A close friend told me yesterday about how disappointed she is with her life. Her dream to start a new business, for some reason, has to wait another couple of months. She was upset and frustrated. If she could, she would skip the days that separated her from the long-awaited event. I tried to persuade her that it did not make sense to be so pessimistic about the present and so optimistic about the future. I failed. She assumed I converted to some sort of new-age religion and ignored my opinions. 

So, I decided I will try to simplify the message.

It is a common belief that if you fulfill your desires and are satisfied with your life, you should feel consequently happy. However, in a famous study, happiness and life satisfaction did not show the expected correlation: a person could be satisfied with her life, yet be unhappy (Kahneman, 2006).

How life satisfaction and happiness are different?

The Nobel prize Daniel Kahneman explained the difference. Happiness is the momentary pleasure we feel when we do something we enjoy. Life satisfaction is the sense of gratification we experience when we look back at what we have accomplished. If you are curious about the distinction between happiness and life satisfaction and its consequences, I vividly invite you to watch Kanheman in a brilliant TED talk. You will be surprised to learn that our bad memory plays a crucial role in the distinction, but that is out of the scope of this article. 

In a previous study, Kahneman (2004) showed that, above all, meaningful relationships with friends trigger happiness. So, happiness is not necessarily experienced by successful or wealthy people. In another work, Kahneman (2010) showed that above the threshold of $60,000 /year of income, Americans are more satisfied with their life as they increasingly earn more money, but they are not necessarily happier.

So, money can improve how we evaluate our life, but it does not buy us happiness. What buys us happiness is to be presently open to social interactions. Despite these pieces of evidence, in “Conversation with Tyler”, Kahneman argued that during his career he could appreciate how people were indubitably more interested in maximizing life satisfaction. They were not so engaged in maximizing the experiences of happiness.

We are more focused on making sure our future self will be successful, instead of enjoying the current experiences of our present self

Is prioritizing life satisfaction over happiness a smart move?

According to many studies, setting a new goal boosts our motivation at work, and helps us get things done (Elliot & Dweck, 1988; Locke, 1996). The benefits of goal achievement are well established and totally desirable. However, we should consider that engaging uniquely in pursuing one achievement after another creates tradeoffs with other important dimensions of our wellbeing. This is documented in work settings: although work engagement is rewarding it can hide the cost of poor work-life balance, family conflicts, and high stress levels (Halbesleben, 2009).

Let me also add that the sense of gratification we feel when we look at our accomplishments is costly but not long-lasting, and what is worst, it does not depend totally on us. Unfortunately, achievements are not entirely in our hands: external factors play a crucial role. Getting a job promotion may be difficult if the startup you work for is having a hard time launching a new product on the market. If you based your sense of fulfillment on that and don’t let yourself enjoy anything else, you are in big trouble.

There is something more. When we deal with the concept of life satisfaction, a cognitive trap called focusing illusion comes into play. Kahneman introduced the phenomenon of focusing illusion in his book Thinking fast and slow. He argued that “nothing in life is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it”.

If you are interested in the phenomenon of focusing illusion, you can find many examples, evidence-based, in the aforementioned publication about the distinction between happiness and life satisfaction (Kahneman, 2006).  

Let me go back to my friend’s experience to give here an example of focusing illusion. She decided that her future self will be much happier than her present self. She decided she needs to achieve her dream of starting her own business to be happy. Nothing in the bigger picture of her life will matter to her while she is so focused on her goal. She will not allow herself to settle for anything else. What if she achieves her dream and she does not feel the anticipated joy? Well, looking back to her achievement, she will most likely think she must be happy, even if she is not. Besides a positive rational evaluation, she will be the same person at an emotional level. However, since she is fully committed to her dream, she will tell herself she is happy.

This is precisely what focusing illusion means: The mere fact we think something is important makes it important. Yet, once we achieve the goal, we adapt to the feeling of gratification and move to the next illusion.  

Most people live their life discounting the present and projecting themselves in a future where they finally get what they think is required to be happy. It can be money, a relationship, moving to a new country. It can be anything we decided is our gateway to a fulfilling life.

Focusing on the negative is our tendency as humans. But we cannot ignore the fact we now know it is just an illusion: the more we focus on things we don’t have, the more they get important.

The smart move is to be honest with ourselves and recognize that we do need new things in life to get excited. But the real emotion of happiness? Well, that fleeting feeling cannot be postponed, nor is subordinate to future life events. Happiness is purely in the intentional actions we make today.

References

Elliott, E. S., & Dweck, C. S. (1988). Goals: An approach to motivation and achievement. Journal of personality and social psychology, 54(1), 5.

Halbesleben, J. R., Harvey, J., & Bolino, M. C. (2009). Too engaged? A conservation of resources view of the relationship between work engagement and work interference with family. Journal of applied psychology, 94(6), 1452.

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Macmillan.

Kahneman, D., & Deaton, A. (2010). High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being. Proceedings of the national academy of sciences, 107(38), 16489–16493.

Kahneman, D., Krueger, A. B., Schkade, D. A., Schwarz, N., & Stone, A. A. (2004). A survey method for characterizing daily life experience: The day reconstruction method. Science, 306(5702), 1776-1780.

Kahneman, D., Krueger, A. B., Schkade, D., Schwarz, N., & Stone, A. A. (2006). Would you be happier if you were richer? A focusing illusion. science, 312(5782), 1908-1910.Locke, E. A. (1996). Motivation through conscious goal setting. Applied and preventive psychology, 5(2), 117-124.