The 3 Things Happiness Requires

As I write this, I’m in the heart of Denver in a coffee shop that I could only describe as… exactly what you’d expect a Denver coffee shop to be. It’s a warehouse closet with one wall covered in grassy moss and another an entire pane of glass revealing vintage coffee equipment. 

The barista, wearing a thick flannel, asked me if I preferred a coffee from Honduras or another coffee from Honduras. My palate isn’t that advanced.  

My brother, Connor, is locked in on work across the table from me, but I’m distracted. It’s my favorite morning of the year: the first Thursday of March Madness. 

I’m a basketball fanatic. I played growing up, and I have a lot of childhood memories attending tournament games with my family. The NCAA tournament has a different juice to it. It’s a David vs. Goliath-like feel. All of a sudden you’re actively rooting for a school that you don’t even know the location of. The urgency of win or go home. It’s cutthroat. It’s thrilling. 

Connor and I are heading over to watch a few games today.

In this moment, I couldn’t be happier. Which, has me thinking about happiness.  

In my early 20s, I was obsessed with the study of happiness and the emerging field of positive psychology. I spent an inordinate amount of time reading the works of Shawn Achor, Tal Ben Shahar, Martin Seligman, and Barbara Fredrickson. I fell asleep listening to the recorded tapes of Napoleon Hill, Earl Nightingale, John Maxwell, and Jim Rohn.  

Yeah, there wasn’t a lot of dating going on back then. 

Over the years, I’ve gotten a lot wrong about happiness. Happiness does fuel higher performance and well-being, but it can’t be pursued. It has to ensue. The more we make happiness the goal, the more it eludes us.

Happiness is a byproduct of three things. It’s the result of having something to do, someone to love, and someone to be.

Something to do 

In the psychotherapist Carl Jung’s autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, he writes about a transformational story in his childhood. He had to drop out of school because he kept randomly fainting. Apparently, this intellectual titan was paralyzed by fear of mathematics. 

“I was free” he wrote. “I dream for hours.. [and I’d] be anywhere I liked.” But after about six months, he had this nagging sense life was passing him by. He didn’t feel engaged or fulfilled. His father was concerned too of what he’d become in life if he couldn’t be cured. 

One day after overhearing his father’s concerns, he remembered being “thunderstruck” and immediately feeling this sense of responsibility to reengage with the world. He thought, “Why, then, I must get to work!” He attacked his studies with vigor. The fainting occurred occasionally, but he continued on anyway. 

This defining moment led Jung to a career of profound discoveries and accolades.  

Psychologists talk a lot about our need to have things to do. As nice as a margarita-fueled beach life sounds, chances are we’d start to feel that same sense of nagging Jung felt. 

Humans don’t do well with stress and chaos, but we also don’t do too well with idle time. 

One of the most fascinating insights I’ve come across is that, oftentimes, Americans find it more difficult to find enjoyment on our weekends than our work week because work requires us to engage our minds, pursue our goals, and have a sense of structure.  

In other words, we need things to do. It’s a fundamental need to seek out novelty and new challenges. Whether toiling with our hands or stretching our minds, we do best when in motion; when engaging in activities that are active, not passive. 

Do something. Anything. Explore your interests. Start with imperfect action. Positive emotions are sure to follow. 

As Harvard psychologist Jerome Bruner says, “You’re more likely to act yourself into feeling than you are feel yourself to action.” 

Somebody to love 

We know that one of the most fundamental needs of humans is to be loved. We need to be hugged and kissed and cared for. We need to be seen, understood, and valued. Children who don’t receive proper care and love have long-lasting, detrimental effects on their psychology. 

As adults, when a little TLC is lacking from our lives, we feel it too. We’ll quit our jobs or send texts at three in the morning.

Our culture doubles down on this need-to-be-loved messaging. We’re told our happiness is dependent on receiving attention, respect, and care from others, so we make checklists of our “perfect partner.” We are quick to identify “red flags” in others. We question whether others are taking care of our needs.

But the other half of the formula is equally important. It’s a fundamental need to love and care for others.  

The psychiatrist and professor at Harvard Medical School, George Vaillant, writes, “successful human development involves, first, absorbing love, next reciprocally sharing love, and finally giving love unselfishly away.” 

I know a woman who emits love to others. She makes everyone feel like they’re the most important person in the world. Whereas others walk into a room and say, “Here I am!” she walks in and says, “There YOU are.” She brings joy to everyone she meets. She’s also one of the happiest people I’ve ever known.

Giving away our attention, resources, and time to others is actually a powerful way to have love flow back to us. The psychiatrist Irvin Yalom finds in his practice that “A problem of not-being-loved is more often than not a problem of not loving.” 

To notice others, to take care of them, to step outside of ourselves isn’t just good for others' happiness, but for our own.

Somebody to be

Lastly, we need somebody to be. Our identity is a complex topic. Who we are is constantly changing and being shaped by both our inner and outer worlds, but we do have a say. We can curate a healthy sense of self by choosing and displaying “good values.”

The author Mark Manson defines “good values” as those that are 1) reality-based 2) socially constructive and 3) immediate and controllable.

For example, feeling positive all of the time is probably not a great thing to value. It’s unrealistic. But being kind even when you’re hangry is because it’s controllable and socially constructive. 

Values like honesty, kindness, courage, self-respect, creativity, humility, service, gratitude, and integrity tend to fuel the good life. Whereas pursuits like power, status, money, or pleasure tend to hurt our sense of wellbeing over the long run. 

When we actively choose our values and find opportunities every day to display those values, we start to develop a sense of self we’re proud of. Pioneers of modern motivational theory, Edward Deci & Richard Ryan find that, “True self-esteem develops when one’s actions are congruent with one’s inner core values and beliefs rather than externally or internally imposed demands.”

Just as we watch and judge other people based on their behavior, we watch and judge ourselves. Every action is a vote for the person we wish to become.

The Paradox of Happiness  

The power of these three elements is that they cause us to forget about happiness entirely. We become so engaged in life that we forget to stop and ask whether we’re happy. The great psychologist Abraham Maslow once said, “The actualized person… seldom stops to assess his happiness.”

In some sense, it’s a paradox because these pursuits don’t necessarily feel good in the short term. Exploration and engaging in new challenges can spark frustration. Focusing on others can make us feel vulnerable (“But who will take care of me?”). Becoming a newer, stronger version of ourselves can be clunky and cause some disturbance in our current environment. 

But over time, these are they pursuits that make life worth living. All three remove us from focusing on how we feel all of the time. They become bigger-than-self pursuits.

And that’s precisely the point. Only by focusing on other things, things that transcend the self, will we find happiness.

We all need something to do, somebody to love, and somebody to be.