unhappy adults, his nervous system will be programmed for unhappiness, even before he has any cause for unhappiness himself.
Why doesn’t every child learn empathy? Because brain development is wildly complex and never the same for two babies. When we were infants, all kinds of brain functions were being programmed at the same time, and for some of us, empathy was only assigned a minor role. This is a troubling inequality, and it extends to happiness. When you see the brain has a set point for happiness, traceable either to genetics or childhood influences, it’s all too easy to conclude that nothing can be done about it. However, this would be a mistake, because neither the brain nor your genes are fixed structures; instead, they are in process every minute of your life, constantly changing and evolving. You are still being influenced at the genetic level by new experiences. Every choice you make sends chemical signals coursing through your brain, including the choice to be happy, and each signal helps to shape the brain from year to year.
In the overall picture, research has shown that the brain’s set point can be changed by the following:
Drugs that act as mood elevators, which work only in the short term and have side effects.
Cognitive therapy, which changes the brain by helping us change our limiting beliefs. We all tell ourselves stories in our heads that provoke unhappiness. Repeating the same negative belief over and over (“I am a victim,” “I am unloved,” “Life isn’t fair, something’s wrong with me,” etc.) creates neural pathways that reinforce negativity by turning it into a habitual way of thinking. Such beliefs can be replaced with others that are not simply more positive, but are a better match with reality (I may have been a victim in the past but I don’t have to remain that way; I can find love if I choose better places to look for it, etc.). In treating patients whose lives are dominated by negative beliefs, psychologists have found that altering really fundamental beliefs can be as effective in changing brain chemistry as prescribing drugs.
Meditation, which alters the brain in many positive ways. The physical effects of sitting quietly and going inward are amazingly extensive. It took a long time to unravel the puzzle. Researchers had to work against the Western assumption that meditation was mystical or at best a kind of religious practice. Now we realize that it activates the prefrontal cortex—the seat of higher thinking—and stimulates the release of neurotransmitters, including dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and brain opiates. Each of these naturally occurring brain chemicals has been linked to different aspects of happiness. Dopamine is an antidepressant; serotonin is associated with increased self-esteem; oxytocin is now believed to be the pleasure hormone (its levels also elevate during sexual arousal); opiates are the body’s painkillers, which also provide the exhilaration associated with runner’s high. It should be obvious, then, that meditation, by creating higher levels of these neurotransmitters, is a more effective way of changing the brain’s set point for happiness. No single drug can simultaneously choreograph the coordinated release of all these chemicals.
The second factor in the happiness formula is C, or conditions of living. Because we all want to improve our quality of life, we take it for granted that moving from bad conditions to good ones will make us happier. But apparently this factor accounts for only 7 to 12 percent of the total happiness experience. If you win the lottery, for example, at first you will be ecstatically happy. But by the end of one year you will have returned to your baseline level of happiness or unhappiness. After five years almost all lottery winners report that the experience has actually made their lives worse. Experts on stress have coined the term “eustress,” to describe the stress caused by intensely pleasurable experiences. We all think we’d like to experience this, yet the body cannot tell the difference between eustress and distress. Either one can trigger the stress reaction. If you don’t adapt well to stress, good experiences can be just as taxing as bad ones to your heart, endocrine system, and other vital organs and systems.
Much like happy events, tragic circumstances, such as a death in the family, a bitter divorce, or a catastrophe such as becoming totally paralyzed after a spinal injury, do not significantly influence a person’s level of happiness in the long term. People have a remarkable ability to adapt to outer circumstances. As Darwin said, the most important factor in survival is neither intelligence nor strength but adaptability. Emotional resilience, the ability to bounce back after something bad happens, is also one of the strongest indicators for who will live to be one hundred. Bad things happen to everyone, but being able to adapt afterward is a valuable trait that we come by naturally. Our remarkable ability to adapt explains why living conditions score so low as indicators of overall happiness.
Almost 50 percent of the happiness formula depends on the third factor, V, or voluntary activities—the things we choose to do every day. What kind of choice makes us happy? One kind is based on personal pleasure, but surprisingly, researchers did not find that these were the most significant. Increasing your personal pleasure by eating a good meal, drinking champagne, having sex, going to a movie, and so on will bring a temporary kind of happiness, for a few hours or at most a day or two. Instant gratification is followed by rapid fall-off.
Another kind of choice promotes creative expression or the happiness of another person. In both cases a deeper level of the self is being accessed. According to researchers, making other people happy proves to be a fast track to happiness, and its effect is long lasting. Turning to creative expression to make yourself happy can also generate positive results that last a lifetime.
This, in a nutshell, is what current research tells us. However, knowing the happiness formula doesn’t guarantee true or lasting happiness. Only the third factor, V, reaches into the inner life of a person, opening the door to the only place where I believe we can truly find the secret of happiness. Let’s see what lies beyond the door. What we find will also answer the most important question: Are humans capable of being truly, lastingly happy?
Eastern wisdom traditions point out that life inevitably contains suffering, which comes in many forms, including accidents, misfortune, aging, illness, and death. This implies that the pessimists are right when they claim that lasting happiness is an illusion. Human beings in particular suffer as the result of memory and imagination. We carry inside us the wounds of the past and imagine that the future will bring more pain. Other creatures are not burdened by worry over old age, decrepitude, and death. They don’t hold on to the past, nursing grievances and resentment.
Animals do have memory. If you kick a dog, it will remember the experience and may snarl at you if it encounters you ten years later. But unlike a human being, a kicked dog won’t plan for ten years how to get even. Our capacity to suffer makes us seek a way out. Therefore, for millions of people, today is planned around escaping yesterday’s pain and avoiding pain tomorrow.
Instead of trying to escape suffering, Eastern wisdom traditions set about diagnosing suffering the way a physician diagnoses disease. In the Vedic and Buddhist traditions of ancient India, five main causes were linked to suffering and the unhappiness it causes.
Not knowing your true identity
Clinging to the idea of permanence in a world that is inherently impermanent
Identifying with the socially induced hallucination called the ego
Fear of death
Life has changed tremendously over the centuries, but these sources of suffering have not, so until we solve them, even the most powerful drugs, the most loving upbringing, and the most selfless efforts to make others happy won’t really work. The happiness formula doesn’t address the real ills of human existence, which we all experience. To be alive is to fear change, cling to the ego and its false promises, and fear the arrival of death. We ponder in confusion the most simple, basic question: Who am I?
Fortunately, it isn’t necessary to wrestle with five causes of suffering. They are all contained in the first: ignorance of your true identity. Once you experience who you really are, all suffering will come to an end. This is, of course, a huge promise, but it has endured for at least three thousand years, waiting for each new generation to discover it. Every discovery is new and depends on the individual. By nature we are all interested in ourselves. If you take that interest and go deep inside, you can each find the place where your true self resides, and then the secret of happiness will unfold.
Your true identity lies in a core consciousness beyond the mind, intellect, and ego. When you look beyond your limited self—the “I” that struggles to find peace, love, and fulfillment in life—you are on the path to your true identity. We are all connected to the source of creation. Ancient sages have left us a beautiful image for this: a shrine in the heart that hides a small candle whose flame is eternal. When you have found that flame, you have found enlightenment, and then the darkness of doubt, anger, fear, and ignorance are dispelled.
Who you are transcends space, time, and cause-and-effect. Your core consciousness is immortal. If you know yourself at this level, you will never suffer again. Many people equate enlightenment with detachment, a remote state of isolation that seems frightening, because they assume that the comforts of everyday life must be sacrificed. If forced to choose between enlightenment and personal pleasure, they will always choose the latter. But knowing your true identity doesn’t isolate you or detach you from the fulfillment of everyday life. On the contrary, this is where you discover the wellspring of all fulfillment.
At the source we discover a connection that binds us all. The real you is transpersonal, meaning that it extends beyond the boundaries of your personal self. Transpersonal doesn’t mean “impersonal,” however, which is another thing people fear when they think of enlightenment. Once again, the opposite is true. As an inspiring Indian spiritual teacher once put it, “My love radiates like light from a bonfire. It is focused on none and denied to none.” If you value love, peace, and fulfillment, finding your true identity expands those things manyfold.
Fortunately, knowing your real self is not difficult. It’s what nature intended for us. Once you find the path, one step follows the next without stress and strain. A small grain of trust is needed at the beginning. In Western society few of us are raised to believe that the only permanent cure for unhappiness is enlightenment, but you can experience the truth of this yourself. Even the early steps on the path remove some suffering, often dramatically.
From where you sit at this moment, reading this page, enlightenment may sound like a daunting and remote prospect, but in the following pages I will provide seven keys to guide you on your journey. Since what works best is always simple, natural, and effortless, let me offer you a single idea that is tremendously powerful.
In the world of constant change, there is something that doesn’t change.
This simple thought describes the goal of all seeking. If you focus on your breath, you can feel it rise and fall. If you focus on your thoughts, you can observe them come and go as well. Every function in your body ebbs and flows, and in fact, the whole world works the same way.
Where does this waxing and waning come from? Where is the nonchange that makes change possible? It must exist. Without the calm ocean, you couldn’t have waves. Without a quiet mind, you couldn’t have thoughts. Without a so-called ground state, a domain of infinite potential for matter and energy, physics tells us that there could be no universe.
Observing that all change is based on nonchange is tremendously important. It points up that your existence, which is enmeshed in change, must be rooted in a deeper state of being that never changes. You have a source, the ground state. Think of anything you can observe—a tree, a sunset, the moon at night, or a distant star. You, the observer, and the thing you observe will one day pass away. Both are caught up in impermanence. But the underlying ground state doesn’t come and go; it remains the same.
Enlightenment simply consists of finding a way to reach this ground state. Having found it, you naturally identify with it. You are able to say, “This is the true me.” That’s all there is to enlightenment, which means the secret to happiness is in your hands. The seven keys to happiness could also be called the seven keys to enlightenment. They consist of simple, everyday things to consider and do. No drastic change in lifestyle is required. You don’t have to tell anyone else that you are on the path to enlightenment. But others will observe that you are becoming happier and more fulfilled.
The process that leads to enlightenment is gradual and requires patience, but fortunately the very act of seeking it yields fruit right here and now. Any step you take toward your core consciousness—your ground state, your true self—obliterates some causes of unhappiness in your life. At the same time, the innate happiness that is your birthright will blossom. Thus you are on a twofold path: to eliminate darkness and to bring on the light.