How to Talk to People - How To Build a Happy Life: When Expectations Don’t Meet Reality

Episode Date: September 27, 2022

In our pursuit of a happy life, we build, we structure, and we plan. Often, we follow conventional wisdom and strategize. But what happens when our plans fall through and expectations don’t meet reality—when the things that should make us happy don’t?  In season 3 of our How To series, Atlantic happiness correspondent Arthur Brooks and producer Rebecca Rashid seek to navigate the unexpected curves on the path to personal happiness—with data-driven insights and a healthy dose of introspection. This series was produced by Rebecca Rashid and hosted by Arthur Brooks. Editing by A.C. Valdez and Claudine Ebeid. Fact-check by Ena Alvarado. Engineering by Matthew Simonson. If you have any questions, stories, or feedback, please email us at [e-mail]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome back to How to Build a Happy Life. I'm Arthur Brooks, Harvard professor, and contributing writer at The Atlantic. And I'm Rebecca Rashid, a producer at The Atlantic. Why did I say it like that? Because you're a millennial. And you end up. You got to end up. Everything's a question.

Don't forget. A producer at the Atlantic? Where am I? In season three of How To, we explore why our expectations of a happy life are often out of touch with reality. Even previously healthy and adaptive behaviors now have become drugified. There was no space in that schedule that I used to have of work, work, work, drink, go to bed, work, work, work, drink, go to bed, to even have a thought about what in that day did I enjoy. So, Arthur, I always thought work would be the thing that made me happy.

There's a reason for that, Becca. You can control a lot of things about your work life, the tendencies to think that everything else will fall into place on its own. You might even be something of a workaholic, because it might not have made you happy, but you got really good at it, right? I not only got good at it. I basically set such high expectations in this one aspect of my life that it also came to define what happiness means for me. It became the one thing I wanted to satisfy all my emotional needs.

And for a lot of people, if it's not about their work, it's high expectations of themselves as a parent or in their love lives or how their life should look versus how it actually is. People think that a lot. They're always looking for the one thing that's going to do it. The one thing that's actually going to bring happiness and that one thing that we can get good at,

the world rewards us for and that we can measure. I mean, the happiness research is pretty straightforward. Happiness comes from our relationships. So why do we so often set expectations for ourselves that get in the way of that. Here's what I think, Becca. The world promises us tons of shortcuts to happiness. Look, I'm a specialist in the science of happiness,

and I've fallen prey to it over and over and over again. But in the long run, what's good for you, what will bring you happiness might not be the same thing that the world is offering. This season, we'll explore why our expectations of a happy life are so often out of touch with reality and how to bridge the gap. Look for how to build a happy life now on your favorite podcast player.