Do you know what makes you happy? Do you know what makes you unhappy or what would be devastating in your life? Believe it or not, very few of us are good at emotional forecasting. In other words, even though we think we know what would make us happy and what would make us sad, it is usually not the case.

Let’s use this example. In a recent study, a group of more than 500 people were asked what would make them happy. Many of their responses included, “spending time with family.” The researchers gave each person in the study a PDA to record their level of happiness and satisfaction each hour of the day and to record what it was they were doing at the time. The results are not what you would expect. By a large margin people scored their happiness and satisfaction higher when they were at work and experienced less happiness and satisfaction when they were at home or with their family.

Another landmark study by Phillip Brickman compared the life satisfaction of lottery winners to quadriplegics. Both groups demonstrated the same level of happiness and satisfaction with the quadriplegics often saying they had a higher quality of life after being paralyzed.

Even though we think we know what will make us happy and what will not, we are actually not very good at predicting it. Why? Because we have an amazing emotional immune system. This immune system allows us to overcome obstacles and rise to the occasion. Additionally, we have been conditioned that external factors make us happy when in fact, happiness is an inside job. It is created from within.

Kirk