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? You would need a 2,777 percent increase in your annual household income for a 5-point boost. Seriously! Think of the time and headspace and energy and stress we put in to earning more money. What a profound mistake we’re making, slavishly following this signpost. Slow boat to happiness.
The Elements of Flourishing
So what’s the answer? Well, first we’ve got to fix the goal. This idea that if we’re nailing every signpost, we’re going to be shiny, happy people all the time. This goal of an all-good, all-happy life is actually part of the problem. It’s nonsense! No matter what we do with our lives, whether we are a famous rock star or a 9-to-5 worker or a CEO or a stay-at-home parent, life’s going to have bumpy bits, setbacks, frustrations, losses, hurts. Things not going our way. Those difficult spaces are not a sign of failure. They’re a sign of being a human being who is alive. We’ve got to truly accept that difficulties are part of the package of being a human. No amount of money, no amount of stuff, no amount of good looks is going to change that.
First, we need to shift the goalposts from this all-good, all-happy life to a flourishing life that includes the whole of the human experience. It includes the uncomfortable bits, the messy bits, the difficult spaces. There’s all of this fun stuff. Flourishing is about fully absorbing the pleasant experiences in life rather than letting them slip on by like we’re made of Teflon. And it’s about working well with the difficult experiences, becoming skilled artisans of our own characters so that we’re not blown around by life’s difficulties.
Trying for three years to break a world record and missing it by 0.79 of a second like I did, it’s part of a flourishing life. Integrating the insights offered by a bout of depression, part of a flourishing life. This means that the whole of life can be part of the flourishing project. Whatever happens, we include it.
Okay, so it’s flourishing as our goal. I’m going to share with you the recipe for doing it. After that moment of emptiness in my gym, those years ago, I used this recipe to make my life rock. It helped me see that some elements were really well-nourished in my life, things like achievement, for example. But others were a bit underdone, things like belonging and connection. And when I saw this, I could turn these into projects, amping up what was already in my life and prioritising these things.
Okay, there are nine elements of human flourishing. Think of a wooden raft made up of nine planks. Each plank is an experience that nourishes us. Together they deliver both safety and fulfilment. The more that are well-nourished, the more we flourish. Feel free to assess your own life on them as we go through.
Okay, the first four make us feel safe. We have material security, feeling physically safe, having enough money to not be worried about getting by. Autonomy, being free to choose how I live my own life. Certainty, understanding enough about the way the world works that I’m not overwhelmed by the uncertainty that’s a part of reality. And belonging, being part of a group. This one’s often undernourished in our modern individualistic societies and it’s related to the loneliness issue. It can be any group, it might be your family, it might be your neighbourhood, your workplace, your sporting team, your local cafe where you’re a regular, your place of worship. The essential thing is that you’re expected to show up somewhere and be part of something. If you don’t, it’s noticed.
The remaining five make us feel fulfilled. We have pleasure, five senses we all know and love, plus the mind. Engagement, being fully absorbed in challenging tasks. Achievement, setting and achieving specific goals. Connection, being known, understood and cared about. This one’s deeper and more personal than belonging. It’s also related to the loneliness issue. Social connection is a stronger predictor of a long, healthy, happy life than IQ, socioeconomic status or genes. It’s not a nice to have, it’s essential for a flourishing life. And finally we have contribution, giving of our talents and resources to help others.
Flourishing fully starts with two decisions. First, set your true north on flourishing, not happiness. Fully absorbing the pleasant experiences in life and using the difficult spaces to hone your character. And second, do an inventory of your life as it is now on the nine elements. Find the element that’s most undernourished and put time into your diary, your day, your week, your month, to bring it to life. Fully float your raft.
Let’s ignore the images on the billboards trying to define a good life for us through money and stuff and looks. Let’s nourish our lives across all nine elements and along the way refine our characters with whatever shows up in life. The pleasant stuff, the difficult spaces and all of our human messiness in between. Thank you.
