What, don’t you believe me? Let's see, if Eduardo Punset can propose a formula, why can I not? I know that to compare myself with him is pretentious at least, (hence my respects to so enjoyed thinker and communicator). Let me instead mimic those studies from some universities that do not want to give up any of the funds that have been granted, and make up the strangest questions to keep their places of research. So, if someone can answer why people who walk 1.3 miles a day and eat chocolate have a 50% higher probability of skipping a traffic light in their life, I can give myself the true formula for happiness. This much for the heading. Well, now in print:
I must say that I have not really invented the formula, but I've improved it.
Do you want to know how I got to it? Let me tell you how it happened, because sometimes the causes are as illustrative as the findings:
I was traveling with a friend in a distant country, a few years ago. We spent a couple of days in a beautiful city that we would leave soon. It was summer and the heat became stifling, still, we ate at street level in a restaurant terrace. Under the heat, with a full stomach and some accumulation of alcohol after the previous night dissipated celebrations I found myself somewhat concerned by a host of setbacks.
These were: we were leaving our department that particular day to continue our trip in a rental car that we would pay half my friend and me. However, we unsuccessfully contacted the owner of the department to repay the bond we needed so bad, at risk of losing the money if that was delayed until that evening. Secondly, that morning I had tried to withdraw money from an ATM, and in my stupidity (or after alcoholic beverages the night before) got the wrong password enough times that my card got invalidated. Among all this, the time limit to pick up the car to leave the following morning was approaching, and if we failed in that, we could find ourselves hundreds of miles away from our paid rooms and no means of transport. So I was restless, with many annoying unknowns and problems piling at times.
I guess all that suggested the coming meditation during the warm food. Namely, that the famous general equality of Happiness = Reality - Expectations, was quite true, strictly speaking. Everything is relative, with respect to human affairs, that was clear to me (it is not the same to be on holiday than in a more urgent situation), and our degree of happiness is proportional to how the facts meet our expectations, too. However, there is one aspect that has not been taken into account and is crucial in this "happy" statement: the time variable.
I realized that just as the vicissitudes of life can cause us to raise and lower on the wheel of fortune, in our great ability to adapt to the world, so do our expectations, changing as our new constraints do. But they do it in a peculiar way. That is, we quickly adapt to the good and not so much to the bad. When our expectations are met, we almost instantly create higher expectations, but when the facts disappoint us, it takes us a long time to assume, prolonging our misery (or supporting a difference between reality minus expectations clearly negative for long periods). This is what I show below:
The facts evolve, and our expectations are following them. As good news increase for us, our expectations match them, but as soon as the facts support a much lower expectations, our unhappiness is great.
So, it takes us huge effort to reduce our level of expectation to the facts that are more immediate, and sometimes never do. Have you not heard of the plight of families who have lost all their wealth? I sense that suffering has little to envy those who have had little all along.
But let me come back to my story. I was discussing with my colleague these ideas, when suddenly I felt a sharp pang, perhaps the result of heat, coffee, hangover, or our concerns, and in that instant, I clearly saw it, that was my revelation:
The key to happiness is to perform a dynamic adaptation of expectations. If we can become fully aware of the present moment, to fully assume the reality of our current environment, forgetting our past expectations, which correspond to a world that is not ours anymore, we can adapt quickly and avoid suffering more than necessary. Let us look at the immediacy, which is what counts, when we want to worry. Thus we shorten the time of our unhappiness and we can enjoy the good news even before, because we are in tune with the present (see example shown, for the same chain of events in the previous case).
I know this may sound a little self-help book without foundation, but think about it, it makes sense. I immediately applied to it thanks to the inspiration of a pressing need bowel. Car rentals, deposits, cards, were clouding a happy holiday time, until another problem, much more challenging, took center stage. And I admitted: "Forget everything," I said to myself, "here and now, all that matters is to find a restroom, everything else will come afterwards."
Fortunately I got relieved and, believe it or not, for the same night the other problems were solved as well. That is the way I have my revelations, discharging the bowels.
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