Happiness Formula

JT has been working on coloring. he enjoys making long, sweeping strokes of bold color on a white background. alsso known as scribbles.

in the feb. 27 issue of the new yorker, john lanchester reviewed two books on happiness, and i was struck by what he called "the happiness formula," according to positive psychology:

H=S+C+V

happiness = your natural set point + conditions of your life + voluntary activities. he found this to be fairly commonsensical and not really news, and focused on v as your grounding in social relationships.
in a letter to the editor in the following edition, a prof of psych who helped develop this idea (she says they never reduced it to a formula) points out that they saw v as also being "intentional behaviors including expressing gratitude, practicing optimism, and committing to life-long goals." hey, even if this isn't life-changing science, it is an interesting way to think about life. and for me as an anthropologist, to think about how culture, biology and the individual psyche?/personality?/self? intertwine.

so, looking at my happiness formula, i see that my set point is fairly low (in other words, even if all happy conditions are met, i am not going to be irrationally happy), but the conditions of my life are pretty good. now, i just need to work on the "v": remember to say please and thank-you, focus on the positive, get more exercise, and work on my goals. the last one is hard, because nature and nurture have made me a procastinator who has anxiety about failure, and thus it is difficult to move out of an inert state into an active one.

i will also remember to eat lots of sugar to keep my set point at the right level. (that one is easy.)

for jt, happiness today was:
h = barbebe + bapa + bubu
stawberries (bar-be-be), papa (ba-pa), and bubbles (bu-bu).