Happiness: Why It’s The Small Things (And How to Make Them Count)

Happiness: Why Its the Small Things (And How To Make Them Count)

I recently heard of a man, older and wiser than me, who does something quite wonderful.

At the end of each day he writes in a journal. Then he reads the entry he made one year ago, five years ago and ten years ago. He does this every night and has been doing it for most of his life.

He’s on to something. Let’s talk about why.

There’s an abundance of research that has found our accuracy in predicting how we will feel about things in the future isn’t that sharp. We are similarly fallible in estimating the future emotional impact of negative and positive events. We’re robbing ourselves of opportunities for happiness.

It’s likely that some of the things we experience today will seem so mundane as to not be worth capturing. According to new research however, this underestimates the potential happiness to be gained in the future when we ‘rediscover’ them. 

A meal, a passing conversation, where we were at 3pm on 20 August 2004 – rediscovering these ten years on can be an unexpected source of joy.

Why do we underestimate the joy of rediscovery? Because we never stay the same. We make the mistake of thinking that the person we are today will be the person we will be in the future, and that we’ll respond to the same things in the same way. We also tend to believe that the details we consider mundane today will hold their mundane status, and that our memory of the details will be accurate.

The truth is that our memories aren’t perfect – they fade, they are overwritten, they change shape over time.

In a recent study, researchers explored how people would feel when they recorded their seemingly insignificant experiences and rediscovered them in the future.


 The Research: What They Did

Participants created time capsules consisting of their responses to the following:

  • the last social event they attended;
  • a recent conversation;
  • how they met their roommate;
  • three songs they recently listened to;
  • an inside joke;
  • a recent photo;
  • a recent status posted on their Facebook profile;
  • an excerpt from a final class assessment; and
  • a question from a recent final exam.

For each question, participants had to predict:

1.  how curious they’d be to see what they’d said;

2.  how surprised they’d be after seeing what they’d documented; and 

3.  how meaningful and interesting they would find each response in the future.

Three months later they were allowed to read (‘rediscover’) their initial responses, but not before they rated how curious they were to read those responses.

What They Found

Results showed that the participants weren’t particularly good at predicting how curious they’d be in the future to read their responses, and how interesting those responses would be to them.

Even after only three months, the capsule more meaningful to them than they had anticipated.

So They Did a Second Study

In a second similar study, researchers asked participants to rate a conversation as ordinary or extraordinary. The more ordinary a conversation was rated, the more people underestimated how good it would be to rediscover it.

And a Third

In a third study, participants who were in an intimate relationship were asked to write about their experience of an extraordinary day (Valentines Day) and an ordinary day (a typical day around February 14).

Interestingly, perceptions of ordinary events became more extraordinary over time, whereas perceptions of extraordinary events stayed equally extraordinary.

People remembered less of what they had written about ordinary events than about extraordinary events.

And (Finally!), a Fourth

A fourth study found that because people underestimate the joy of rediscovery, they bypass opportunities to document their experiences. They the report in the future that they regret not being able to retrieve those records. It’s our human way, it seems, to underestimate our future curiosity for past experiences. We also tend to underestimate how fascinating we’ll find the process of rediscovery.

As a result, people forego the opportunity to document things that happen in the present. This is partly because people believe they will be able to remember more about an event than they actually can. This is generally the case for ordinary, rather than extraordinary, experiences.


 Researcher Ting Zhang of Harvard Business School explained, ‘We generally do not think about today’s ordinary moments as experiences that are worthy of being rediscovered in the future. However our studies show that we are often wrong:

What is ordinary now actually becomes more extraordinary in the future – and more extraordinary than we might expect.’

He continued, ‘People find a lot of joy in rediscovering a music playlist from months ago or an old joke with a neighbour, even though those things did not seem particularly meaningful in the moment. The studies highlight the importance of not taking the presence for granted and documenting the mundane moments of daily life to give our future selves the joy of rediscovering them.’

But.

There is a cost to documenting experiences.

Past research has shown that taking photos or writing about them can interfere with the creation of the memory itself, or even create false memories.

The value that comes from documenting events lies in taking the time out to rediscover that which we have documented, not engaging in endless documentation bearing witness to every facet of daily life.

Ordinary moments today, if documented, can be a wonderful ‘present’ to ourselves in the future.

Life isn’t made up of big moments, it’s made up of many small moments brought together. Now we have research confirming how much the small moments matter. All that’s left now is to make them count. 

2 Comments

Mark Paver

Paying attention
To this moments… Happiness
Happens each moment

The least little thing
When you are present and still
Will happiness bring

If your happiness
Is just a mental construct
It will self-destruct

Happiness is quite
Natural… the opposite…
Totally man made

Let all that happens
Embrace you with joy like the
I in happiness

Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Join our newsletter

We would love you to follow us on Social Media to stay up to date with the latest Hey Sigmund news and upcoming events.

Follow Hey Sigmund on Instagram

Mattering is about feeling valued and feeling like I’m doing something that adds value. It doesn’t have to come from grades or schoolwork, and for so many kids it probably won’t. There are so many ways to help kids feel seen and valued that have nothing to do with schoolwork, but which can work to engage them in schoolwork. Little things make a big difference. 

We also have to let our teachers know how much the matter. They are the greatest key to ‘mattering’ (or unmattering) in our schools and for our young people.♥️
If we want to meet their learning needs, we first have to meet their relational ones. If we want them to be open to learning, they first have to open to the adult they are learning from - and they won’t be open if they don’t feel seen, safe, and cared for. It’s not always easy, it’s just how it is.♥️
You know what's lovely? Aside from Sundays and sunshine? …
Sales. 

You know what's even lovelier?
Sales that are 25% off books and resources designed to help kiddos feel bigger, braver, and calmer.

For a short time, we’re taking 25% off books, plushies, courses, posters, and a bunch of tiny treasures that can help build courage and calm in kids and teens.

With the end of the financial year just around the corner, it’s the perfect time to top up your toolkit — or quietly replace those resources that have shimmied away while you weren’t looking. (We see you. We've been there.)

This one is for you. And the young ones in your life. Actually, this one is for everyone.

Happy shopping!
We know there are too many kids struggling right now, including those from loving, responsive families and in loving, responsive schools. 

One of the places these struggles will show themselves is at school, even in the most loving responsive ones. Sometimes these struggles show themselves with a roar, sometimes with nothing at all.

Too many kids are feeling no sense at all that they matter. They don’t feel they are doing something that matters, and they don’t feel that they matter to others.

Too many of them will go weeks at school without hearing their name in a way that makes them feel seen, cared for, and valued.

Too many of them are showing up at school but are noticed more when they don’t, even if only by the unticked box beside their name.

For too many kids, we are asking them to show up when they don’t feel like they have anything to offer, or anything at all to show up for. Why wouldn’t they struggle?

This week I had the greatest privilege of speaking to a room of 300 school well-being staff about how to support all children, how to catch the ones who are struggling, and what we can do to buffer, protect and heal all young people at school.

If you are a parent of a young person who is struggling, I want you to know that schools are working hard to hold them, lovingly and safely.

I know there are also many parents who haven’t had this experience, and your children haven’t got what they need. I know that. I want you to know that change is happening. I want you to know what I see when I work with the wellbeing staff at these schools. They care. They really do. They are so invested in supporting your children, seeing the child behind the student and showing up big for all of them. The work is happening. There’s a lot to do, but it’s happening.

Yes we need more resources, and yes more people, and yes we’re asking more of our schools and teachers than ever, and yes the world is asking more of our kids than ever, but the work is happening.

Thank you to the Department of Education Queensland for working with me, and thank you to the wellbeing staff, teachers, and leadership who are giving everything they can to be there for our children. You matter.♥️

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This