At the end of March every I like to review my year, my dreams and goals that encompass all of my life. I get out large sheets of thick bristol board and go general and specific. They are my desires that I hope will enhance my life. They include things like, swimming or reading or making a mural, to remember to call my friends and family, etc. I update and review the lists every other month. One of my list items was to create a course to share things that I have learned during my life and over the last few months, I built it. It’s a a course in gratitude meant to help people without any obligation of exchange. In general, whilst people have the opportunity to join my mailing list or make a donation, none of that is required. No strings. Their only requirement is to commit to it and do it.
Something that I learned a long long time ago that materialism, albeit life-enhancing most of the time and let’s be clear there is nothing wrong with enjoying them, they don’t fill us with joy. That’s something else. So, it’s always nice to know that my personal knowledge is backed up by professionals through their research. So today, I am sharing a relevant article authored by Ted Fischer a Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Latin American Studies at Vanderbilt University who offers us his findings and his learning, a direction to focus on – the good life.
Still thinking about your New Year’s resolutions? This year, try focusing on the good life
Author: Ted Fischer
The end of the year is always a time of reflection on what we have done and what we have left undone. And, of course, it’s time to start thinking about those resolutions for the new year and what we will do differently.
Our New Year’s resolutions usually target minor vices – eat fewer snacks, drink less, stop smoking, exercise more – whatever your particular self-admonitions may be. But it is too easy to get lost in the particulars – and in the negatives.
In setting out our resolutions, we should first step back and take stock of what it is that we really want, what we consider the good life to be, and then think about how best we might achieve it.
Well-being is more than just being well
Fellow anthropologist Arjun Appadurai encourages us to be driven by an “ethics of possibility” – hope, aspiration, optimism – and not just the “ethics of probability” – costs and benefits, risk management and systematized rationalities. We can be pragmatic, but let’s not allow that pragmatism to kill our dreams of how things could be better.
I’ve spent the last few years studying what contributes to the good life – the elements of well-being – for folks around the world. I’ve talked to rural Maya coffee farmers in Guatemala and urban supermarket shoppers in Germany, as well as Americans from all walks of life. I’ve looked at notions of well-being in Mozambique, Brazil and China. I found that income is important, but not as important as we might first think. Health and security are also necessary, but insufficient, for living a fulfilled life.
Well-being, it turns out, is about more than just being well. It also requires strong family and social relations, a sense of dignity in our lives and fairness in our opportunities, and commitments to larger purposes.
For example, Miguel, a 43-year-old Mayan coffee farmer in Huehuetenango, Guatemala, I met during my research has benefited in recent years from the boom in high-end coffee in the US. He says that life is good right now – even if we might characterize his circumstances as extremely impoverished. He finds a dignity in owning his own land, in growing quality coffee that commands a decent price. He is committed to providing his children with more opportunities in life, and that endows his hard labour with a larger purpose.
Such large purposes may take many different forms. German shoppers who buy organic and fair trade products see this as a way of linking consumption to moral projects of ecological stewardship and social solidarity. Mastering a craft, political activism, even religious extremism – all are ways we give larger meaning to life.
Based on this research, there are some lessons to take away from our New Year’s resolutions. First, we need to ask what is really important in our lives – and how we can align what we do with those values. Then we should commit, or recommit, ourselves to larger purposes that go beyond self-interest. These could be grand (changing jobs to something more meaningful) or modest (cooking more meals at home for the family) — the crucial thing is that they are about more than just getting ahead.
Lessons for a happy New Year
In fact, sometimes being less productive economically can make us better off in terms of well-being. Filipe Campante and David Yanagizawa-Drott found that in Muslim countries, the fasting and observances during Ramadan had a negative impact on GDP growth, but that individuals also reported being happier and more satisfied with their lives. Giving something up for a greater good – and just giving more broadly – is deeply rewarding.
Second, we should be generous with the time we invest in family and social relations. Material goods usually bring only fleeting happiness, and yet we often pin our hopes and dreams on the accumulation of things we hope will make us happy. Focusing on relationships and experiences adds much more to our long-term life satisfaction. Across cultures, we find that strong social relations and the amount of time spent with family are very good predictors of overall well-being.
For many in the US, this means adjusting our work/life balance. In Germany, there is a clear distinction between work and play. Germans are more productive than Americans when at work, but they also work less and guard their time off. At Volkswagen, managers have demanded that Blackberry servers be turned off after working hours so that they will not be expected (or tempted) to respond on their own time. Americans spend much more time at work than in many other industrialized countries – around 1,800 hours per year on average, compared to around 1,400 hours for Germans. In 1930, John Maynard Keynes famously predicted that by now productivity would be so high, the average workweek would be only 15 hours. And yet our material wants have outpaced even our dramatic productivity gains.
Finally, we should take time to step back from our culture of busy-ness and getting ahead to appreciate what we already have. It may be human nature to want more, but the good life also rests on gratitude and purpose.
Author: Ted Fischer
Ted Fischer, Professor, Anthropology and Director, Center for Latin American Studies, Vanderbilt University
This article was originally published on The Conversation and is published here under Creative Commons
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