A Prescription For Happiness

Dr Mark Rowe is a happiness expert. His quest to find the truth about what it is, how you achieve it and how to hold on to it, led to a great deal of research and a book based on his findings. Here’s his prescription for happiness

If I was to ask you what do you really really want from life, when it's all stripped away, then if you're like most people around the world you'll say you want happiness, contentment, inner peace and fulfilment. Happiness can be one of those things that's hard to define and it can mean so many different things to different people, but generally we all know it when we experience it. 

For me happiness is about making the best of good times as well as having the resilience to deal with tough times. In Buddhist philosophy there can be no real happiness without having at some time experienced its opposite – suffering. Suffering and happiness are two sides of the same coin. There’s no doubt that the Covid pandemic has brought struggle and suffering to so many. Which is perhaps a reason why this topic of ‘happiness’ is now more important than ever. 
Of course I'm not suggesting it's possible to learn how to be happy all the time. 
Real life has plenty of setbacks and speed bumps and of course you are hardwired for fear, anxiety and survival, not for happiness. Life is never perfect for anyone so don’t expect it from yourself.

 Don’t let life pass you by awaiting perfection before you allow yourself to be happy. Learn to embrace your flaws, accept what you can’t change and find the courage to change what you can. Give yourself permission to be more human by making the best of good times by and having the resilience to embrace defeat, disappointments and dealing with tough times. 

Perhaps the best definition of happiness I've come across is that happiness is the result of having someone to love, something to be grateful for, something useful to do and something to hope for and look forward to.
Positive psychology focuses on what's strong rather than what's wrong, a strength based approach to living rather than focusing on inadequacy or weakness. 
For me as a medical doctor, my interest in sustainable happiness is that being happier can improve your health. It has been so interesting to observe first-hand how patients can and have benefitted from the findings of evidence based positive psychology as a means to build new habits and boost wellbeing. Unsurprisingly this science of happiness and wellbeing is spreading around the world as people begin to embrace the possibilities for their own lives. 

So what is happiness ?
Happiness is an emotional state or feeling of contentment fulfilment and wellbeing which triggers positive emotion. 
There is clearly a difference between your moment to moment experience of happiness right now as you read this and your sense of reflected happiness and life satisfaction when you stop and ask yourself how happy you are with your life overall.
Fundamentally happiness includes three things - pleasure, engagement and meaning. Pleasure is a profound psychological need. It feels good, you gravitate towards it. The carrot is so much better than the stick. Just think for a moment about all the sources of pleasure in your own life. For me these include the aroma of freshly ground coffee, a few squares of really dark chocolate, walking in nature, sitting at a warm fire. Pleasure is wonderful in its own right in the moment but must by definition be temporary and transient- otherwise your brain would adapt and turn pleasure into routine. All that glitters is not gold!
An interesting question to ask yourself is do your sources of temporary pleasure bring you lasting happiness. 
Sustainable happiness also requires a sense of engagement - being creative, energised, and stretched to the limit motivated for personal growth.
William Butler Years, one of the world’s greatest poets once wrote that happiness is neither pleasure nor virtue nor this nor that, but simply growth. We are happiest when we are growing. Climbing a mountain of value to us, neither necessarily reaching the summit nor wandering aimlessly at the foothills.
Sustainable happiness also requires a sense of purpose and meaning. Despite struggles and setbacks, time and again the human mind can overcome these with a renewed sense of purpose, perspective and what we call post-traumatic growth. In fact far more people grow from adversity than languish from post-traumatic stress. In ‘Mans Search for Meaning’, (one of my all-time favourite books), Victor Frankl understood, despite the harrowing circumstances he found himself in, that he had the power to choose how to respond in any given moment. “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves,” he explains.
From an evolutionary viewpoint this all makes sense. Because If some achievement or acquisition made you permanently happy you would probably lose your motivation or initiative to learn new skills and grow as a person. On the other hand if loss or so called failure led to a permanent sense of disillusionment then that would be highly detrimental to your wellbeing and chances of survival. 

But can you actually become happier? 

As a doctor I would have initially thought that perhaps it is possible to become a little happier, while mostly believing that the attainment of happiness boils down to your personality, circumstance and the cards you were dealt. It turns out that about 50% of your potential happiness is inherited. This is your inbuilt baseline happiness level or set point. All things being equal, once your basic survival needs have been met then only about 10% is accounted for by your life circumstances. The remaining 40% what I call the 40% solution, is determined by every day choices and habits. 
A written gratitude practice can be really good medicine for the mind, body and soul and a powerful medical antidote to toxic stress. It is simply not possible to feel envious, resentful or hostile and grateful at the same time - try it and see for yourself. By focusing on selecting positive things that are good in your life, you undertake a sort of filtering process whereby you filter out the more irrelevant and negative aspects. This retrains your brain to reinforce the positive which over time can lead to a real shift in your perspective and personal reality. 
The key idea is that life, to a large degree, is how you choose to see it. The ability to respond through the lens of gratitude and appreciation rather than absence and scarcity. 

My book ‘A Prescription for Happiness - ten commitments for a healthier life’ - describes many of these happiness boosting habits. These include gratitude, kindness to others and to yourself, supportive relationships, working towards goals consistent with your values, time and exercise the greatest pill of all. It also involves realistic optimism, cultivating simplicity, spirituality and the courage to choose. Ultimately, finding happiness becomes a choice - your everyday choice to find more balance, harmony, contentment and fulfilment. To value the everyday moments, people, conversations, the gift that is life itself.
Here’s to your happiness!
Dr. Mark Rowe, GP, Author and advocate for positive health and lifestyle medicine. www.drmarkrowe.com or follow on Facebook Instagram and Twitter 
@drmarkrowe