Read the full transcript of author Lenorë Lambert’s talk titled “Why Chasing Happiness Is Nuts: What To Do Instead” at TEDxBillings 2024 conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
The Pursuit of Happiness
LENORË LAMBERT: How much money do you need in your bank account to be really happy? $50,000? $500,000? A million? More? What kind of number do you think would actually send you there? You might have a number. You might be working towards it right now. You might even be getting close. But I’m here to tell you that no matter what that number is, you’re never going to be happy all the time. And getting rich is the slow boat there. In the next 15 minutes, I’m going to share with you a better recipe.
When I was 24, I’d landed my first real job outside of a university. I joined an HR consulting firm. And for the first time in my life, I was being paid more than a pittance. No one had taught me how to live a great life. I didn’t even really know what that meant. So I looked around in my society for clues. The signposts seemed to point to three things: look good, make money, and buy stuff. And the billboards and magazines told me that if I had enough of these things, then I’d nailed it. And the sign that I’d nailed it is that I’d be a shiny, happy person all the time. It’d be all good.
So I was earning some money. And next, I followed the signpost saying stuff. I bought myself a sports car. A red sports car. I transferred the money and the man’s just given me the keys and he’s pulling out of his driveway. And as he drives past, his wife winds down her window and she yells to me, “You’re going to love it. People will look at you.” I’m 24. I’m thinking, “Yeah, baby. Why else would you buy a red sports car?” So I’m earning money. Tick. I’ve just bought this very cool bit of stuff. Tick. And according to the woman, the bit of stuff was going to help me tick the third box: looking good. I was flying out of the blocks on this happy life thing.
The Emptiness of Achievement
By my early 30s, my pursuit of happiness had taken me to all sorts of places. I’d done the corporate thing. Tasted the high life. Corporate credit cards, nice hotels, restaurants, holidays.
At the age of 41, I followed another sparkling signpost: sporting success. I took up master’s athletics and I loved it. Soon I was training six times a week. Following best practice, nutrition and sleep. Arranging my life location to always be near an athletics track. After five years, I was 0.79 of a second off the world record for the 400 metre hurdles. I came home from world championships with eight world championship medals. Most athletes are over the moon if they manage to bag one. Here I was with eight of the darn things. But what I noticed was, after the competition was over, this highly sought after achievement didn’t change my life one bit.
After all that effort and achieving most of the ambitious goals I’d set, here I was feeling underwhelmed. I’m sitting in my gym and I’m looking at the board on my wall with all the shiny medals on it. And my life is the same as before. The experience itself was a thrill. But that’s gone now. It’s just a memory. And I’m feeling adrift. Kind of in the doldrums. All that effort and time and dedication and success. And life wasn’t any different. It was just ordinary.
And I’m starting to think I’m being duped. Or maybe I’m missing something. I’d followed all these signs: money, stuff, achievement, winning. But despite the fun parts of these things, I just never felt full. I found myself standing at this point in my life asking, “Is this it? Is this as good as it gets? And if so, why are there still so many bumpy bits? Stress, angst, this sense of underwhelm, of emptiness.”
And it began to dawn on me that happiness is a feeling that arises while I was having an experience. Certain internal experiences and external events come together in this moment. It’s not a destination. You can’t set up camp there permanently.
The Loneliness Epidemic
And as I pondered this, I realized that in the developed world today, most of us have what we need to flourish physically. We’re safer and more comfortable than most of our human ancestors. And yet, we’re miserable. Anxiety, depression, suicide, depths of despair, on the rise. The World Health Organization has declared that loneliness is a pressing global threat. Being lonely has the same impact on our lifespan as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. In the UK, they even have a minister responsible for reducing loneliness.
The word “success” has become synonymous with making lots of money. And we assume without question that it’s the key ingredient in happiness. Meanwhile, a lack of connection with others is literally killing us. Well, I want to hack down this misguiding signpost that tells us that getting rich is the answer.
I discovered that out of the 195 countries in the world, the US is the sixth wealthiest by GDP per capita. And it has the third highest suicide rate in the developed world. 23rd out of 184 countries that report it. Clearly, money isn’t delivering the happiness we think it will.
So I looked at the research. And it turns out that if we’re asked to assess our satisfaction with life, money matters. It seems to be the measuring stick we use to judge our satisfaction with life. The more we have, the more satisfied we are. However, the research on our happiness in life, that is, our actual lived experience of happiness on a day-to-day basis, that tells a different story. What that tells us is that there is a link between money and happiness, but the size of that relationship is ridiculously small.
On a 100-point happiness scale, if you rated your life 70 at the moment, what size increase would you need in your annual household income to bump yourself up from 70 to 75?