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The great philosophers of ancient Greece taught that people are happier if they acquire the thinking skills that enable them to make the right choices, develop the right attitudes, and cope with adversity. The evidence from modern science bears this out. Various studies have shown that individuals who possess wisdom tend to have happier lives. Wisdom makes a particularly big contribution to happiness in old age.
None of this implies that children must attend philosophy classes in order to be happy (although there is much to recommend this idea). It simply means that parents and teachers can help children greatly by equipping them with practical strategies for coping with everyday problems. These can include very simple rules of thumb, such as always trying to learn from bad experiences (‘what does not destroy me makes me stronger’), not setting wildly unrealistic goals, not seeing everything in black and white, and accepting that bad things sometimes just happen.
One of the main ways in which children acquire wisdom is by observing how their parents behave. Children are more inclined to do what their parents do than what they say, which means that parents need to think about their own behaviour and set a good example. Education obviously plays a key role as well. Well-educated people live healthier and happier lives, partly because they have the knowledge and wisdom to make the right choices and avoid harm. We will return to education and its contribution to happiness in later chapters.
16. Freedom from excessive materialism
Too many people in wealthy nations live their lives as though acquiring money and material possessions will bring them enduring happiness. In fact, as we shall see later, wealth has surprisingly little lasting impact on happiness. Acquiring more money or possessions can make us feel better for a while, but the rise in mood tends to be modest and short-lived. We soon get used to what we have and our expectations rise, leading us to want ever more.
More importantly, the process of trying to acquire wealth can actually make us less happy if it gets in the way of things that really do matter, such as personal relationships or a sense of purpose and meaning. As we will see in chapter 8, there is good evidence that highly materialistic people are less happy on average than those who have other priorities in life.
17. Regular experience of flow
A fairly regular occurrence for most happy people is a particular state of optimal experience which is sometimes referred to as flow.3
Flow occurs when you are utterly absorbed in an activity. That activity might be something mundane like reading a book or socialising, or it might be more demanding, like playing a musical instrument or climbing a mountain. Whatever the activity is, you have chosen to perform it for its own sake and have a clear sense of what you are trying to do; you are also completely focused on the task in hand and nothing else seems to matter. (In this way, flow is an excellent antidote to self-absorption.) Your attention is firmly rooted in the present, rather than flitting anxiously between the past and future as often happens in normal experience. In addition, you might notice a change in your perception of time, which can feel either as though it has speeded up or slowed down. The sensation of flow can be intensely rewarding, but it may not feel especially pleasurable. Someone in flow will probably not be whooping with joy: the gratification usually comes later, when looking back on the experience.
Flow requires you to be fully engaged in a task that is sufficiently challenging to stretch your skills, but not so difficult that it becomes stressful. Someone in flow can feel intensely alive, as though they were meant to be doing what they are doing. Think of James Bond performing some feat of derring-do and saving the world (again). Bond feels more than mere physical pleasure – indeed, he might feel quite the reverse if the villains temporarily have the upper hand. Rather, he feels at one with himself and fulfilled. In contrast, an essentially passive pastime like watching TV is unlikely to produce flow because it makes so little demand on the viewer.
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