All right, my friends, we’re still diving into happiness. And if you’ve been catching the last couple of episodes, we’ve been talking about what drives and doesn’t drive our long term happiness. Now I want to quickly review the happiness research with you, which says that we all have what’s called a set baseline happiness level. And so maybe my baseline level is here and someone else’s is a little bit higher. And so what this means is that good things happen in our life, like maybe we get a new job or we buy a new house, or our kid wins their basketball game. Whatever it is, we get a little boost in happiness and our happiness does go up. Now, it might last for two hours, it might last for two minutes, it might last for two days or two weeks, but it’s always going to come back to whatever your baseline level is.
Now what’s really interesting is Sonja Lubominsky’s research explains the same is true that you and I can have difficult things in our lives to deal with. Disease, loss, trauma, adversities, struggles, and our happiness levels will drop. But what’s very interesting is that almost all human beings reset back to their original happiness baseline. This is not to say that when we endure really hard things in our lives that we don’t suffer from those, but the research shows over and over again that most of us will eventually reset back to our happiness levels. We may carry the grief and the struggle and the trauma of that, but many times our bodies, just like with hedonic adaptation, will adapt. It will adapt from the stressors and somewhat recalibrate.
An example of this is Viktor Frankl. I read his book, Man’s Search for Meaning. Phenomenal, powerful book. And he talks about how he was a Jew and he was sent to the concentration camp with his wife, who I believe was carrying their unborn child, and his mother and father, and they were all separated and every one of them perished except for Victor. Victor somehow made it through years of terrible physical abuse, emotional torment, starvation, disease, all that went in to living in a concentration camp. And Victor says there were two things that even though almost everything had been stripped from him, there were two things that they could never take away from him. One was hope. They could never take away the hope that he had that he could make it through this. And the second thing he said was, I got to control my thoughts. They could not take control of my mind. And Viktor Frankl, who went through immeasurable loss and atrocity in his life, went on to live this life of great purpose and Great meaning.
And so when we’re thinking about our happiness levels and we think about that baseline, why do some of us have a lower baseline than others? And if you think of your happiness as a pie chart, what we know is that 50% of your long term happiness is genetic. I know when I am keynote speaking and I have a crowd of 10,000 people in the crowd and I say, 50% of your long term happiness is genetic. I literally see 80% of the heads drop and I hear whisperings or murmurs of, oh my gosh, I’m so screwed. Because immediately people are thinking of their mom or their dad who has a propensity towards negativity or pessimism. And I know that 50% feels like a lot, but it’s neural wiring. It’s somewhat genetic inside of us. Some of us are born with brains that are wired to see more good than bad, and others of us are wired with brains that see or, or pick out the more negative things. And So I know 50% is huge, but I want you to stick with me here because this is where I think it gets very interesting.
What we know is that we can take every single external circumstance you’ve ever had in your life. What kind of childhood did you have? Were your parents married? Single, divorced? Widowed? Did you have money? Did you not have money? Were you bullied? Were you popular? Were you athletic? Were you not even into adulthood? We can take every single external circumstance that’s been thrown at you. And the happiness research, right, from Sonia Lubominsky says that our external circumstances only contribute about 10% of our long term happiness. 10%.
If you’re like Kim Strobel, you will let some people and some experiences steal way more than 10% for far too long. I am going to tell you that that’s on Kim Strobel. That’s Kim Strobel choosing to let these things steal way more than 10%. Now, granted, if my husband comes home and he decides he’s leaving me for another woman, I’m positive that more than 10% of my happiness will be gone for a period of time. And this does not mean I’m supposed to just shake it off and say, well, that’s an external circumstance and I really shouldn’t let more than 10% of my happiness be stolen. I’m not talking about that. Of course, if something tragic or stressful happens, you will have more than 10% of your happiness stolen for a while, as it rightly should. But I’m talking about long term happiness. And that means if Kim Strobel two years from now is still in the gutter, blaming all or her unhappiness on the fact that Scott Strobel left this marriage. Thank God I’m not having to deal with that.
But you know, if that’s on Kim Strobel, because here’s the thing. Life is unfair. We know this life is challenging. It is full of injustices. But we and only we are 100% responsible for our life, regardless of the past. It’s up to us, right? And so when we think about external circumstances, is I want you to ask yourself, are you letting someone steal way more than 10% of your happiness? Are you letting a situation from years ago rob you of your joy today? And if so, you have to understand that’s a personal choice you’re making. Now, some of you might be wondering, well, Kim, if 50% of our happiness is genetic and only 10% is our external circumstances, well, that leaves 40% of the piece. And what I’ve studied and what I’ve learned and what’s had me on fire for the last 20 years is that every single human can raise their happiness levels by up to 40%. And folks, when we raise our happiness levels up to 40%, we change every single area of our life that’s important to us. It changes how we show up in our job and our career. It changes how we show up in our parenting life, our marriage life, our health and fitness life, our spiritual life. We move the needle in those areas when we learn how to prioritize our happiness and well being first. And that 40% is made up of these three things.
The thoughts you’re thinking, the actions you are or are not taking in your life. And some of you, even if you’re not taking an action that’s a non action that you’re taking. And it’s the behaviors or the habits that you have in your life, right? So it’s thoughts, actions and behaviors that move that 40%. And in my book, Teach Happy Small Steps to Big Joy, I concentrate on what are the happiness habits that are going to cultivate that 40% that’s up for grabs. And so I want to keep this short and sweet, but I want you to understand what the happiness research says and that many times we put an outsized weight or value on things that we say are robbing our happiness, rather than understanding that we have the ability to take more power and personal agency back in our life when we learn how to cultivate happiness habits. And I will get into that in the next episode. Folks, if you have somebody in their life who you’re like, they need this episode. Maybe you have a friend, a sister, a mom or a dad. I want you to send this link, this podcast link over to them and let’s start creating cultures where we take responsibility for our life, our happiness and our well being. Because then, and maybe then can we move the needle in the other areas of our lives.
