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Emotional equations are sort of like adult finger painting. One of the things we learned in kindergarten was red plus blue equals purple. So the color wheel. And what I learned was there’s an emotion wheel. If you have joy with a sense of anticipation, that’s optimism. And that was created by a guy named Dr. Robert Plutchik about 30 years ago. Why it was relevant to me was I was going through a really difficult time about three or four years ago, and I was trying to make sense of my emotions. We often say our emotions get the best of us, and it’s partly because they’re a bit of a mystery. And what I really wanted to try to understand is what are the ingredients that are creating anxiety or happiness or despair?
And so, I did a deep dive with the luminaries in the psychology field to try to understand what are the components of some of these emotions that kick our butts. And in so doing, I found that in fact, quite often, putting them in an equation helped us to understand these ingredients and how you can influence the ingredients. So what emotional equations is all about is how to understand in the worst and craziest of times, what’s going on inside of you? How do you understand the internal logic of your emotions as a means of remedying what’s going on out there in the world?
Despair = Suffering – Meaning
The emotional equation that really sort of started my interest was at the start of 2008, when it was very clear to me that that the economy was about to take a nose dive, and I started reading Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search For Meaning.” And I wanted to distill that quite compelling and poignant book on meaning into an equation because I was looking for a mantra on a daily basis. And that equation was despair equals suffering minus meaning. The way the equation works is suffering is a constant. It’s true for him – he was in a concentration camp. True in a recession. True if you’re in a bad marriage. True if you’re not in a relationship. True – there’s always suffering. It’s the first noble truth of Buddhism, in fact, that suffering is ever present. Where there’s a variable is the meaning. So if suffering’s a constant and meaning is a variable, increase the meaning and the despair goes down. That became my little mantra for how to get through a really difficult time.
And then I shared it with the top 80 executives in our company at our annual management retreat because all I saw was suffering in the room. And everybody loved it because it helped them to understand that when you’re going through emotional bootcamp, maybe you’re going to exercise some emotional muscles that you can use later in life. And it’s been proven in a couple studies of women in the Depression. Those women who actually grew up in the Depression were better able to handle their husband’s dying first and being a widow later in life than were women who actually didn’t go through the Depression.
Happiness = Wanting what you have / Having what you want
After I discovered the despair equation, I decided I wanted to go the opposite extreme. I wanted to learn about happiness, and I went to Bhutan. I studied the happiness equation in Bhutan because that’s the country in the world that was the first one to actually create a gross national happiness index. And I came back with the equation of happiness equals wanting what you have divided by having what you want. That sounds like a mind tease, so let me explain. When you want what you have, you tend to practice gratitude. You feel appreciative of what you have in your life. And scientists, social scientists have shown that the fastest way to get happy is to actually express and experience gratitude. The experience alone isn’t enough. It’s like wrapping a present for the holidays or for Christmas and not delivering it to someone. So the actual, not just the experiencing of it, but the actual expressing of it is really important.
The denominator is having what you want. So, how’s that different? Well, the act of going out and having what you want, pursuing what you want is the pursuit of gratification. If you look in the dictionary under the word pursuit, you’ll see the definition “to chase with hostility.” Do we pursue happiness with hostility in the United States? Well, quite often we do, and it’s partly because we get on this treadmill what’s called the hedonic treadmill. And whatever we achieve or get, now, we want twice as much. It’s true of our salary, it’s true of our dating, it’s true of all kinds of things. We have a tendency to get bored and complacent with what we already have.
So, what do you do with this equation? Well, if you want happiness, know that it’s almost impossible to pursue gratification, the denominator, at the same time that you’re practicing gratitude. So, spend time in the numerator. Practice some gratitude. Doesn’t mean you should be a couch potato and not pursue things in life. I’m a pursuer by nature. But it does mean when you’re actually feeling a little bit out of sorts with your happiness, ask yourself quite quickly, “Am I practicing gratitude? And how can I do that as soon as possible?” And you may find that you’ll actually get back to a happier place.