Episode 34.
Why Aren't Americans Happy?

Question:

Key Points:

• The US was rated number 18 in the 2018 International Happiness Study
• (Not in the podcast)The US was rated 19 in the 2019 International Happiness Study
• Seeing your friends more is one of the biggest things you can do to be happier
• There is a lot of research that a person's happiness is significantly dependent on what you are comparing yourself to
• There is a seminal study on olympic medalists which showed that gold medalists are generally the happiest, but bronze medalists are generally happier than the silver medalists
• Silver medalists seem to be comparing themsleves to the gold medalist; essentially thinking about the fact that they didn't get gold
• Bronze medalists, though, seem to be comparing themselves to all the people who did not get a medal, so they are pretty happy
• When looking around, people thend to compare "their back foot to other's front foot"
• When on a job interview, people tend to "put their best foot forward"
• Americans tend to know themselves much better than they know the people around them. As such, they compare their "front foot" to the realistic view of themselves, i.e. their "back foot"
• Recently, Americans have mooved away from real relationships to Facebook relationships. But, what is on social media tends to be what people want others to see, not how their life really is
• There was a study with pigeons on tapping a button multiple times to get food. If the number of times to peck for food is constant, the pigeon learns that amount and will only peck when it wants food. But, if the number of pecks needed is randomized, then the pigeons tend to keep pecking and pecking because they don't know when they will get a reward again
• Making small, short-term goals are more easily achieved, which results in more positive feelings of accomplishment
• Writing goals down make them significantly more likely to be achieved
• The number one thing in a book called "Great at Work", is to "do less, then obsess"
• Some practical things that you can do to do less negative comparisons:
  • Spend less time on social media, either by limitign the days you go on or the amount of time per day or per time you go on
  • Write down things you care about, such as in a gratitude journal. On a regular cadence (e.g. every day), look at the journal, remember what you are grateful for, and write anything new down
  • Write down your goals and review your goals regularly
  • "Do less, then obsess": figure out what is most important for you to do, and then be sure to do that really well
  • Develop deep relationships with friends and spend time with them
• A lot of Americans have a "do more" mentality, where they want to do everything
• This often causes us to try to do too much, which results in too little sleep, which results in poor performance on the things you are trying to do
• It is important to realize that by definition, when you say "yes" to one thing, you are saying "no" to something else
• When you are with close friends, you end up knowing a lot more about a person (and they know the same about you), which makes you feel like you are about as good as those around you