You must have heard of this personal financial advice: don’t put all your income in one basket.
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Editor’s note: In the financial sector, we often hear the suggestion “Don’t put all the eggs in the same basket”, meaning to learn to spread the risk. In fact, this principle also applies to our daily life. In order to achieve true happiness, we must learn to get happiness from different places, instead of limiting our own thoughts, only obsessed with the big things in life. This article was translated from Medium, author Jude King, PhD, originally titled “The Key To A Happier Life: Diversify Your Happiness”, I hope to inspire you.
You must have heard of this personal financial advice: Don’t put all your income in one basket.
This is a good suggestion because eggs are eggs, the world is the world, and they all have cracks. Your boss may fire you and your company may go bankrupt. You don’t want to limit your financial resources to one.
So the key is to be diversified. When there are a few good eggs in the first basket, you can start making more baskets. Many people are aware of this, and a 2017 study estimated that 35% of millennials are currently engaged in sideline business. With the opportunity and leverage provided by the Internet, the sideline has become a standard source of income.
Having a variety of income sources has become a norm. For some people, there are even as many as seven sources of income. Shaunta Grimes recently wrote an article about this. Wonderful article. Many people work in the second or third job to supplement low-income full-time jobs. But in general, the less likely an employer is to deprive you of all your sources of income, the better your financial situation will be.
This diverse mindset doesn’t just apply to your income. It also applies to the happiness of your entire life.
Happiness is hard to grasp, and many writers are exploring how to get happiness. This is the ultimate goal of most of our pursuits. Obviously, we end up wanting a happy and happy life, but the road to success is not clear.
Trap of tunnel view
Like keeping your finances healthy, there is a way to improve your overall happiness, which I call happiness diversity. Various studies have confirmed this.
Tim Wilson of the University of Virginia and his colleagues did a study that allowed college students to predict how many of their favorite football teams won or lost a game. After the day, how happy or unhappy you will be. Before making a prediction, one group (participants) is asked to describe other events in the day, while the other group (participants) is not required to describe. A few days later, these students reported their true level of happiness, and the results showed that these people seriously overestimated the impact of winning or losing on their happiness.
Why is this?
These ordinary people are asked to focus on only one aspect, the result of a football match. Therefore, they did not imagine that other aspects of their future life would also affect happiness, such as eating a big meal with their family, spending a good time with friends, and getting good test scores. On the other hand, those who are allowed to think about other aspects of the future predict that their happiness is much less important than the outcome of the game.
In other words, one group of participants was asked to put all the happy eggs in one basket, while the other group was asked to consider multiple sources of happiness. Therefore, they predict that their level of happiness is much less important than the outcome of the game.
In fact, whenever we think of one thing (and only one thing), we tend to overestimate its impact on our happiness. This is why we often underestimate the actual level of happiness of people with chronic diseases or disabilities. For example, “When people with good vision imagine themselves blind, they feel that they are blind in their own world. Blind people can’t see things, but they can also do what most visionary people do, like picnicking and listening. Music, etc., so they may be as happy as people with good vision. Daniel Gilbert, a psychology professor at Harvard University, wrote, “They can’t do everything that normal people can do…But no matter what a blind person’s life is, it is impossible to have only the word blind.
Happiness is hidden in small things
When we think about what makes us happy, we always think of big events, maybe graduations, weddings, or upcoming launching ceremonies. But such things happen not often enough, and may be one or two times in a long life, and the happiness they bring disappears after a few days.
We tend to ignore small things that bring us happiness, even small things are more fun than big things, because they happen more often. Think about how healthy you are, you can sit and read, and you can laugh, you can take the hand of the person you love. You can curl up on the couch, holding a book in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. You can also enjoy a good movie with your partner.
These little things make up most of our happiness, but we tend to focus on big things and ignore small things. If you find yourself looking for happiness, then your standard of happiness may be set too high. Have you ever looked at the children and wondered why they are usually happier than adults? The answer is because they can find fun in small things, and their standards of happiness are low enough.
Happier, Inc., co-founder and CEO Nataly Kogan in her TED talk, “How Pancakes Make You Having Fun and Change the World” (How Pancakes Can Make You Happier And In Change The World, the key to explaining happiness is to collect the small and beautiful moments we experience every day. She said, “These little things will eventually bring a feeling of happiness.”
Happiness Secret
In fact, there is no magic secret to happiness. Happiness is to maximize your happy time every day, week, and year.
Happiness exists in the smallest things, things that seem trivial, and these little things will slowly accumulate. It’s just that you may lift the threshold of happiness too high and will not be happy with these little things.
Til Wilson’s research gives usIt is to avoid the tunnel-like narrow vision that college students are forced to fall into, and to avoid linking their happiness to only one thing. If you are keen enough, when life takes your hand off a branch, you will probably find another one to catch.
The key to happiness is to have multiple sources of happiness, just as you would like to have multiple sources of income. The way to do this is to lower your standard of happiness, learn to appreciate more small things, and make them a source of happiness for you. “Weaving as many baskets as possible for your happiness” is the key to a happy life and never being conquered.
Translator: Jane
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