Why you are happier than you think – according to science

In the immediate aftermath of the loss of my 30-year career I feared I may drown in a river of feelings of failure, that I’d be swept away by a sadness that would penetrate all areas of life. When your identity is as strongly tied to your job as mine had been since the age of 16 it is hard to imagine a happy normality without it. But something unexpected happened in the months after I was made redundant from my magazine editing role; I found myself heartily warming to the idea that satisfaction with what I had, instead of striving for more at work, was making me happy.

How strange. I felt illogically liberated by the loss of my career coat-of-armour, which was unexpected. I began to “switch states” as the therapists call it and started to live in the moment, which is very unlike me. I started revelling in small daily joys, often doing things like getting up to watch a sunrise in my slippers in the garden, I said no to big projects that would have consumed me like my job had before, I had Fridays off. I became, dare I say it, a little dull in my early fifties.

But it turns out, that I was onto something. This week a new survey I’m labelling “A Manifesto for Being Boring” discovered that satisfaction is now the UK’s main marker for success. In other words, we no longer need to strive for “more” to be happy in life, we can instead settle for “enough”. In our wobbly post-pandemic, Brexit-battered uncertain world of wars and climate disasters, the seed of hope is that feeling satisfied with your lot – even though you know “your life could be better” (as the survey questionnaire put it) – is good for you.

The findings are to be welcomed. It gives us permission to back off from the showy achievement-based bucket lists we’ve all been encouraged to curate, particularly the have-it-all women of Generation X. It stops what one mid-life friend of mine calls “the closing doors panic” of ageing, where you feel you’re running out of time to meet self-imposed expectations. But don’t be fooled folks for you may find that being happy with your lot is harder than it looks.

I was made redundant in the middle of a pandemic when I was home-schooling a 10-year-old alongside waving goodbye to my firstborn as she left home; it knocked me sideways but it also taught me a valuable lesson: that the here and now really is all we’ve got. The only certainty in life is the uncertainty of it all, so the logical thing to do is celebrate the ordinary day-to-day stuff that makes you feel safe.

I once put in an Olympic effort to get to the “next big thing” and I can’t tell you what a relief it is to have finally liberated myself from my ambitious manic mindset. My whole identity was tied to my busyness and I somehow ignored all the other more ordinary signs of success. I had a healthy family of four kids, a happy marriage, had earned enough money, saved a pension and had a roof over my head. I was lucky – or as the millennials say, “blessed”. Striving for more feels exciting though doesn’t it, but settling with what you have is so much better for you mentally and physically.

Gradually, I discovered that accepting contentment as a life strategy (and my measure of success) is more sustainable and less exhausting than a strategy of striving. We live in a culture today which urges us to seek the high of constant happiness, where we’ve been led to believe success is measured by status and stuff and yet this new Ipsos study of more than 2,000 Britons, which asked them to rate their own success on a 10-point scale, concluded that we no longer value high ticket belongings and big job titles.

We have stopped being a nation of ambitious strivers and instead become a nation of satisficers. We’ve found happiness in what could be seen as the most ordinary of goals: over half of those quizzed said owning a house, having a pension and being able to leave an inheritance was all they needed in life. The survey also showed that 60 per cent of those earning under £26,000 per year deemed their lives a success right now. Not a peacocking type like the Zuckerbergs, Musks and Bezoses of this world among them.

The research revealed we Brits like to think of ourselves as hard workers who earn the right to control our time and for the older end of those quizzed, retiring early was the dream rather than chasing more money or more career glory. It seems that something we’ve known all along but reaching this nirvana requires a softening of character (mine had been hardened by going at full speed) and a radical acceptance of feeling all your emotions good and bad, you just let them pass through you like waves change expert and therapist Julia Samuel advised me.

One thing that helps when it comes to embracing the pleasure of daily satisfaction is knowing that you are not alone if you find it problematic – especially in mid-life when science shows everyone hits rock bottom in their mid-forties, Jonathan Rauch’s book “The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50” proves this eloquently. I had no light-bulb moments as I abandoned my striving but I would say that if you really want to accept that success is believing this is the best it is going to get you’ve got to open your mind to some magical thinking. I found this tricky because I like hard facts and science, I’m a logic-based human who didn’t notice the changing of the season outside my window or how beautiful birdsong is on my walk to work. This won’t work if you want to live more in the moment.

You’re going to need to read books by “there is only now” pathfinders like Wintering by Katherine May, The Bridge By Donna Lancaster or even Eckhart Tolle’s classic The Power of Now and my new favourite, Chip Conley, to help you give in to the woo-woo. What you’re also seeking of course – which the survey showed – is time affluence, or control over the hours in our day.

To be a fellow “satisficer” you’ll need to lean into slowing down, say no to stuff and to make space in your day to find neurologically soothing moments of “awe” that take your breath away (I can watch the sea for hours). Given the context you already have what you need, you will have to proactively step off the white-knuckle ride of your ambitions and think smaller. This way you will squeeze the glory out of the ordinariness of things and immerse yourselves in that. It’s often the softest of skills that are the hardest to learn, but the rewards of learning them last a lifetime.

Lorraine Candy is the author of ‘What’s Wrong With Me: 101 Things Midlife Women Need to Know’