The Secret of Happiness

In an effort to extend my pattern of posting about things that are not directly related to this blog's topic (the "blopic"? anybody?), I will point you all to another NYT article. It's about how people in Denmark are happier than people in any other country in the Western World. The results of the research in question suggest that this is because the Danes possess a lower set of expectations about their lives than other groups of people so when they exceed these expectations they are happier.

And now, to make what I find to be an independently interesting article germane to this blog (to get back on blopic as it were), I will attempt to tie the idea of lowered expectations to my own standards of health and fitness. I wanted to be a part of this contest because I found that my happiness level with my physical appearance/health was lower than I wanted it to be. I could then do one of two things: I could have done what the Danes are doing and simply lowered my expectations of myself (which I did for a while); or I could raise the amount of success I have with maintaining my physical fitness and nutrition. I found that lowered expectations only got me so far - really it was only a moment to moment happiness that ended up not amounting to any sort of sustainable feelings of satisfaction. I think that this falls into the "defense mechanism" category of self-justifying thought processes. I've come up with the following equation to more clearly illustrate this principle:






H = Happiness Level
S = Amount of Success
E = Level of Expectations

As this equation illustrates, as your level of expectation decreases, happiness increases. Also, as your level of success increases, the level of happiness increases.