"Small but certain happiness" is a concept put forward by the Japanese author Haruki Murakami. It refers to "a small yet certain form of happiness" — for instance, "the feeling of an ice-cold beer after pushing your body through hard exercise in the heat of summer". The idea has become hugely popular of late, seen as a way for today's busy, stressed-out city dwellers to fold a little happiness and comfort into ordinary daily life. But why does small but certain happiness have such magic? And do you know how to find it yourself? The findings of psychology may offer us a few suggestions.
The First Secret of Small but Certain Happiness: Consistency
What is happiness? Starting a family? Succeeding in your career? When we imagine happiness, we usually picture a handful of big, joyful events that give our lives great meaning. Yet psychology has found that, although such events can indeed make people feel happy, in the long run their weight actually matters rather little.
The Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert points out in his book Stumbling on Happiness that most people are neither good at accurately predicting which things will make them happier, nor skilled at working out how long that happiness will last. On the contrary, people tend to overestimate the real impact a current setback will have on us, and on our happiness. And whether it is something that brings us enormous joy in an instant — like winning the lottery — or a major blow such as losing one's job, after a period of time many people find their sense of happiness drifting back to its usual level. As a result, these events have little lasting effect on our happiness.
If even big events have so small an effect on our happiness, then how can small but certain happiness bring us any happiness at all? The answer is to unearth a few moments of happiness in everyday life, each and every day. If a person can experience small but certain happiness several times a day, then over time, as these moments accumulate and add up, they may well end up happier than someone whose stretch of days holds only a single great joy. And because they feel happy so often, the positive effect that ripples through their daily life may be greater still.
So, every so often pursuing a little of what we call small but certain happiness — adding some colour to your own life or the lives of those around you — can make life happier.
The Second Secret of Small but Certain Happiness: Five Key Elements
Everyone defines a happy life differently. But for most people, happiness is not really a single category of thing; it is a positive feeling made up of different layers.
The psychologist Martin Seligman put forward what he called the theory of well-being (the PERMA model), consisting of Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Achievement.
Positive emotion refers to being able to stay optimistic about the past, the present and the future, in good times and bad alike. Engagement means losing ourselves in completing something — playing an instrument, exercising, working, or even pursuing a hobby. In the process we may even feel a kind of calm, focus and joy, so absorbed that we lose all track of time. Of course, we cannot only attend to our own pursuits; we must also look after our relationships with the loved ones, friends and partners around us. In daily life we meet things big and small, and they can laugh alongside you as well as see you through hard times — this is why relationships matter to happiness. And if the things we do hold meaning for ourselves or for the people and matters around us — helping us to grow, for instance, or helping someone in need — they too can make us feel happier. In the same way, achieving some of the goals in our own lives, and the sense of accomplishment that comes with it, will also bring us happiness.
The five elements of happiness above sound rather grand — so how do we turn them into something "small and certain"? There are three little methods we can use in everyday life. The first is to keep a gratitude journal, jotting down from time to time the people and things you are grateful for, so that we can record and remind ourselves of the happy moments we encounter day to day. The second is to write down a list of your goals, setting yourself some concrete, clear and achievable aims for daily life. When you look back on the goals you have completed, you can feel a sense of accomplishment and meaning, which in turn brings a feeling of happiness. Third, we can recall situations where we faced adversity — how it affected your emotions, and how you got through the hard times. This process of remembering lets us explore the meaning within difficulty, allowing us to view our own lives from a positive angle.
Happiness is certainly not there for the taking, but neither is it out of reach. If we can apply different insights from psychology in everyday life and stick with them, gradually adjusting our patterns of thinking and behaviour, we believe we can find more small but certain happiness, and little by little grow happier.
Reference
https://www.thenewslens.com/article/79505
https://positivepsychology.com/perma-model/
http://counseling.sa.ntnu.edu.tw/ezfiles/4/1004/img/167/125703084.pdf
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