THE POWER OF THE DECISION Attainable Happiness
I became interested several years ago , after graduating from college with a minor in psychology while still planning on attending medical school , in what science could tell me about how to become and stay happy . Fresh out of an environment that focused on empiricism as opposed to experiential evidence , I quickly discovered that there was , thankfully , a fair amount to help guide me . Learning that variety isn ’ t always the spice of life was a surprise , 1 but the most important realization was that my original question – how can I be happier ? – was closely related to others . Certainly one could make small modifications on occasion and be happier , but sustained success required an understanding of how we perceive happiness and how we can make decisions that allow us to move in the direction of a future , happier state . My goal isn ’ t to discuss authentic happiness or to provide any positive psychology background , and I ’ m not going to get into the ways we measure the emotions that surround the concept of happiness . Rather , I will focus on a few concepts that I hope will serve to remind us that we can consciously make decisions that will make our lives better .
In the larger context , what I learned was refreshing on multiple levels . But I think it is worth mentioning that there was a concept that struck me as much as any other . It was , simply stated , that we are not nearly as unique as we believe . Take a simple experiment as an example . If you ask a person how happy they will be in one
by BENJAMIN ROGERS , MD
week if they are given a bag of chips , they are not particularly good at predicting their future happiness . That said , their happiness is predictable . You simply ask someone eating that bag of chips how happy they are . It seems simple to say that someone eating a bag of chips can tell you how good that bag of chips is , but the implications run deeper , particularly in medicine . We are wont to believe that we know ourselves better than anyone else could know us , and therefore that we can accurately predict how happy an event will make us , even without experiencing that event . But the data does not support that conclusion . Quite the opposite , if you want to understand how happy you will be when you experience an event , simply ask someone who is actively experiencing that event . In medicine , this provides very helpful information , because it reminds us that if we want to know if we will be happy in a particular job , we would be better served by asking a few people at that job how happy they are , rather than trying to imagine for ourselves how we might feel . Moreover , as a profession , we might do well to extrapolate these findings . It behooves us to look to our less happy colleagues and assume that their unhappiness is not a shortcoming of personality , but rather an unavoidable response to a tough situation . We might do well to try to help find solutions together .
But to the task at hand , my goal is to share a few of the concepts that I enjoyed learning about . These are well-known to some , but they are worth repeating ; they represent our best bet . Perhaps the best-known strategy is that it is imperative for us to spend a portion of our time doing some aspect of our jobs that we love .
14 LOUISVILLE MEDICINE