Day 20: Happierness
Can tracking your failures make you happier?
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Somewhere between Beaver, Utah and Denver, Colorado, we listened to this episode of The Happiness Lab with Arthur Brooks. Early on, I opened my Notes app to jot down a few ideas I wanted to come back to and I never closed it. In the end, I think I basically transcribed the entire interview.
One of the tenets I loved most about Arthurâs work, and what I wanted to offer today, is something we donât typically talk about in happiness conversations: the value and necessity of unhappiness as a part of our happiness journey.
It reminds me of this part in Project Hail Mary, where one of the characters is trying to work out his velocity, but first he has to know: compared to what? Because velocity is relative. It can only be measured in the context of two different objects.
I think happiness is probably the same. It exists in relationship to unhappiness.
In his class at Harvard, Arthur gives all of his students an assignment (he also covers this at the 3 minute mark in this clip, if you donât have time for the entire podcast):
Create a Failure & Disappointment Journal
Every day, you write down a bad thing that happened. This starts the process of you managing these negative experiences, rather than the other way around.
A month later, you go back and you write one thing youâve learned about yourself because of that thing that happened.
Six months later, you go back and you write down one good thing that came out of that bad thing that happened.
I heard that and thought: Whoah.
How powerful would it be to leave yourself a breadcrumb trail like that. Connecting dots that, when left isolated, tell one story. But, when directly linked to what follows, can be translated with an entirely different context.
We all want to be happy. And we all have regrets and disappointments.
So many of us feel defined by our mistakes and failures (I know I do). They create a chasm between us and the life we want. Happiness lives on the other side.
We think happiness means overcoming our unhappiness, one big leap from where we are to where we want to be, but maybe the work is building a bridge, so both can exist together. Unhappiness becoming a part of our happiness. And a way for us to move more easily between the two.
@tami What a great idea: Create a Failure & Disappointment Journal. Reflecting back after a month and then six months could be remarkable. Must try this.