The Expert’s Guide to Boosting Creativity, Mastering Gratitude, and Making Exercise More Fun Than Sex

A conversation about owning the unknown, finding your people, and, yes, making exercise more fun than sex.

Scott: Why not write a book on happiness or how to get more money? Why on a good life? What’s the difference?

Jonathan: There have been so many books on happiness over the last decade or so; I think the topic has been extraordinarily well-covered. Part of what the research is uncovering is that the maniacal pursuit of happiness can set up expectations for an end state that’s not attainable, and leave you anxious and stressed—it’s not unusual for you to end up less happy than when you started.

The research [also] shows that we’re not 100{b163ed859cc9a16ba73837184ee02d2cdeccd9aa6dd670f1698634a383290a0c} in control of “happiness.” There are certain things that we can do, but at the same time, there’s almost a genetic set point for happiness that we tend to revert to. [So] to say, “My happy should look like the happy of this person who’s bouncing off the walls and wakes up smiling all the time,” can set you up to feel even worse about the whole thing.

Then there’s the third confounding variable, which is that it’s hard to understand what anybody is actually talking about when we use the word “happy.” In the research, nobody defines “happiness.” Generally the questions are asking people, have they laughed or been happy in the last 24 hours, but you can’t give a universal, objective description of it. We end up with literature that’s fascinating, but there’s this big, gray, undefinable in the middle: what does it actually mean to be happy? From what I’ve seen, the things that most effectively deliver people to this state that we call “happy” are pursuing relationships, pursuing connection, pursuing meaning. This state of happiness ensues more as a side effect of those other things, rather than trying to pursue it as a direct outcome.

Read more at Helio.