Hacking Happiness (33 page)

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I find Konstantin’s experiment a fascinating example of focusing on currencies that have nothing to do with wealth. The fact that his happiness level decreased when he wasn’t able to express his values is also compelling. While we all have to do things we don’t want to in our lives, tracking our activities and noting their effects can help us prioritize how we want to spend our time.

The Billion People Project

Measuring your own life is a powerful motivator for happiness. Tracking your actions in aggregate with like-minded individuals can also greatly accelerate positive well-being.

The Billion People Project (BPP) is providing this type of opportunity. I interviewed Della and Carrie van Heyst of the Van Heyst Group in Boulder, Colorado, founders of this project, which is aimed at getting people to engage in planet-conscious actions that
can minimize and reverse negative effects to the environment. As people get involved and take action, they are measured and broadcast in real time on the project’s website and app. Tracking aggregate action becomes the inspiration for large-scale positive change. “Our goal is to bring together massive amounts of people to help the environment and move the dime on policy,” notes Della.
⁵

The Van Heyst Group is known for the high caliber of events they’ve hosted for more than forty years for clients like Cisco,
Fortune
magazine, and Equinix. Now they’re leveraging their skills at creating passionate communities to increase people’s happiness while reversing environmental erosion. Inspired to create an “action tank” versus a “think tank,” the mother/daughter pair sense a pivotal shifting point regarding technology and how it can impact genuine human relationships. As Carrie pointed out in our interview:

Tech has taken over too much of our lives. Teens are sitting next to each other and texting versus talking. When we first got exposed to the Internet, all we wanted to know was how we could get more connected to it. Now we’re asking ourselves how we can get more connected to each other again. Can we move toward a happiness- or values-based economy? We need to do a check-in with ourselves and ask: What are our values and how can we express them?
⁶

Having run over four hundred events around the world, the Van Heysts will be able to leverage key relationships with their friends in the tech and business communities to make the Billion People Project a reality. The project differs from other environmental campaigns in regard to its focus on data collection and participant’s personal environmental impact on water, carbon, waste, air, and natural habitats—all leading to sustaining the health and happiness of the individual and the planet.

In the same way that companies are required to have offsets for
any potential harm they cause to the environment, with the BPP, individuals can experience the tangible ways their actions hurt or help the earth. Where it may seem impossible to make global change as an individual, the Billion People Project will poignantly show aggregate impact. “My thought was, rather than just sit around, let’s take action into our own hands,” says Della. She continues:

We, the people, can do this. Technology lets us scale our individual actions. And it’s simple stuff—eliminate plastic in your life, change out an old heater. Walk more often than you drive. A lot of people are doing this, but they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. We’ll aggregate this in an effort to show how we’re all connected as human beings.
⁷

Upworthy and the Third Metric

I mentioned a while back how my father would ask all of his patients if they watched the eleven o’clock news. If they said yes, he would recommend that they stop watching. His point was not to try to keep people from facing reality but to help them shift their focus away from media that present news or information with certain biases. While it would take too long to discuss the nature of objectivity in journalism, it goes without saying, especially in the United States, that the top news stories on most shows focus on negative events. If you watch three local news stations in any market, for instance, you can even see the formula for most shows—two or three top stories typically focusing on generally negative events, followed by a “color piece” near the end of the broadcast highlighting a positive local event—a charity event, a remarkable pet, etc. Most people don’t realize that even if the first few stories are presented in an objective light, the way the pieces are ordered is purposeful, designed to attract and keep viewers watching. While the formula is not necessarily diabolical, it’s important to
note how it has affected our overall consciousness, and also why late-night talk shows come immediately after the eleven o’clock news—we need something to laugh at quickly because we’re so distressed by what we’ve just seen.

Upworthy (http://www.upworthy.com) was cofounded by Eli Pariser, whom I interviewed about his book
The Filter Bubble
. He and his team have done an amazing job of providing a refreshingly real and admittedly biased (toward the positive) framework for sharing stories intended to entertain, empower, and edify. Here’s a bit of language from their “about” page:

We’re a mission-driven media company. We’re not a newspaper—we’d rather speak truth than appear unbiased . . . But we do have a point of view. We’re pro gay marriage, and we’re anti child poverty. We think the media is horrible to women, we think climate change is real, and we think the government has a lot to learn from the Internet about efficiency, disruption, and effectiveness.
⁸

I’m a firm believer that it’s actually easier to be objective with reporting if you admit your biases upfront to your audience. I also believe in basic journalistic standards, such as giving two sides of a story, accurately citing sources, and so on. But it’s the easiest thing in the world to veil your true opinion behind research you feature to prove your point. That’s why I’m boldly telling you with this book that you’re lying to yourself if you think the majority of modern news isn’t weighing you down. While you can’t control what happens in the world, or how it’s reported, you are allowed to decide how and when you want to ingest it. And there’s a difference between avoiding truth and being purposeful about which voices you bring into your life on a daily basis.

Here’s one quick example of why I love the Upworthy site so much—a video by Rebecca Eisenberg
⁹
in response to some “old
school, YouTube fat hate” she’d been receiving about her weight. In a little under three minutes she beautifully describes the difference between being fat and all the stigma attached to a person’s size. She’s smart, specific, brave, and bold, and offers an utterly refreshing take on weight issues versus the typical polarized “don’t bully” versus “hater” debates we’ve heard for years. Beyond the fact that I’ve battled with being heavy for years and thereby sympathized with her views, since having the epiphany that launched this book and the H(app)athon Project, I crave and seek raw truth. It’s so much more meaningful and satisfying than overt bias veiled in objectivity or a rampant worldview that has chosen to see the world through a negative lens.

The Third Metric is part of the
Huffington Post
and you can see it here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/third-metric. The articles featured on this portion of the site are “redefining success beyond money and power” and reflect an overtly Beyond GDP mind-set meant to change the status quo surrounding ideas of how we work, live, and find well-being. As Arianna Huffington pointed out about the site (and the conferences focused on the same issues) in a recent
Chicago Tribune
article, “The motivation for these events is that it has become increasingly clear that the current model, in which success is equated with overwork, burnout, sleep deprivation and never seeing your family, isn’t working. It’s not working for women. It’s not working for men. It’s not working for companies, for any societies in which it’s dominant or for the planet.”
¹⁰

There are a number of things I love about this site/conference. First, it honors women. I’m married to a woman and have a daughter and can speak from deep personal experience—women are awesome. It is beyond pitiful and ludicrous that in 2013 there should even be a need for a site/conference dedicated to women but sadly it’s more needed than ever. However, what I appreciate about the site is its how-to focus regarding proactive ways to lower your stress or simply identify the paradigm of incessant
productivity most of us feel equates to being successful. The
Huffington Post
also features an app/site called GPS for the Soul (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gps-for-the-soul/) that provides similar proactive ways to measure and combat stress. The app even lets you measure your pulse by placing your finger on the lens of your mobile phone camera. After you get your pulse, you can see the videos or articles available on the site or create your own slide show from personal pictures to actively calm yourself down.

The Paradigm of Being Proactive

These are just a few samples of sites and voices designed to help you reorient your daily perspective on how positivity can actually be crafted in your life. You’re allowed to reflect on what truly brings you meaning, and also understand how deeply your worth doesn’t have to be focused on your wealth or outward image and influence.

This whole section of
Hacking H(app)iness
is about being proactive—promoting personal and public well-being versus just getting money and accumulating influence as a primary objective for your life. If, to quote Avner Offer, “the currency of well-being is attention,” we all have to get better at spending time looking more deeply at ourselves while also regarding others and their needs as important as our own.

  20  

HACKING H(APP)INESS

I have learned to be comfortable with mystery.

DAVID W. HAVENS, M.D.

I
DIDN’T REALIZE
how much of this book was about my dad until I finished it.

He inspired it, as I pointed out in the introduction. And I’ve mentioned him a few times throughout the book. But for all the geektastic technology and economics I’ve learned about in my work on
Hacking H(app)iness
, I keep coming back to my dad.

• He did work he was built for.
  
• He got paid, but money was never the focus of his work.
  
• His life’s calling was to listen and help others.
  

Put these three things together and you see a man who got paid to do what he loved. But did the fact he got paid alter the
value
he gave his patients? The value went beyond mere transaction. We
were never rich, but I know Dad created a legacy of wealth for the people he cared for and their families.

After I got my driver’s license in high school, I would often go to pick up my dad after work. Sitting in his worn leather armchair still redolent with the embedded scent of Borkum Riff tobacco from his pipe-smoking days, I could feel a palpable sense of deep emotion permeating the room. The experience was strikingly similar to the feeling I’d get for years as a professional actor in a theater after an audience had seen a play. Theater is therapy, as much for the actors as the audience. Scripts, lighting, costumes—they’re all just pieces of a mirror we agree to look at together for a moment in time, giving us permission to reflect.

I received a letter from one of my dad’s patients not long after he died. She told me how much he had meant to her in a deeply troubling time of her life. She gave me a glimpse of his life I had never seen. It was a precious gift, and it stands as a written testament for the shared experiences of thousands of other people my dad touched with his work. And his life.

We don’t need to write everything down. Sometimes it can be exhausting or counterproductive to measure just for measuring’s sake. But technology and science are helping to create ways to peer more deeply into our lives so we can let in some light to areas where we can inspire healing and growth. And people around the world are recognizing our inherent value has been supplanted for too long by the reckless pursuit of money, and that we’re worth more than wealth.

The Heart of Hacking H(app)iness

As a review, here’s what I’ve done my best to prove in this book:

• Data is getting personal.
  
• Happiness can be quantified and increased.
  
• The happiness economy is redefining wealth.
  

Here are the benefits I explained you’d gain from reading the book:

• Informed Choice
  
• Joyful Discovery
  
• The Currency of Connection
  

Here’s how I’ve encouraged you to act in the context of mobile/modern technology, positive psychology, and evolved economic models focusing on shared value and balanced well-being:

• A—be Accountable
  
• P—be a Provider
  
• P—be Proactive
  

I’ve done my best to show you the following:

• Your personal data is more connected to the world than ever before.
  
• By measuring your life, you can optimize it and increase your happiness/well-being.
  
• By connecting your skills to actions that help others, the whole world gets h(app)y.
  

In short, I’ve tried to prove why your personal data counts and how tracking it can change the world. Now you know that I mean this literally and figuratively, and you can start the process now.

The Mystery

My dad’s quote about learning to be comfortable with mystery wasn’t a cop-out. He said it to me years ago, after we’d had a long argument about religion.