“How to Be Happy: The Big Picture”
By Reverend James Kubal-Komoto
Saltwater Unitarian Universalist Church
Des Moines, Washington
January 10, 2010

            It’s the beginning of January, my friends.

            The holidays are over, and it’s time to take down what’s left of the Christmas tree, step on the scale, open the Visa bill, and look forward to another day, another week, and at least another month in which the mostly likely weather forecast will be “45 degrees and rainy.”

            For at least some of us, I suspect, we may be glad to be done with the holidays, and back into the routine of things. I am.

            But for at least some us, I suspect, it’s also not our favorite time of the year.

            And for at least some of us, I suspect, it’s also the time of the year when we think about what changes we’d like to make in our lives during the next 12-months in our on-going but occasionally elusive pursuit of happiness.

            So what better time of the year, I have been thinking to myself, to talk about what truly will make us happy in life and what won’t, which it turns out is often very different than what we think will make us happy.

            My words with you this morning are the first in a three-part sermon series about happiness. My sermon this morning is called “How to Be Happy: The Big Picture.” My sermon next week is called, “How to be Happy: The Power of Positive Thinking.” My sermon three weeks from today will be called, “How to be Happy: The Limits of Positive Thinking.”

            For thousands of years, people have speculated about what really makes us happy as human beings, but during the past few decades, there’s been a big step forward in our quest to understand happiness. Instead of gurus, philosophers, and other assorted wise ones merely speculating, social scientists have begun to scientifically study what actually makes us happy, and this morning I’d like to share with you some of the things they have discovered.

The most important thing I want to tell you about this morning is something called the Happiness Formula. This is what it looks like: H =  S + C + V . In this formula, “H” stands for how happy we usually are, “S” stands for our set point, “C” stands for our circumstances, and “V” stands for the voluntary things we do and don’t do.

            Let consider the first variable in the Happiness Formula, “S,” our set point.

It seems that to a considerable degree, like many things about us, how happy we are in life is determined by genetics. In other words, if anybody here wants to blame your unhappy, miserable life on your parents, you are at least partly right do so, but not because they didn’t buy you Rock ‘Em Sock’Em Robots for Christmas when you were eight, even though all your friends had it and you ask for it a thousand times.

If you are a person who always seems to be irritable, grouchy, and pessimistic - - if you are a person who looks at a half-full glass of water and thinks to yourself, “Why is it water? What couldn’t it be vodka?” - - studies show that about half the blame belongs to your biological parents, or at least the genes you inherited from them.

            Similarly, if you are a person who is always smiling and effervescent and who can’t help seeing the world in a rose-colored tinge, studies show that about half the credit belongs to your biological parents, or, again, at least the genes you inherited from them.

            Just like some people are born to be taller or shorter, it seems that some people are born to be Eeyores and some people are born to be Tiggers, and that each of us has a genetic set point for happiness - - sort of like a thermostat has a set point for a certain temperature  - - that won’t change no matter what we do or what happens to us in life.

How much of our happiness is determined by our genetic set point?

Studies of identical and fraternal twins suggest that about 50 percent of our happiness is determined by our genetic predisposition, which is a lot - - so perhaps you shouldn’t beat yourself if you don’t ever seem to feel quite as happy as other people, or beat up other people if they don’t seem to be quite as happy as you - - but it isn’t everything - - which should give all of us a little hope if we’d ever like to be a little happier than we are now.

Let’s consider the next variable in the Happiness Formula, “C,” which stands for the circumstances of our lives, in other words, things which are either completely beyond our control or things that would be quite difficult or at least impractical to change about our lives.

            Here’s a list of factors affecting our circumstances: gender, sexual orientation, intelligence, attractiveness, education, type of job, income, marital status, number of children, age, health, race, religion, climate, and nationality.

            Let me ask you. Which of these play a significant role in determining how happy we are?...

            Ready for some answers? Here’s some factors that don’t make a difference: sexual orientation, intelligence, attractiveness, education, income, number of children, age, health, race, and climate.

Here are the factors that do: Here are the factors that do: gender, type of job, marital status, religion, and nationality.

Any surprises there? For me what stands out is how different what makes us happy is from what society tells us will make us happy.

In his book, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, Jonathan Haidt describes two people with very different lives: “Bob is thirty-five years old, single, white, attractive, and athletic. He earns $100,000 a year and lives in Sunny California. He is highly intellectual, and he spends his free time reading and going to museums. Mary and her husband live in snowy Buffalo, New York, where they earn a combined income of $40,0000. Mary is sixty-years-old, black, overweight, and plain in appearance. She is highly sociable, and she spends her free time mostly in activities related to her church. She is on dialysis for kidney problems.”

Haidt says that many people would predict that Bob’s life would be happier, but they would be wrong.

Let me talk a little bit about the factor that most people in this country think makes the biggest difference in their happiness but doesn’t…how much money we make or have.

Why do we know that money doesn’t make a difference?

 First, compare 2010 to 1940 - - seventy years ago. In 1940, most homes were not only much smaller, they also didn’t have washing machines, dishwashers, microwaves, plasma TVs, DVD players, computers, and iPods. On average, people’s incomes - - adjusted for inflation - -were about half of what they are today. However, how happy were most Americans in 1940? On a scale of 1 to 10, Americans had an average score of 7.5 in 1940. Seventy years later, with so much, much more stuff in our lives, our average score is 7.2 .

Second, we know that there are many countries in the world with lower average per-capita incomes than the U.S. whose people are, on average, happier than most Americans are.

Third, we know that even within the U.S., once income is above the poverty level, differences in income makes very little if any difference in how happy people say they are.

Did you know that winning the lottery won’t likely make you happier at all and that lottery winners, in fact, often join lottery winner support groups to help them deal with the negative consequences of becoming instantly rich?

(I’ve decided that we’re going to start a group like that here. There will be a small, $50,000 participation fee.)

Did you know that billionaires are just marginally happier than people earning $50,000 a year?

But how can this possibly be? Isn’t it more likely true that people who claim that money can’t buy happiness just don’t know where to shop?

The reason why money can’t buy happiness is because of something called “the adaptation principle.”

Simply put, we human beings are extremely good at adapting to both positive and negative changes in our lives, especially our material circumstances.

If you suddenly have enough money to buy a new wardrobe, a new car, or even a bigger new house, these things will make you happier - - for a while, but not for very long. If you’re like most people, they will make you happier for about three months.

After that, you’ll adapt.

For all the millions of Americans who bought a bigger high-definition TV for Christmas this year, there’s some good news. This new TV will make them happier. Until about March.

Similarly, if you or your family suddenly has less money than you used to - - let’s say because one spouse loses a job or stops working to care of children - - as long as your income is above the poverty line, the good news is that you too will adapt.

It seems that one of the keys to discovering long-lasting happiness in life is discovering those things in life that will make us happier that we won’t adapt too. For example, in addition to our economic circumstances, we adapt fairly quickly to things like a change in climate - - people in southern California are no happier on average than people in North Dakota - - or even changes in our health - - people on long-term kidney dialysis are just as happy as much healthier people.

On the other hand, there are some things to which we never adapt well, such as chronic pain, interpersonal conflict, and loud, intermittent noise. There are some changes too which take us a long time - - years, if ever - - to which to adapt, such as the loss of a spouse or a child.

What about some of the factors that do make a difference?

What about gender? Most social scientists who study happiness tell you that men and women are equally happy - - that most women do have higher emotional highs and lower emotions lows than most men, but on average, men and women are equally happy, and if you look at the really big picture, this is true.

However, according to a paper published last year by Betsy Stevenson and Justin Wolfers called “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness,” during the past 35 years, women’s happiness in industrialized nations has been slightly declining, absolutely and relatively compared to men’s happiness even though opportunities for most women have dramatically increased. Nobody quite knows why.

What about our jobs?

In general, as long as you are not unemployed, the fewer hours you work per week and the fewer weeks you work per year, the happier you will be. If we really wanted to maximize happiness in this country, we’d all work about half time. Related to this, the shorter your commute, the happier you will be. More specifically, people who have more decision making in their work are happier. Interestingly, people who have high-prestige jobs - - such as lawyers, doctors, bankers - - are on average not as happy as people in the helping professions - - such as clergy, physical therapists, nurses, and firefighters.

(When I found out about this, I was at first devastated to hear that being a minister is no longer considered to be prestigious but have tried to console myself with the fact that as a minister, I will most likely be happy.)

What about marriage?

We human beings are social creatures. Social scientists studying happiness tell us one of the most important things affecting our happiness is the number and the depth of our relationships with other people, and marriage provides people with on-going opportunities for both emotional and physical intimacy.

(I know this may surprise some of you, but sex seems to really make people happy.)

On average, married people are more likely to be very happy than people who are single, divorced, or widowed. This certainly doesn’t mean all married people are happier than all non-married people, but people who aren’t married may have to be more intentional about creating social relationships in their lives.

It’s also much better not to be married than to be unhappily married. As the Greek dramatist Euripides said, “Marry, and with luck, it may go well. But when a marriage fails, then those who marry live at home in hell.”

What about our religion?

Religious people report being happier than non-religious people, but why does religion make a difference? Is it because religious people are often part of a religious community and have more social relationships, or is it because of what religious people actually believe?

For us religious liberals, there’s good news and bad news here. The more regularly you attend church, the happier you will be. People who attend every Sunday are the happiest! This is partly because of the experience of community. Singing perhaps plays a role because singing, especially in groups, at least temporarily lifts your mood. The research on listening to sermons is very mixed.

However, studies also show that it matters what you believe, and people who hold more orthodox beliefs - - whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim or something else - - are also, on average, happier than Unitarians and Reformed Jews. It seems that blind certainty may be bad for society, but it’s not so bad for individuals.

Now I couldn’t become more religiously orthodox if I tried. I’m a religious liberal not because I want to be but because I have to be. However, I suppose the upshot of this is that if one of our children comes home and says, “I’ve become a born-again Christian,” we should be happy for them.

What about your nationality, or more accurately, the country where you live? As you probably know, if you had your choice of any country in which to be born and you wanted the best chance at being happy, you wouldn’t choose the United States.

In fact, you’d probably choose Denmark, Switzerland, Holland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Ireland, Australia, or even Canada before you chose the U.S.

Why? People who live in democracies, like the U.S., are usually happier than people who don’t live in democracies, but people who live in countries with less inequality of wealth are happier than people who live in countries, like the U.S., with greater inequalities of wealth. Related to this, people who live in countries with a greater social safety net - - think universal health care with a public option - - are happier than people who live in countries without such a net. People who live in countries where people work less, have slightly lower standards of living but have more time to spend with family and friends, like many European countries, are also happier than people who work longer hours, have higher incomes, but spend less time with family and friends, like both the U.S. and Japan.

Let me try to put all of this into perspective, however, and let’s look at the Happiness Formula again.

As I said before, in the Happiness Formula, “S” - - our genetic set point - - determines about 50 percent of our happiness. How important are the circumstances of our lives? Surprisingly to me, according to scientific studies of what makes us happy, it seems that our life circumstances determine only about 10 percent of our overall happiness.

This strikes me as not only being incredible, but having some interesting implications.

The truth is, by any objective measure, like many of us here, I lead a very fortunate life, especially when I compare my life not only to the lives of other people in this country, but to the lives of the other six billion people on this planet, not to mention the billions of people who have come and gone before us on this planet.

But like all of us, I suspect, I do sometimes spend time imagining my life different than it is now.

You know the Unitarian Universalist congregation in Honolulu is looking for a new minister this year, and at least one, or twice (or maybe even more than that) I’ve curiously imagined what it would be like to preach in a Hawaiian shirt every Sunday morning as palms trees sway gently in calm, 75-degree Pacific breezes outside the open sanctuary windows.

Or, I’ve wondered what it would be like to have written a book that appears on the New York Times best-seller list, to have Sue Eaton, our church administrator, call out one Wednesday morning, “It’s Oprah again on Line 2,” and to respond, “Tell her I’ll call her back after I’m done talking with Charlie Rose.”

Or, I’ve wondered, what it would be like to have enough money simply to travel around the world, to visit Venice before it sinks, to stand before the Great Pyramids of Egypt, or go on a photo safari in Kenya, to dine in one of the fine restaurants of Paris and send the mussels back to the kitchen because they were slightly overcooked.

Yet everything that the study of happiness tells us is that neither I nor any of the rest of us should spend too much time wishing the circumstances of our lives to be any different than what they are because even the circumstances of our lives were different, it wouldn’t make very much of a difference if any at all in how happy we were.

Here’s something else. Let’s look at the Happiness Formula again. If our genetic set point accounts for 50 percent of our happiness, and our the circumstances of our lives account for only 10 percent of our happiness, this means that in this formula, “V” which stands for thoughts and actions under our voluntary control - - accounts for up to 40 percent our happiness.

Now whether you believe that this is good news or bad news - - whether you believe that it’s good news or bad news that 40 percent of your happiness is totally up to you, totally up to your ordinary, everyday thoughts and actions, totally up to the way you choose to look at yourself, your life, and the world, and some simple things you do or don’t do everyday - - that is probably determined in part by the 50 percent of your happiness accounted for by your genetic predisposition.

I happen to think it’s good news, and I’ll talk more about it next week.

But let me finish this morning with words based on a poem by Walt Whitman:

Will you seek in far off places?

Surely you come home at last.

In familiar forms and faces,

Thing best known, you find the best.

Joy and peace are in this hour.

Here, not in another place.

Here, in this beloved flower;

Now, in this beloved face.

So may it be for all of us. Amen.

My sources for this sermon include Authentic Happiness by Martin Seligman, The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom by Jonathan Haidt, The How of Happyness by Sonja Lyubormirksy, The Pursuit of Happiness by David G. Meyers, and Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert.