The science of happiness is perhaps something unexpected for most people. The first time I stumbled upon an anthropology on happiness my first thought was how trite. Shouldn't we be studying how to prevent genocide or how to end world hunger, who cares about happiness? But then I thought about it more and I realized, happiness is the thing we pursue. Why there are wars or famines or inequalities ultimately comes from the fact that some nations and groups of people are pursuing their own or their people's happiness at the expense of others' happiness. But ultimately, the pursuit of happiness in the end is what drives us all. Yet we are so unhappy as a whole, as a society. In the study I read in school, it suggested we were the happiest when we were hunter gatherers. We had the most free time then then we do now. Of course I think a lot of us think of hunter gatherers as a period where we desperately were trying to find enough to eat and in a state of constant wandering looking for a safe place but we actually typically had large storage of food, 70-80% of calories were gathered and plentiful, and spent most of our time raising our children, telling stories and generally enjoying each others' time. So what happened?
Some blame that we put work first and actual living second, that the job that was supposed to provide the capital for life took over the life. Some blame capitalistic greed and the constant desire that is never fulfilled. I think of the parable that has been passing through social media for some time now about the businessman seeing the small fisherman and telling the small fisherman he should monetize and create a large fishery and have employees so he can make a profit. When the fisherman asks what he would do once he spends his life creating this company the businessman replies, “Then you can sit on the beach and relax!” to which the fisherman replies, “But this is what I am doing now.” And while it is easy to blame modern society, greed and ego for the lack of happiness, and there are some truths there, this alone is not the reason for modern society being depressed. We pursue the things we are told to pursue, nice cars, home ownership, name brand or fancy things, attractive spouse and friends and so on because we expect these things to bring us happiness. And for some people these things do bring happiness, while others are miserable. Likewise, people with very little might be considered very happy while those with everything might feel a void. Yes, we follow these things for happiness because that is what our society tells us to do, but none of these things are intrinsically corrupt or bad. The answer to happiness isn't giving up worldly possession or desires just as it isn't accumulating those things. The reason might be something much less unexpected.
Harvard researcher, Matt Killingsworth, spent several years developing an app to study happiness and what he found is not surprising to us at Bullionite, but maybe surprising to you, and that is that the secret to happiness is mindfulness. That is being in the present moment and enjoying your life in this moment. In a sampling of 15,000 participants spanning socio economic, countries, education and gender lines he found that we are most happy when we are in the present moment and least happy when our mind is wandering. How his study worked was he had the app text people at random moments throughout the day and ask them to rate their current happiness and what they were currently doing. Consistently it didn't matter so much what the people were doing on whether they were happy or not but how present they were while they were doing it. Even when people's minds were wandering to pleasant thoughts they still ranked happier when they were actively engaged. He also found that our minds wander on average 47% of the time in the day, meaning we are not in our peak happiness at these times. Killingsworth isn't alone in his findings, part of why we suspect hunter gatherers were the happiest of humans is because they were constantly involved in activities that required them to be present. Be it gathering food or telling stories or engaging with the tribe, it required being present. They also lacked the modern devices that thrive off letting our mind's wander so we can engage with advertising or the app, like social media.
So the next time you are questioning why start or continue your mindfulness exercises, or a friend asks you why do you practice mindfulness, remember this article and tell them not only is mindfulness beneficial for your stress levels, goal setting, communication skills and so many other things, it also just might be the secret to happiness. And who couldn't use a little more happiness in their lives? Visit our blog at https://www.bullionite.com/blog-index for more articles on mindfulness and reach out to us with any questions or comments at info@bullionite.com.