This is a little lesson on happiness. After reading this post, I hope it will be easier for you to be happy.

To avoid any confusion, I will start by explaining what I mean by happiness.

When I say happiness in this post, I mean the excitement and energy that you feel when something good happens to you. Like when you get a raise, or when you buy something you wanted. You know that feeling.

With that in mind, now let’s understand how happiness works.

Happiness depends on life’s direction

How happy you are at a given moment is not determined by your current state but by the direction you are moving in. If your life is improving in the areas that you value, you are moving in the right direction, and that will increase your happiness. And if your life is deteriorating in those areas, you are moving in the wrong direction, and that will decrease your happiness.

How about when your life is neither improving nor deteriorating?

Here’s the most important thing to understand about happiness: When life is stagnant, at any level, your happiness reverts to its baseline.

The baseline of happiness

We all have a base level of happiness or the baseline of happiness. And it can be different for everyone. If you want to know what your baseline of happiness is, observe how you generally feel on ordinary days of your life when nothing particularly exciting is happening. The way you feel then is your base level of happiness.

When you move in the right direction as described above, your happiness goes upward from the baseline. Meaning you feel happy. But once you stop moving, your happiness will gradually revert to the baseline.

Let’s take the example of money. Say with the amount of money you currently have in your bank you’re neither happy nor unhappy. That means this is your base level of happiness. Now as you get more money, your happiness will go up from the baseline. You will feel happier. But for you to continue to feel the increased level of happiness, money will need to continue to increase. Once the money stops increasing, happiness will gradually revert to its baseline. You will be richer, but no happier than you are now.

Ask a lottery winner if they are as happy after a year of winning the lottery as they were on the day they won it. They won’t be nearly as happy because, after one burst that increased their money and spiked their happiness above the baseline, the money didn’t continue to increase, which brought their happiness back near the baseline.

When you get a salary hike, seal a lucrative business deal, or buy something you want, you feel happy. But you don’t stay that happy for a prolonged period. That’s because happiness always tends to revert to its baseline. Constant movement in the right direction is needed to maintain the happiness level above the baseline.

When you move in the wrong direction, meaning when you lose the things you value, your happiness will move downward from your baseline. You will feel unhappy. But what is interesting is, even in that case, after a while gradually your happiness will revert to the baseline! Your unhappiness will wane with time as you get used to the state you were thrust into. And again as you start moving in the right direction from there, you will feel happy.

What all this means is that happiness is dependent on your state relative to the prior state, and not on the absolute state of your life. In other words, if things in your life are generally improving, you are happy. It doesn’t matter what level you are at.

Insights about happiness

It is possible for a millionaire and a beggar to be equally happy because happiness is not determined by one’s current level or state of being. It’s determined by what direction one is moving in. A beggar can feel as much happiness on his good day when he gets a handsome meal as a millionaire would feel on his good day when he seals a lucrative business deal.

But happiness always reverts to the baseline. This understanding of happiness brings with it some fascinating insights.

Insight #1

No matter what you lose in life, whether it’s money, woman, or anything else, it’s not the end of your happiness. You will get used to it and your unhappiness will eventually fade as your happiness reverts to its baseline.

The human mind can get used to virtually any state short of physical torture.

Insight #2

Achieving your goals won’t make you happy but the process of moving towards them will. When you’re moving toward your goals, you’re moving in the right direction. That is exactly what produces happiness. Once you achieve a goal, the spike in happiness will be momentary as it has to go back to the baseline.

Hence the wisdom that the real enjoyment is in the journey. The journey is the destination!

Insight #3

Wealth won’t make you happy. Wealth is valued for what it brings. That’s comfort. And there is only so much comfort you can add to your life. Once you have all the comforts you can afford, that journey ends there. Happiness would start reverting to the baseline. In the absence of positive movement in the other areas of life, and negative movement in some, it is even possible that happiness would decline despite all the wealth and comforts of the world. That’s why we see super-rich people also falling into depression.

Here I don’t want you to misunderstand me about wealth. I am by no means saying that you should not strive to be wealthy. You definitely should. Being poor is no path to happiness no matter what you value in life. Money is a lubricant. Money makes it easy for you to achieve what you value.

The key to happiness

To remain happy, you have to keep moving in the right direction about the things you value. There would be things you don’t have control over, and if those things go in the wrong direction, you must counterbalance that by moving the things you can control in the right direction.

The net movement of life should be positive for you to be happy. The one thing that is certainly in your control is your self-improvement. Moreover, the more you improve yourself the higher the odds of other things moving in the right direction. Constant self-improvement can counterbalance every negative movement in your life.

So long as you keep moving in the right direction about your self-improvement, you will likely never face shattering unhappiness.