The Recession as the Catalyst for Happiness

Lately I’ve been seeing articles here and there about how the recession has actually freed up a lot of people to reprioritize their lives. The end benefit of this being that they will, in general, become much happier people. Happiness is an interesting and often studied concept. The Atlantic had an interesting article this month titled “What Makes Us Happy” and it follows a study that tracks a handful of men throughout their lives. The conclusion about happiness is it’s about how you react to the situations in your life that determines your happiness level. And depends much on your personality as to how you react to those situations. It was a very compelling article and an interesting way to look at how you could attain happiness.

However, I think there is a ton of inertia that the average person has to overcome to react appropriately. I think that’s why we are so obsessed with the concept and work so hard to find quick and easy ways to attain happiness. You can’t beat something that’s ingrained in you.

Back in college I worked in the community a lot and was obsessed with creating change. Like this happiness example, there was just a lot of inertia that had to be overcome. In a conversation about this, my friend shrugged his shoulders and said, “something big and catastrophic needs to happen or else nothing will change,” just like a huge disruptive force.

That’s what this recession means to our collective pursuit of happiness.

It’s a giant force that not only knocks us off our routine; it challenges the things that we believe in. That might be the most interesting insight into happiness is that sometimes we may not be capable of setting ourselves up to get it. Not that it just happens to us. But we do need a significant push.