TL;DR

• The youth mental health crisis is mostly a Western phenomenon. Same smartphones, very different outcomes. East Asia and Eastern Europe didn’t see the same collapse.

• The smartphone case isn’t wrong, but it’s been oversold. Screen time explains under 1% of wellbeing variance, less than bullying, sleep loss, or family relationships.

• Gen Z is more openly LGBTQ and more therapy-fluent than predecessors. Some of the “crisis” is real distress; some is honest reporting that earlier generations never gave us.

• Post-2021 data shows things improving. The boring fix works: guard sleep, move daily, see faces over screens, and don’t slap a diagnostic label on normal sadness.

I like my classroom to be a “safe space” with open dialogues about difficult subjects. Sometimes they’re political things. Other times they’re personal. The biggest benefit, no matter the topic, is connection. We build trust and navigate hard moments together. (Always on cue is the semi-annual mass shooting.)

There’s another little bonus: I get to peek through the blinds and into their lives…in a totally non-creepy kind of way.

Dozens of open dialogues have taught me 2 seemingly contradictory things.

1. Our kids have healthier behaviors than we did. Anecdotal evidence and hard data both speak to this.

2. They are less mentally fit than we ever were. Emotional stability. Resilience. Hope. They fare worse on all of these fronts. (For reference, I’m an ’80 baby sitting on the Gen X-Millennial cusp.)

Our youngest adults drink less, smoke less, and screw less. (No wonder they’re so depressed.) Teen pregnancy rates have plummeted by 75% since the 1990s. The kicker? Despite the incessant texting, they’re also safer drivers.

Then, out of left field, comes the frailty. Compared to elder generations, Gen-Z adults are the least likely to be “thriving” (39%, lowest on record). They’re also almost 2X as likely to seek therapy compared to Boomers.

So our kids are showing themselves to be responsible. They’re treating their bodies better. But they’re also more likely to express feelings that things aren’t quite right in their lives. Their quest for answers has compelled them to advocate for their own therapy.

This strikes me as a counter-intuitive mix of decorum and depression. That’s my first thought, anyway. But the more I tossed it over, the more it occurred to me that their relationship with their feelings might not signal a generation in crisis. Maybe—and I know this is a wild thought—they actually have the healthiest relationship with mental health we’ve ever measured. They’re making the right behavioral choices AND freely expressing when they need help.

To find an answer, I delved into the reigning explanations for the youth mental health crisis. And the 4 biggest things I learned might surprise you.

#1: It’s mostly a Western problem

The American Gen-Z data on thriving and therapy is telling. But a global comparison on general happiness adds much-needed nuance.

• The US has fallen out of the top 20 happiest countries, mostly driven by a collapse in happiness among people under 30.

• The US ranks #23 in overall happiness, but #62 when ranked by its young people alone. To boot, the US ranks #10 for its over-60s population. Same country, two realities.

• Jean Twenge and David Blanchflower found the same post-2012 youth decline in the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Scandinavia, Germany, and France.

• Curiously, happiness rose among young people in Central/Eastern Europe, East Asia, and parts of the former Soviet bloc over the same period.

The Twenge and Blanchflower article argues that the “happiness U-curve” has shifted in the Western world. In other words, it used to be high in youth, then dip in middle age before rising again. Now, it’s a flatter line that increases slowly with age.

Most importantly, we can’t pass these trends off as American anxiety over school shootings, fentanyl, or the Netflix crackdown on password sharing. None of those explain why the kids in London and Melbourne started struggling at roughly the same time. Well, except the Netflix thing. That was a universal tragedy.

I’ll dig further into the global differences in #3 below. For now, we can conclude that these countries simultaneously saw a cultural shift that took motion in about 2012. That conspicuous timing has led experts to shovel the blame onto screen adoption, and particularly the smartphone.

#2: The merits (and limits) of the smartphone explanation

Scholars have dusted for fingerprints at the scene of this crime—A LOT. And they’ve landed on the iPhone as a key person of interest. To their credit, youth mental health took a dive right when smartphone adoption hit a saturation point, the 2012 timeframe I just mentioned.

The strongest evidence goes like this:

• and colleagues analyzed data on 1.1 million high schoolers from 1991 to 2016. (Creepy much?) They found the teens were doing fine right up until 2012. Then, suddenly, they weren’t. As shown in the chart below, wellbeing fell off a cliff at exactly the moment most teens got their first smartphone. If there’s a smoking gun, this is it.

• Twenge grabbed some more homies and did a follow-up study. When they added national suicide data, the authors noted sharp rises in depression, suicidal thoughts, and suicide deaths starting around 2010, especially among girls. They specifically tested and ruled out the obvious economic explanations (unemployment, stock market, etc.). The money parts didn’t track with the changes, but screen time did.

• From there, Twenge went rogue, doing a solo study in 2020. In that piece, she pulled together the evidence and laid out some proposed mechanisms. She argued that phones eat sleep, replace face-to-face contact, and amplify social comparison (the last one being especially damaging to teen girls).

Pretty airtight—right?

Well, kinda. It’s at this point that iMessage addicts rushed to the defense of the smart phone. (Hot conspiracy take: They were on Apple’s secret payroll.)

To start, Amy Orben and Andrew Przybylski poked significant holes in the data. Using large data sets, they found that screen time explains at most 0.4% of variance in adolescent wellbeing. In a fit of fighting words, they made a famous comparison: screen time was as closely associated with wellbeing as eating potatoes or wearing glasses.

These weren’t rhetorical flourishes. They were direct comparisons the authors ran in the same datasets to add context to the screen time effect. And they weren’t done. They also pointed out that other factors had dramatically larger effects than phones:

• Being bullied

• Smoking marijuana

• Sleep loss

• Healthy relationships (especially at home)

Then came the direct rebuttal to ’s The Anxious Generation, the 2024 book that effectively placed the smartphone argument on every parent’s nightstand. In her response, Candice Odgers puts out a basic objection: Haidt’s data is mostly correlational and the effects are small. To which Haidt replied, “My effects are average size!”

Odgers doesn’t think people like Twenge and Haidt are completely manufacturing the youth mental health crisis. She agrees that it’s real and requires intervention. But to intervene effectively, we have to focus on causes. And it’s a big leap from “phones are connected to mental health” to “phones are rewiring children’s brains and causing a mental health crisis.”

Going back to the global comparisons, Odgers also pointed out many countries with high smartphone adoption rates didn’t show the same effects, especially in East Asia. Put bluntly, the smartphone adoption thesis cherry picks countries where the timing lines up nicely and ignores the others.

Again, people like Orben, Przybylski, and Odgers aren’t doing an Officer Barbrady impression. They agree that there’s something to see here. They just think the evidence against the smartphone is, at best, circumstantial. At worst, it’s misleading and could lead to unproductive interventions (e.g. phone bans).

SIDE NOTE: As a father of two girls who will one day become tweens and teens, I don’t care if the evidence proves causality. I’m ALL about phone bans and pushing these things back until adulthood. I’ll die on this hill. Then, one day, my girls will trounce on my dead body as they scroll away.

#3: The crisis has a demographic

This is where the Gen-Z and Millennial mental health crises come into focus. Before I dive in, I should make it clear that I’m not saying the smartphone, lack of sleep, and social comparison aren’t real drivers of this phenomenon. But we’re getting an unclear picture simply by pointing at smartphone saturation.

At the risk of tanking your libido, I’m gonna get stats-nerdy. To help, here’s a pic of an ugly guy with his hot wife you can come back to when you get bored.

Any statistician will tell you that survey data is fallible. Just look at the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections for a couple fine examples. To their credit, most of these youth happiness surveys don’t suffer from sample size issues. But the surveyed population does present some problems, meaning that the data is skewed by character traits in the respondents.

First, Gen-Z is vastly different from those of previous generations, both in culture and demographics. Specifically, Gen-Z is far more likely to openly identify as LGBTQ. In fact, there’s a steady cross-generational rise in queer self-identification.

There are two possible explanations:

1. Gay proselytizers really hit their marketing stride in the early aughts, convincing more straights that being gay is cool.

2. Acceptance of alternative lifestyles led to more honesty and self-identification in Gen-Z. So it’s not that more people are gay. It’s that they’re more likely openly identify as such.

Despite the mercurial rise of marketing majors, explanation #2 is far more plausible. If true, it indicates that younger generations have shed some weighty stigmas common to their progenitors. Having unloaded that stigma, they no longer fear the judgment associated with honest survey responses. This is likely the case for being gay. The result, potentially, is more honesty and less overall response bias (AKA lying).

Could the same honesty effect also show up for expressing anxiety, depression, or thoughts of suicide?

At minimum, the ascent in LGBTQ identification is a signpost of a generational culture shift. And stats geeks have repeatedly pointed out that culture conditions survey responses. At most, we’re seeing the tip of the iceberg of Gen-Z’s honesty on surveys.

I want to show you why LGBTQ identification likely impacts the overall happiness trends.

• People who identify as LGBTQ are 2-6x more likely to experience mental distress.

• Persistent sadness is expressed by 65% of LGBTQ respondents, versus just 31% of cisgender peers.

• LGBTQ teens are 4x more likely to attempt suicide than straight peers. The highest risk subgroup is bisexual teens with more than a 1 in 4 chance of attempting suicide (27%).

• LGBTQ adolescents had 5-6x higher odds of clinical-level depression and 3x higher odds of clinical-level anxiety.

So let’s recap Gen-Z’s cultural artifacts:

1. They’re more likely to openly embrace alternative sexual identities.

2. Those alternative sexual identities are linked with higher rates of mental health issues.

3. They have been acculturated in a therapy-friendly world and view therapy as a positive, legitimate path for addressing problems.

Each of these traits introduces a population bias in the survey data. In other words, Gen-Z’s mental health may be a story of identity and culture, rather than a yarn about a lost generation. On matters of gender and sexuality, it’s clear that Gen-Z’s reality is different from their predecessors. (It’s no wonder Boomers think they’re all batshit crazy.)

But this presents us with a population knot in the “saddest generation” data. It’s possible, compared with previous generations, that they’re just more likely to be honest about many things. These might include sexuality, negative emotions, anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation.

Let’s zoom back out to the global perspective. You might remember that some countries saw declines in youth mental health while others didn’t. The former group includes the US, UK, Canada, Australia and Western Europe. The latter group is mostly Central and Eastern Europe and parts of East Asia. This creates a consistent cross-national pattern that helps us tease out why identity, culture, and therapy might be causing a divergence between actual wellbeing and measured well-being.

• Declines are concentrated in high-LGBTQ acceptance/identity + mature-therapy + housing-squeezed countries. Wellbeing is stable or rising in lower-LGBTQ visibility + recovering-economy countries.

• Eastern European story: genuine economic improvement (post-Soviet recovery + EU integration), lower LGBTQ+ visibility and identification, less developed mental health infrastructure, and lower therapy uptake. So even where real distress may be similar, measured distress is lower.

• Anglosphere story: stagnant or worsening housing and middle-class conditions for young adults, high LGBTQ+ visibility and identification, mature mental health infrastructure, therapy-saturated. The same underlying distress shows up much louder.

• The implication: countries aren’t different because their kids are different. They’re different because their measurement instruments and real economic conditions differ.

It’s possible that young people in Poland are happier than the ones in Portland. (Having been to Portland in December, I could see why.) And maybe contrasting experiences with technology are responsible for this. It’s also possible that their society just hasn’t gotten to the critical threshold of gay acceptance and therapy uptake to reveal the truth.

All of this, for me, places some question marks in the data. But it falls short of delegitimizing the data entirely. There’s clearly something there. It’s the alarmism and phone scapegoating that are arguable.

#4: The problem is real. It’s also getting better (maybe).

There are valid arguments about flaws in the survey data and the limits of the smartphone argument. Despite this, my biggest takeaway is that this problem is very real. Diagnosis rates for youth mental health issues have increased significantly since Gen-Z has come of age.

Whether or not this confirms a mental health “crisis” is arguable. But something’s afoot in the area of youth wellbeing, and many are scrambling to identify causes and fixes. When I say it’s real, I mean one of two things is certain:

1. Today’s youth are truly less happy.

2. They’ve become convinced their lives are less happy and perception has become reality.

There’s no need to quibble over chickens and eggs. Not here, anyway. We should just accept the messages coming from the data we have. That data says that Gen-Z feels worse about their lives than any previous generation did at the same age.

If happiness is the measure and surveys are truth-tellers, Boomers win and Gen-Z loses. Big time.

Then comes the last twist in the literature. This very real problem appears to be finding real solutions. In fact, some are saying that the worst has already passed. The strongest indicators have arisen in the post-pandemic era.

• CDC data shows improvement from the 2021 peak in the youth mental health crisis. For example, persistent sadness and hopelessness among US high schoolers dropped from 42% in 2021 to 40% in 2023. Among girls specifically, the decline was sharper — from 57% to 53%.

• Suicidal ideation among high schoolers fell from 22% in 2021 to 20% in 2023.

• Hispanic students showed the clearest improvement, with persistent sadness dropping from 46% in 2021 to 42% in 2023. Suicidal ideation fell from 22% to 18%.

I know, the shifts are small and could just be measurement error. But keep in mind they come on the heels of a decade-long upward trend in depression, anxiety, and all aspects of suicide. Any leveling is a good sign. Only future surveys will tell if it’s a fluke.

Other studies back the notion that we’re seeing improvement. A 2024 global survey by Deloitte revealed that 39% of Gen-Z said their mental health improved in the last year, versus only 18% who said it got worse. Pew data from 2024 said that 48% of U.S. teens now say social media has harmful effects, up from 32% in 2022.

It turns out that maybe, just maybe, the broad adoption of therapy across Gen-Z is working. Are you sensing the irony yet? The same therapy saturation that inflates diagnoses and self-reports is enabling people to get help and address problems.

Boomers had their crises in midlife, following their divorces and steep Mazerati payments. It’s possible that Gen-Z is having their crisis on the front end of life, treating it with vocabulary, tools, and a mental health infrastructure that didn’t exist 30 years ago.

What to do for yourself (or the young people in your life)

I’ve read some “hot takes” that suggest young people need to drink more, smoke more, and fuck more. I refuse to be one of those guys. In fact, the last suggestion I would have for my students (or my kids) is that they rush out to poke holes in their liver while making bad choices. Instead, let’s identify some real solutions based in high-quality research.

Under the noisy academic debate sits a quiet consensus. Every research camp—from the alarmists, to the skeptics, to the developmental psychologists—agrees on the same short list of protective factors.

They’re unsexy, boring, and (at this point) cliched. But they’ll work regardless of your age cohort. Here are four:

1. Guard sleep like it’s your job. Sleep is one of the strongest predictors of adolescent wellbeing (yep, larger than screen time). In fact, sleep problems significantly explain the phone-to-depression pathway. Sleep loss keeps the amygdala hyperactive (threat detection) while dampening prefrontal regulation. This is the signature of anxiety. Remove the phone from the bedroom and a cascade of other things improves.

2. Move your body. A meta-analysis of 100+ studies shows physical activity reliably cuts depression and negative affect while raising life satisfaction in youth. Exercise releases BDNF and endorphins, but the more durable mechanism may be giving the body regular rehearsals of doing something hard and finishing it. This is a direct counter to depression’s cognitive loop.

3. Prioritize faces over screens. Face time is a psychological nutrient that digital “connections” struggle to replicate. This is likely why young people today report having fewer close friends than previous generations. Here’s how much this matters: The Surgeon General’s 2023 advisory puts chronic loneliness on par with smoking.

4. Resist the diagnostic label when it doesn’t fit. Sometimes you’re sad, not depressed. And a healthy amount of anxiety isn’t crippling. Therapy doesn’t have to be vocabulary prep for your upcoming sadness interview. Everybody has rough weeks, even months. There are valid reasons to avoid pathologizing normal feelings, and research to support this.

Seems like a solid list to me. Though I do have to admit something: The drinking, smoking, and sex sound a lot more fun. I wouldn’t blame anyone who takes that route instead. But that’s probably because I’m a grimy, godless Gen-X’er who’s made more bad choices than Woodstock ’99.

For someone interested in happiness, one of his most interesting articles is Religious People are Happier, published in September of 2025. In that piece, Dr. Burge finally says the “one true thing”: Religious people self-identify as happier than non-religious people. Period. End of story. High-quality data repeatedly bears this out.

Like Dr. Burge, I’m an academic. In contrast, I’m an atheist. Nobody’s perfect.

You might imagine that I found Ryan’s piece a bit unsettling, given it relegated me to a life of misery and melancholy. (See how dramatic I can be?)

This piece isn’t a direct response to Ryan’s article. Instead, I want to explain some of the “why” behind the numbers that he (and others) are citing. My obvious bias is to defend the unchurched, to show that our lives can be as happy as anyone else’s. But I promise to shove down that prejudice and get to the truth of faith and happiness.

So if you’re not churching on Sundays, bring a droopy chair and your slumped posture. I’m about to drop the real reasons why Christians say they’re happier than we are—and what we can do about it.

The Sunday Happiness Gap

My first run-in with the “Christians are happier” thesis came in 2019, when Pew noted that actively religious Americans are 44% more likely to say they are “very happy” than both inactively religious and unaffiliated respondents. To make sure, they added controls for education and income. The numbers didn’t budge.

I blew it off.

Pew. What do those pencil necks know?

Then, in 2022, Gallup added to the swell of data on Christian happiness. They found that 67% of weekly church attenders report being very satisfied with their life, versus just 48% of infrequent attenders. Those same weekly attenders experienced more positive emotions per day, especially on Sunday.

These studies dovetail with Burge’s numbers, which insist there’s a causal stream running from frequent church attendance to feeling better about your life.

What’s REALLY Making Churchgoers Happier

The descriptive statistics speak to the conclusion that piety cranks up the happy. But those statistics do little to tell us WHY this is the case or if the numbers hold up under heavy scrutiny. For all we know, happier people are more likely to go to church in the first place (AKA reverse causation).

We need to know more. And to know more, we need to get past descriptive statistics from Pew, Gallup, and the General Social Survey. This called for more sophisticated models from academics. (Yep, more pencil necks.)

First, I’ll give you a rundown of the main pathways linking active religiosity with happiness. I came across many, but to keep things simple I’ll limit it to three:

• Friendship. Religious attendance → congregational friendships → social support + belonging + identity reinforcement → higher well-being

• Meaning-making. Religious worldview → framework for interpreting suffering, purpose, and mortality → reduced existential anxiety → higher well-being

• Positive emotions. Religious practice → awe, gratitude, hope, compassion, transcendence → broader outlook and connections → better social/psychological resources → higher well-being

Those are the active ingredients, each one with its own pathway. But there’s a least common denominator for all of them: religion breeds psycho-social benefits. And those psycho-social benefits have real impacts on life satisfaction.

But we’re running the risk of falsely assigning causality to religion as it pertains to happiness. Just look at the list above to see a case of data masquerading as truth. All of the things attributed to religious attendance actually depend on something else for the effect to exist. In other words, the effect is there but it’s indirect.

This is where academic studies are helpful.

• A study led by Harvard’s Robert Putnam found that 33% of weekly attenders with 3-5 close church friends reported being “extremely satisfied” with life. Weekly attenders with no close church friends? Just 19%. More telling is that regular attenders with no friends at church fared worse than people who never attended at all. It’s not the steeple, it’s the people.

• Harvard epidemiologist Tyler VanderWeele found that social support explains about 25% of Christianity’s well-being benefit. Again, the single biggest chunk of religion’s “magic” isn’t theological—it’s the built-in social network.

• A large meta-analysis co-written by David Yaden, Jonathan Haidt, and others found that spiritual experiences—feelings of awe, transcendence, and connection to something bigger—pulled about three times more weight than attendance when it came to happiness. The Sunday routine matters. But the transcendent moments are doing most of the work.

• Ryan Burge’s 2025 analysis of the Pew Religious Landscape Survey found that people who watch religious services online but never attend in person are no happier than people who are completely nonreligious. You can livestream the theology. You can’t livestream the potluck.

Yes, the psychosocial benefits of church are real. They are not, however, caused by God. They are the byproduct of social connectivity, spiritual experiences, and transcendence.

Let me be clear: I’m not trying to make the case that religion doesn’t matter. It’s clearly a positive force in people’s lives. I’m just trying to make the case that many of these outcomes are indirect and that Christians don’t hold a monopoly over spiritual benefits.

All that said, it’s clear that secular people have to concede the point made by Burge and others: Being an active Christian expedites many traits of a good life.

Comradery. Congregation. Coping. Compassion. Connection to something larger.

Compared to all other people, active Christians are more likely to harness the power of these forces. But “more likely” is a long way from “uniquely capable.”

The new question is, how can Sunday abstainers access these same benefits? Or, from another angle, what types of secular people are more likely to reap these spiritual rewards than others?

The Secular Plot Twist

Christians have denominations, meaning not all are alike. In a sense, so do non-believers. Some are torn from the cloth of atheism (like me). Others take up the ambiguous mantle of agnosticism (commitment issues). Still others, thanks to surveys, embrace terms like “spiritual but not religious” or “nothing in particular” (super commitment issues).

Also like Christians, the happiness outcomes of secular people vary. And this is where things get interesting. I also think it’s where we get closer to the truth behind the faith-happiness connection.

First, we have to organize secular people to create distinctions. For our purposes, the aforementioned brands of secularity are good enough—atheists, agnostics, spiritual but not religious (SBNR), and nothing in particular (“nones”).

Here’s how they size up on well-being:

• Among secular Americans, atheists reported the highest levels of life satisfaction and self-rated health. (Scoreboard.)

• A separate national study also found that atheists had better physical health and markedly fewer psychiatric symptoms (anxiety, paranoia, obsession, compulsion) than other secular individuals.

• SBNR respondents reported the highest happiness but the lowest life satisfaction—they often feel good, but are less settled or content with their lives overall.

• The strongest predictor across secular groups was whether their nonreligion feels comforting vs anxiety-provoking; comfort is associated with higher happiness.

The most telling bullet is the last one. When distance from religion produces confusion or anxiety, people suffer. If it leads to comfort, they fare much better. Sounds obvious, but there’s something there. We just need to figure out what produces secular anxiety.

More studies add perspective.

• A U.S. study by Luke Galen and James Kloet found that “strong” atheists—who feel sure God doesn’t exist—had higher life satisfaction and emotional stability than “moderate” atheists (less sure) and agnostics (unsure).

• Another study found nonaffiliated theists (nones) had significantly worse physical and mental health compared to atheists, and the worst outcomes of any group in the study. Another study echoed this finding.

• These findings are attributed to atheists’ sense of “existential certainty” and a confident worldview.

To recap, atheists typically have the firmest beliefs among secular groups, which comes with a couple of benefits. First, their existential certainty reduces chronic rumination on questions of God and faith. This is associated with lower anxiety and, by extension, higher happiness.

Second, for atheists non-religiosity is like sweatpants—they are comfortable with it and often adopt an affirmative non-religious identity. That identity comes complete with a secular worldview rooted in secular values—science, nature, art, etc.

Agnostics and SBNR people, on the other hand, are far less sure and more conflicted. In a sense, they’ve rejected the communal and dogmatic parts of religion but haven’t built a secular alternative. They tend to be “seekers” who are exploring without settling.

They’re also the most disconnected from the infrastructure that makes religion work. According to Pew, only 2% of SBNRs attend a weekly gathering (of any type). Just 5% say they’re part of an important spiritual community. They’re not just ambivalent about God. They’re bowling alone.

In the end, Galen and Kloet concluded there was a U-shaped relationship between existential certainty and happiness, with devout believers and strong atheists at the ends and more uncertain groups in the middle.

What matters isn’t what you believe. It’s how settled you are in your worldview. Or, put another way, it’s not faith vs. no-faith. It’s certainty vs. ambivalence.

A coherent, committed worldview (whether religious or secular) gives you:

• A stable framework for interpreting life events

• Clarity about purpose and meaning

• Freedom from existential churn

• A consistent identity and community of like-minded people (identities tend to attract association)

Ambiguity, in contrast, costs you psychologically. If you’re not sure whether the universe has meaning, whether death is the end, whether suffering has purpose — and you haven’t settled into either a religious or a secular answer — you pay a well-being tax in the form of ongoing existential anxiety.

I should point out that most secular people identify with the uncertainty factions. A 2024 Pew report pinned the nones at 63% of non-religious people and agnostics at 20 percent. Atheists sit at just 17 percent. That’s more than 8 in 10 who score low on happiness.

Translation: The secular data on happiness is skewed toward unhappiness, simply due to the make-up of non-religious groups. When we compare strong atheists with frequent church attenders, the happiness gap almost vanishes. Not quite. But almost.

How to Get Happier

I just threw a lot of studies at you. (My bad.) Together, they tell a story about theology and happiness, and Christianity is the main protagonist. But the narrative quickly shifts when we unearth the nuances.

First, any argument claiming that religion is directly responsible for happiness is on shaky ground, simply because the data claps back at this argument. Identifying with a religion does little for a person’s well-being, as evidenced by the happiness gap between weekly attenders and non-attenders.

Second, the relationship runs through intermediaries. Rather than Christianity, this is about friendship, meaning-making, and positive emotions. To be clear, it’s not that Jesus isn’t doing some heavy lifting. He clearly helps active Christians find these benefits.

Compared with SBNRs and agnostics, Christians really do experience happiness benefits. But only if they do it a certain way. And they don’t possess a monopoly over spiritual happiness. Secular people can get there, too.

For all of us—from devout Christians to atheists and everyone in between—there’s a well-worn set of spiritual practices that build happiness.

They look like this:

1. Join something (and keep showing up): The research is clear. Communal participation drives well-being, not private belief. Find a group that meets weekly (or close to it), shares your values, and offers real friendships.

2. Settle your existential accounts: Galen and Kloet’s U-curve shows that too many big, open questions can cause existential anxiety. Is there a God? What’s my purpose? How do I deal with mortality? People with answers are happier than perpetual seekers. So learn, think, and arrive at an answer. Then commit to it. This isn’t about being right or “sure.” And it’s not cemented for life. But you’ll benefit from having a solid idea.

3. Practice awe on purpose: Spiritual experiences had 3 times the happiness power than religious attendance by itself. Fortunately, you don’t need a church for awe. Nature, science, music, art, and meditation produce transcendent emotional states. Schedule them like you’d schedule exercise.

4. Build a personal “meaning architecture”: Religious people benefit from a coherent, ready-made story about why they’re here. Meaning and purpose are served up to them on a silver platter. Secular people can have this too. But it requires intentional construction rather than passive inheritance. Engage with philosophy. Perform service. Parent your kids with passion. Find your creativity. Learn the ripples you make in the world, the impact you can have. The possibilities are endless.

Religion is a powerful happiness technology, but it’s not the only one. The mechanisms are human. The ingredients are portable. And the best time to start building is always the same: now.

Rod Tidwell’s mantra in Jerry Maguire stuck with me. Great movie, an underdog tale about making it in the vicious world of pro sports. There are even character arcs and a love story peppered in. But the main object of desire, other than a youthful Renee Zellweger, is a big payday. (Spoilers: They get paid.)

Jerry Maguire’s narrative captures the essence of American material values. First, it unmasks how we define success (money). Second, it reveals our zealous faith in money, especially that can money buy happiness.

And maybe a fit trophy spouse.

These American values are at odds with what our mothers told us, which is that money can’t buy happiness. So who got it right—movies or mom?

Regrettably, my goal here is to make a liar out of moms everywhere. Here’s why: For most of us, money is likely to produce happiness. Admittedly, the relationship is complex. In fact, the line from money to happiness is more crooked than straight.

Most importantly, I’m about to reveal who money works for and why. With that knowledge you’ll be able to avoid the pitfalls of unhappiness that plague even the richest people.

Side note: “Happiness” here means people’s self-reported moods, feelings, and emotions, communicated through some kind of survey instrument. It’s how you feel in the moment, not how you feel about your life in general.

Money & Happiness: What the Research Says

Luckily, academics have been poring over the money & happiness question for a couple of decades. This gives us a healthy amount of information to work with.

In 2010, Nobel laureates Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton published the first highly touted study on money and happiness. They argued that money has a diminishing return on “emotional well-being”, which is your day-to-day experience. As you climbed the income ladder, money’s impact on your daily happiness steadily plateaued, eventually disappearing at about $110k. (Adjusted for inflation from the original figure of $75k in 2010.)

Their main implication is that money does buy happiness, but only if it’s attached to upward mobility from the working class to the upper middle class.

If you’ve ever been poor, you know that this conclusion ranks at the tippy top of the no shit, Sherlock list. Poverty sucks. Getting out of it is uplifting, even joyful.

The Plateau That Wasn’t

This cap on money and happiness was widely cited for years, eventually being called the plateau consensus. But all that changed in 2021, when a cheeky scholar had the gall to drop a knowledge bomb on the Nobel-prize winners.

Matthew Killingsworth—whose name is straight out of a British production of Dexter—amassed a real time data set from 33k U.S. adults, immediately giving Kahneman and Deaton a serious case of data envy.

Killingsworth’s article heavily debunked the plateau consensus, loudly declaring that there was no ceiling to the happiness potential of money. Here’s a visual:

Notice that the line steadily rises with added income. Importantly, Killingworth concluded that the impact of money on happiness ran through 2 avenues: autonomy (control over one’s life) and security (less risk). Autonomy by itself accounted for 74% of the connection between income and happiness.

In other words, money buys happiness mostly because you feel more in control of your life. The sense that you’re less at risk also helps, albeit more subtly.

In a pointed (and direct) rebuttal to Kahneman and Deaton, Killingsworth titled the article “Experienced well-being rises with income, even above $75,000 per year.”

Street translation: your mom.

Resolution (kinda)

Killingsworth and Kahneman committed to a steel cage match to sort out the $75k plateau question. But it was called off when Kahneman didn’t make weight. (Nice job, chubs.) So they shifted gears and teamed up for the study to end all studies.

That piece was published in 2023 and added some much needed nuance to the debate. Here’s what they found (and where things stand):

1. Results vary from person to person. While income bumps gradually make some people happier, other people experience the plateau (pegged at $100k in this study).

2. Using real time happiness scores, they separated people into 3 groups; the “unhappy minority” (bottom 20%); the middle 50%; and the happiest 30%.

3. For the unhappy minority, happiness plateaus at $100k. Whatever joy they’ve reaped from money stops there.

4. Both the middle 50% and the happiest 30% avoided the plateau. Increases in happiness continued beyond $100k and the curve never flattened.

5. For the happiest 30%, the money-happiness connection accelerates. In other words, happiness rises faster than it does for the middle 50%. If you’re already a very happy person, money really does buy happiness—and fast.

It turns out your experience of money and happiness depends on—well, how happy you are. So there you go. Happy people get happier with money.

Does this argument seem painfully obvious and possibly cyclical? I thought so, too. At least at first. But the authors explained that it’s a little more complicated than “happy people keep getting happier.” Instead, they’re saying that happy people are better at turning financial wealth into exponential joy. Or, from the other side, that unhappy people are mired in their melancholy, regardless of what money comes their way.

Why Money Makes Some People Happier Than Others

At this point, the biggest unanswered question is, why do the happiest 30 experience money differently? If we know the answer, we can tiptoe around the unhappy minority pitfalls and try to mimic the lives of the happiest 30.

Killingsworth and the gang take a purely statistical approach. For them, the unhappy minority are those who frequently experience “negative affect”, the industry term for feeling cranky. The happiest 30, in contrast, rarely report negative affect and frequently report positive emotions. The middle 50 sit somewhere in between.

Basically, the first (and most unsatisfying) differentiator between happy and unhappy is being in a bad mood vs. a good mood. That’s as far as they took it.

Thankfully, other studies give strong clues about the comorbidities of negative affect. Here are the highlights:

1. High neuroticism

2. Chronic stress (financial, time, work, etc.)

3. Chronic illness/pain

4. Social isolation

5. Strained/failing relationships

As far as I can tell, the neuroticism part is neurological and often genetic. Their nervous systems generate more threat signals and they get less pleasure from positive experiences. So even a windfall doesn’t register the same way.

The rest of the list qualifies as circumstantial. In short, the unhappy minority is either genetically hapless or situationally deprived. And the situational parts are complicated. Some are changeable. Others are avoidable. Many are neither. (Like chronic illness/pain.)

What’s more interesting are the ways that happier rich people use their money. Take a look at how this list compares to the one above:

1. They buy time (less time stress)

2. They spend prosocially (on others)

3. They prioritize experiences over things

4. They align spending with values and purpose

None of these fix neuroticism, illness, or chronic pain, mind you. Those are uniquely destructive and stubborn circumstances. But each other problem on the negative affect list is partially mediated by money. But the outcomes depend on how money is used.

Here’s the rub: If you dodge chronic illness, are (mostly) pain free, and not overly neurotic, more money can buy you more happiness. You just have to convert money into time, autonomy, experiences, generosity, love, and purpose. The returns will still diminish over time. But you’ll defy the gravity that many experience at the high end of the income scale (AKA the plateau).

The Limits of Money for Buying Happiness

There are, of course, some caveats to the argument that money + generosity + values = happiness. I’ll start with the biggest one and squeeze the others in as best I can.

To understand the first limitation of money on happiness, you have to understand the 50-40-10 rule popularized by Sonja Lyubomirsky. You may have heard it by its other name, the happiness pie. Put simply, the 50-40-10 rule breaks happiness into 3 buckets, with each contributing a certain percent of your happiness. The 3 buckets are genetics (50%), behaviors (40%), and circumstances (10%).

As of this writing, you have no control over genetics. It was set the moment daddy’s sperm poked into mommy’s egg. (Was “poke” too graphic?) The two parts we have a say in are behaviors and circumstances.

Money is primarily a circumstance. Therefore, assuming the 50-40-10 split is true, money has a minority stake in the pie at just 10 percent. It’s not insignificant. But it’s limited. As I explained earlier, behaviors are the more important part of the equation (how you use it).

An equally big problem is capitalist materialism. This is an intractable problem, simply because marketing convinces us that imagined problems are real problems. And each “real” problem has a “real” solution which, if you order in the next 5 hours, will be here by 4 PM. (As a minimalist who’s sensitive to consumption, I’m acutely aware of this mind game.)

In our societies, avoiding the perils of unbridled consumption is akin to walking uphill, both ways. Simply put, behaviors don’t happen in a vacuum—externalities matter. This leads to the biggest mistake in the realm of money: Falling prey to using it as cheap fuel for instant gratification.

The Bottom Line: Money, Happiness, and What You Can Control

At the top, I said that the line from money to happiness is complicated. But complicated doesn’t mean imaginary. For most of us, assuming we use it wisely, money absolutely can (and often does) buy happiness. It heightens our emotions and brightens our daily lives. The most powerful explanations are stress reduction, increased autonomy, buying time, and deeper experiences.

Under certain circumstances—like illness, chronic pain, or neuroticism—the power of money wilts and potentially vanishes.

What we’ve discussed here is money’s impact on how we feel, moment to moment (emotional well-being). There’s another aspect worth noting: Our holistic perception of our lives, or what’s called “life satisfaction.”

These are very different measures. The former is a single frame from a movie. The latter is a review of the whole film. Your life, like most movies, has some ugly frames. If you’re like me, it’s got entire scenes that aren’t pretty. But it can still be satisfying.

Conversely, you can feel good right now, but think your life is an overall shit-fest. It goes both ways.

Even Kahneman and Deaton, the fathers of the plateau thesis, found that money’s impact on life satisfaction does not plateau. The more money we have, the better our holistic evaluation of our lives. This is also the case for lottery winners and inheritance beneficiaries. (Good news! You don’t have to hit the lottery yourself. An ailing grandmother will do just fine.)

My loose theory is that life evaluations are closely connected to what other people think. It’s not so much that we feel better about our lives as income increases. It’s that money comes with heightened status. Outside observers think we’re awesome, which we happily embrace.
In any case, one thing is clear: Our moms lied to us. Money buys happiness. So go ahead, walk around screaming, show me the money! There’s good reason to believe it’ll make you smile.

The disagreement begins at what the hell “happiness” even means. What does happiness look like? Is it just being giddy all the time? How much money do I need? What role do genetics play? What do the happiest people do every day?

I’ve spent the last couple years intensely focused on making sense of the idea of happiness. In that time, many truths have made themselves known. But none are more important than these:

1. While I claimed happiness as my goal in life, I had no clue what that truly meant.

2. Happiness is not an emotion. It’s a complex mix of circumstances, behaviors, and genetic predispositions.

3. The river of happiness has 3 main tributaries: Health, Harmony, & Hope.

This article zooms in on point 3. It’s also the first article in a series that delivers the foundations of happiness for ALL humans. You. Me. The trolls lurking in the comments section. Everybody.

Don’t believe me? I’ll tell you what: If you stay with me to the end and I still haven’t convinced you, email me for a free prize that’ll make you happier (if you use it regularly).

I should mention that there’s an intentional flow here that extends from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

I’ll start with the aspect of happiness that’s closest to our most basic needs. Then, we’ll move up the pyramid toward social and psychological needs. 

Let’s start with health before moving on to harmony and, finally, hope.

Happiness Source #1: Health

In the happiness literature “health” is an umbrella term that includes physical health and mental health. In Maslow’s terms, basic physiological needs are part of this. But it also stretches into financial security, safety, and general wellbeing.

The WHO defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”

It’s a little nerdy and wordy, but I like it. 

Health isn’t just not being sick. It’s not being sick and being of sound mind and body. Mobility, mental acuity, access to decent food, health care, all that. Maybe an ab muscle and a Lexus would be nice. (I wouldn’t know.)

For context, consider the impact that physical health has on happiness in older populations. One meta-analysis noted that “higher physical capability” (grip-strength, mobility, etc.) was a heavy determinant of one’s happiness.

A 10-year study found you didn’t even have to test an older person’s health. You could simply ask them how healthy they felt. Participants who rated their health highly were also the happiest. In fact, no other factor better explained life satisfaction.

This makes sense. Stop and consider how many things extend from being healthy and able-bodied. Right up front, especially in old age, is the absence of chronic pain. Logically, it’s hard to be happy in the face of constant hurt. 

On top of this is the link between physical capacity and independence. The ability to get up and walk outside allows you to stay socially connected and do what you enjoy. The list is endless.

It’s worth noting that money has direct implications for health. Most notably, there’s a clear connection between financial security and decent healthcare. (At 45 I can envision a long list of costly prescriptions someday.) It doesn’t stop there. Money buys high-quality food, comfortable housing, weather-appropriate clothes, and so much more. 

It’s important to avoid the trap of equating wealth with happiness. But having enough money to feel secure is important. In other words, financial deprivation is a source of insecurity and, by extension, unhappiness. 

It’s a diminishing returns problem: Once you get out of poverty, money doesn’t buy happiness the way it used to.

At this point, a critical truth starts to emerge: Happiness depends just as much on avoiding undesirable conditions as achieving desirable ones. (I talk about this avoidance mindset in detail in Article #2.)

Happiness Source #2: Harmony

Harmony is best described as emotional balance. But it’s nuanced. 

Balance is achieved when we’re aligned with our relationships, culture, and environment. So it includes family, friends, and community. In a way, money too.

We normally associate harmony with music. Different notes or chords are ordered into an arrangement that’s (hopefully) pleasing, if not sublime. 

There are, of course, exceptions. Harmony for Imagine Dragons means banging drums like you caught them breaking into your house.

Harmony in life isn’t all that different from harmony in music. We’re all trying to find the combination of notes that work for us, that make us feel content. When we hit the right notes, they combine to create a whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts. That “whole” is our individual sense of harmony. 

There are myriad note combinations that can create harmony in life. They include:

• Relationships (family, friendship, connectivity)

• Belonging (community, group membership, identity)

• Affection (intimacy, love, attachment)

• Self-respect (sense of worth and dignity)

• Recognition (external validation, appreciation)

• Achievement (self-efficacy, goal attainment)

Ideally, we hit all of these notes all of the time—a veritable symphony of the good life. 

Intimate love within our families + 

high-quality friendships + 

a sense of belonging in our community + 

a healthy amount of self-esteem, self-worth, and accomplishment + 

recognition from others that those accomplishments are valuable

= harmony.

How hard could all of that be?

It would appear, unfortunately, that it’s pretty hard. In fact, harmony is increasingly elusive in modern society. Or, put another way, our culture and technology lend themselves well to dissonance. 

We used old folks to add context last time. Let’s flip the age pyramid and pick on the youths.

There’s a well-documented decline in youth happiness, which has a list of competing explanations. There’s also a defined spike in youth anxiety. The negative effects of digital media environments has steadily risen to the top of that list. (For a few examples, see here, here, and here.)

Excessive digital and social media consumption is linked to social isolation. On top of that, even when it’s used to connect with others, it often invites perfectionism, social comparison, and insecurity. 

These are significant hits to harmony, since relationships, community, affection, recognition, and self-respect all suffer.

Older generations enjoy rants about “the kids these days.” But modern media’s impact on harmony goes beyond Gen Z.

One meta-analysis on the effects of streaming culture noted that binging habits can cause social isolation and depression. To be fair, the effect was strongest in the 18-30 age group. But all age groups saw risk increases.

The combination of screens, digital media, and streaming culture is linked to the decline in social event attendance. This is another trend that affects all generations, but young people the most. 

Translation: Partying is in a funk. And not a good funk. In this case, we DON’T want the funk.

Technology’s penchant for isolation heavily influences the harmony aspect of happiness. Evidence consistently says that strong relationships and social support are critical to our wellbeing. This is because our connections make us feel protected, integrated, and confident.

I’m arguing, along with others, that it behooves all of us to take a look at our time-spending habits. If our activities are solitary, our support system takes a hit. When that happens, we feel the imbalance and our sense of harmony suffers accordingly.

Finally, there’s balance with our environment. I’m not just referring here to ecology. I’m talking about cultivating a healthy relationship with money and our material world. 

We noted that healthy finances are a pillar of security, which is an important part of well-being. But when income growth turns into avarice and material excess, money morphs from angel to demon.

A meta-analysis of 258 studies found that materialism has a significant and negative impact on life satisfaction. Another review of 131 studies discovered that money spent on experiences brought far more happiness than money spent on stuff. This is referred to as the “experiential advantage.” 

We intuitively know why this is the case. Wealth as a means to stuff creates an insatiable passion for consumption and a long ride on the hedonic treadmill. We feel good about acquiring something, a brief sniff of satisfaction. Then the dopamine hit of an Amazon box wears off, short-lived. 

Experiences, on the other hand, are usually social, gratifying, and enduring. How many times have you told a cool story about something you bought? It’s almost always about something you did. (Bonus: You sound much less like an asshole.)

Buddhism says that craving, or what they call tanha (thirst), is a key source of human suffering. The more we want, the more imbalanced we are. And the further we get from harmony.

Happiness Source #3: Hope

Hope might be the toughest source of happiness to define and harness. In Maslow’s language, we’re talking about self-actualization. But this means different things to different people. It’s also likely to change as we grow.

A good way to describe hope is through life itself. DNA is the fundamental building block of all life. What makes it remarkable is that it has a very focused purpose: self-replication. That’s the end all, be all for DNA. To accomplish that, it lays out very specific instructions for each organism and cell. 

Put simply, DNA has a unique purpose and drive. Our goal, if we’re to have hope, is to find the same thing in ourselves. 

Why do you do what you do every day? What are your core values and do you live in concert with them? What (or who) do you aspire to be? Are you optimistic about your future?

Our sense of hope is propped up on our responses to these questions. (Until recently I wouldn’t have had great answers. At times, they still need work.)

That’s why “self-actualization” is so variable—our definition reflects our values, identity markers and personal experiences.

There are, however, a few aspects of hope that are universal.

1. Knowledge/Wisdom

2. Self-improvement

3. Spirituality (both religious and non-religious)

There’s a reason why all religions and philosophies tout the virtue of knowledge. 

Buddhists speak of prajna while muslims learn of hikma. For the ancient Greeks it was sophia. Proverbs 4:7 says that acquiring wisdom is the highest of all virtues. They all know how important wisdom is for hope.

While these schools of thought are different, their takes on wisdom overlap. Ask questions. Think, study, and think again. Reflect in silence. Gather intellectual humility. Learn the power of experience. Learn also the power of failure.

These are the common threads that link all philosophical approaches to knowledge. Time and again, modern research has confirmed what’s scribbled on papyrus scrolls. (Well, except the parts on slavery, women, property, cohabitation, and…okay, basically everything else.) 

A person’s desire to grow—AKA their personal growth initiative (PGI) —is directly linked to happiness. One meta-analysis concluded that PGI adds to subjective well-being by inducing growth in critical areas like self-improvement, planning, and readiness for change.

In short, people dedicated to growth are more resilient, self-confident, resourceful, and adaptable. They strive for a better life and, importantly, believe that it’s within reach. 

It’s also why lifelong learners are the happiest among us. They have curiosity. They have a hunger for knowledge. They have drive, meaning, and purpose. 

They have hope.

The ancients also agreed on the centrality of spiritual pursuits. Again, modern science has repeatedly vindicated them. (Well, except for the parts on polytheism, monotheism, sky daddy, geocentrism…I think you get it.)

Researchers have amassed mounds of data showing that frequent religious attendance boosts happiness. The weight of faith on happiness only grew when frequent practice was thrown into the mix.

Pew’s Global Survey found that “actively religious” Americans are more likely than less-active and non-religious Americans to describe themselves as “very happy” (33% vs. 27% vs. 25%).

Religion, however, does not have a monopoly over spirituality. Secular spirituality works wonders, too. (Full disclosure: I am not religious and pretty much Godless.)

Non-religious spiritual practice has a happiness benefit of its own. This is why the “spiritual but not religious” person is often happier than one who identifies with a faith but doesn’t practice it. In fact, one meta-analysis found that spirituality was more impactful than religiosity for happiness.

This means that religious affiliation isn’t enough. Hope feeds on spiritual practice, whether it’s religious or secular. Either way, it’s hard to deny the largest truth delivered by these studies: Hope starts with believing in something bigger than yourself. 

Therein lies the problem for so many people in Western society, who wear realism and skepticism as a badge of courage (as I used to). In rejecting a “higher power” they place nothing above themselves. 

Their life is the ultimate focus and their mind is the locus of control. Admitting otherwise is capitulation to a higher power and thus a personal failure. 

I’ll defer here to Ryan Holiday in Stillness is the Key:

There is no stillness to the mind that thinks of nothing but itself, nor will there ever be peace for the body and spirit that follow their every urge and value nothing but themselves. The progress of science and technology is essential. But for many of us moderns, it has come at the cost of losing the capacity for awe and for acknowledging forces beyond our comprehension. It has deprived us of the ability to access spiritual stillness and piety. 

As I write, the assassination of Charlie Kirk is just 5 days old. While I won’t pretend to agree with so many of his words, the impact of this event isn’t lost on me. On the same day, Americans experienced yet another school shooting in Colorado.

Many people in our society feel this is an unending abyss. Their despair grows each day. This, they believe, is a hopeless society.

They’re partly right. Our society is bereft of hope. But it is far from hopeless. 

Don’t believe me? Go to almost any elementary school on any given day. Go to a youth soccer game. Scour the earth and you’ll see good triumphs over evil everywhere everyday. We’ve just stopped noticing.

Don’t take my word for it. Go. Look. Hope is what you’ll find.

What you can do

Avoid making the world bigger than it is, which is overwhelming. Just work on you. This is a good starting place since it’s mostly under your control.

Here are a few tips to start you off on the right path:

1. Find your “why.” Why do you do what you do each day? Who is it that you want to be? What are your core values and how do you stay true to them? Developing honest answers to these questions will feed your sense of hope. Then, turn your why and core values into a drive for self-improvement. 

2. Spot any places where life is out of balance. Is your time stacked too heavily on individual pursuits rather than social ones? Are material pursuits becoming a distraction from what’s truly important? Harmony is an ongoing process that’s never done. 

3. Believe in something bigger than yourself. The surrendering of control isn’t a failure. Quite the opposite. It takes strength. Not a God-fearing person? Me either. Find faith elsewhere. The uniformity of nature. The connectedness of all things. Consistent meditation. Whatever. This is the heart of hope.

4. Make a plan to move each day and in every way possible. Walk. Run. Sweat. Lift heavy things. Then be still.

These are broad suggestions, but they’re actionable. I hope this enhances your quest for health, hope, and harmony. 

I know it has helped mine. 

Ready for the next article on the main sources of unhappiness? Go HERE* for the 12 minute read.

My older brother (child 1) has a thick baby album festooned with decoupage. I (child 2) have a manila envelope with “JC” scribbled in sharpie. 

Therapy’s helping.

But there’s also evidence that new dads are less happy than their childless bros.

So which is it? Does becoming a dad bring joy or misery? Or just sleep deprivation?

The lived reality usually depends on how men walk into fatherhood. And this doorway is heavily conditioned by a new dad’s access to paternal leave time.

Quick stats: Paternity leave is an underutilized benefit for many men. In the U.S., only 36% of dads take more than two weeks leave. The rest take less or, sadly, none at all. Less than 5% take more than two weeks.

Whether you’re expecting babies or done making ‘em, cozy up to this one. I’m about to explain why leave time keeps new dads from putting their baby into a donation box. 

It’s on all of us to prevent that—or, at minimum, to tell them to poke some holes in the top.

Paternity leave and Post-Partum Depression (PPD)

One aspect of this is post-partum depression (PPD), which does affect men. The numbers are all over the place, but somewhere between 10 and 20% of new dads get the baby blues. (Sorry to steal your thunder, ladies.)

Notably, if their partner is experiencing PPD, the number can jump to 50 percent. (What’s that saying about a happy wife?)

Taking at least 2 weeks of leave time reduces a new dad’s risk of PPD by up to 26%. There’s also a dose effect, meaning the more leave time (3+ weeks) the more benefit we see.

Side note: According to one meta-analysis, screening methods heavily influence PPD diagnosis rates for men. Self-rating methods led to higher incidences (17%) versus interviews (4%). Two potential explanations: 1) Men are hesitant to openly discuss their depression in an interview; 2) Interviewer bias. They don’t expect men to have PPD so they don’t see it. DM me to let me know what you think.

FWIW, PPD for dads typically surfaces about 3-6 months into fatherhood, which is later than for moms. There are a few possible reasons:

• Women experience hormonal shifts immediately after child birth. Male hormonal changes are slower and gradual. These include declining testosterone and fluctuating levels of estrogen, cortisol, and vasopressin.

• The dad role often means bearing less of the parenting burden than moms. (Every breastfeeding mom just yelled, “ya think?!?!”) But over time, stressors like work-life balance and sleep deprivation can mount.

• Psychologically adapting to fatherhood unfolds more slowly for men. Importantly, many new dads feel emotionally disconnected in the initial weeks and months of fatherhood. Mom and baby are uniquely connected and they’re the odd person out. This can settle in slowly over time.

Leave time helps with most (maybe all) of these. And a quick review of this list shows why the dose effect shows up in the relationship between leave time and happiness for dads.

More opportunities to bond. 

More time for sleep. 

Enhanced work-life balance. 

A window to call the doctor and say, Me want testosterone. Me want be strong man.

Leave time and Family Dynamics

How we experience our home life will ultimately shape life satisfaction. There’s no other environment more important than the home.

So it’s worth asking, how does a new dad’s leave time affect family dynamics and relationships?

First, there’s a connection between family-friendly leave policies and increased life satisfaction. This is the case for both fathers and mothers. 

There’s also a link between more egalitarian leave policies and better relationships at home, including lower conflict and higher marital satisfaction. This is called a “spillover effect”: One thing (leave time) cascades into other parts of life (relationships).

I’ve written elsewhere about marriage and happiness. It’s no secret that there’s often a spike in marital satisfaction right after a baby is born. But that quickly turns into a dip in satisfaction when the weight of parenting settles in. Leave time is an anchor that can keep you on solid ground.

Side note: This is probably why cross-national studies have found a societal effect, where family-friendly laws lead to better happiness outcomes. It also explains why Americans are more likely to be less happy after becoming parents.

Paternal leave time has lasting effects on father-child bonding. Here’s why: When dads get baby time, they become more confident and involved. The quality of these interactions build a connection for years to come, compounding over time.

One study asked 9-year olds to grade their relationship with their dad. Leave time was a strong predictor of how they felt a decade into their lives. When dads took more than 2 weeks leave it led to healthier father-child relationships.

When asked if their dads were “cool”, the child participants became giddy with laughter. (The study didn’t actually cover this, but I’m sure it’s true.)

Finally, I want to go back to the spillover effect I mentioned above. 

Data from Princeton’s Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study found that paternal leave time influences parental relationship quality and coparenting. This effect was still there 5 years later. The authors noted that it was a spillover from dads being more involved in family life.

It’s not just child bonds, but also partner bonds that benefit from extended leave time. 

Does Paternal Leave Improve Work Life?

There is an impact on work life, although the data is mixed. 

One meta-analysis found there was little to no effect on job satisfaction. They concluded that “the increase in life satisfaction does not seem to come from changes in the work environment, but rather changes in the home environment.”

And yet, other studies point to an indirect (but significant) effect of leave policies on productivity, satisfaction, and loyalty.

It’s possible that the work part is complicated because it’s a double-edged sword. A McKinsey study noted that 20% of dads feel like their career (promotion) was negatively impacted by taking extended leave. 

That same 20% of dads also reported their boss was a heartless dickhead. (If they didn’t, they should have.)

Despite any brown linings, the study found that, in the end, the vast majority of dads still felt like the time was worth taking. Two stats from Pew explain why: 62% of men found childcare hours to be meaningful, versus 32% who felt the same way about work hours. 

Parenting is more meaningful than work. Thus the time feels better spent. 

What to do

It’s hard to draw a straight causal line with this data. But it’s equally hard to dismiss how critical leave time is. 

Simply put, getting it increases the likelihood of good family outcomes. On the other hand, sadly, not taking leave is connected to lower quality relationships and less happiness.

There are a few things you can do to make sure you’re on the good side of this equation:

1. If your baby is on the way, check into your employer’s leave policies and start planning to take advantage of what’s offered. Your worst case scenario is FMLA which guarantees you 12 weeks unpaid leave, by law. Remember that there’s a dose effect. The more leave you take, the better your family life and the happier you’ll be.

2. Quantity is important, but quality matters more. Whatever time you get, try to be as actively engaged as you can. Presence is cool. Hands-on is badass. Holding, feeding, soothing, breast pump maintenance, whatever. Communicate to your partner that you want to be involved. They’ll appreciate it and help create opportunities. Then wear those spit-up stained shirts with pride.

3. Done making babies? Communicate the value of paternity leave to new or soon-to-be dads. Let them know that both quantity and quality matter. You’re a role model for them, an informal mentor of sorts. Embrace your influence.

4. Got older kids? Keep in mind that it’s never too late. What these studies ultimately show is that father involvement matters, whenever it happens. Paternal leave time is just a convenient way to study the issue. Try to snag a flexible work arrangement if you can to get more time. Whatever time you get, use it wisely.

Unless you have a lot of kids, you won’t spend much of your life taking care of babies. And yet, it’s probably the most impactful sliver of time we have. Take leave. Hopefully lots. And dive in. 

It’s a big part of building a fulfilling family life which, in turn, heavily impacts overall happiness.

My single mother, brother, and I fit right in.

Was it a thing, I wondered, for a married couple to stay together in eternal bliss? 

How do we, the next generation of bliss-seekers, keep marriage joyful? 

When I dug into the data on marital satisfaction, I discovered that marriage has stages. Each stage has its own vibe, if you will, with different keys to success.

What’s more, the various stages have typical levels of happiness, as reported by survey data and meta-analyses.

The chart looks like this:

Turned out I was asking the wrong question. Instead of “can marriage be happy?”, I needed to ask “when is marriage happy?”….and why?

Disclaimer: The stages and the happiness levels vary widely. Some timelines won’t resonate with you, maybe because you dated for a decade or played house for a long time. (Shit or get off the pot, bruh.) While the stage dynamics apply to most of us, the details are averages. Translation: Just go with it.

That said, let’s learn why these patterns emerge and what we can do to make ours last.

The Filter Stage (Years 0-2)

Dating is bumpy. But after the jungle of awkward dates and physical flings, you reach an upswell of joy because that person comes along. (You’re right, the flings were pretty awesome too.)

That joy has a source, which we call love. This marks the start of the filter stage, where nothing you see is completely true to life. This lasts between 6 months and 2 years.

You like someone. They like you back. The sex is young and (relatively) photogenic. You get the feels, which is exciting and happy.

Now, we’re here on the chart:

To thicken the love plot, let’s see what’s happening in your brain:

• Your partner is like a drug. (No, really.) Your feelings stem from spikes in dopamine, phenylethylamine, and serotonin. This cocktail bears a striking resemblance to cocaine, only your lips are chapped instead of numb. 

• There’s also a shut-down of the pre-frontal cortex, the brain region responsible for judgment and decision-making. This leads to “the suspension of negative judgment.”

Basically, your brain sets your loins ablaze while extinguishing logic. Tell me that’s not a perfect summary of falling in love.

The good: 

This leads to what I call the morning hotty effect, meaning your judgment is so annihilated that your love interest looks good at 6 AM…

and the cat that shit in their mouth is sooo adorable…

and they couldn’t possibly be guilty of night farts.

The bad:

Love cuts both ways. It’s a time of extreme attachment, but also rejection anxiety. Thus this phase is also full of rejection avoidance and “best of you” behavior. 

Putting forth the best of you sounds good. But it can lead to dishonesty, especially on potential deal-breakers. Some people go from “best of me” to “not me” to avoid rejection.

My wife was so good at the “best of you” part that I had no clue who she was until baby #1 was on the way. (I learned.)

Reality Check Stage (AKA I guess you’ll do; Years 2-4)

Like the Molly in college, the love drugs wear off and leave you with a slight hangover. 
Enter the next 2-year phase, the reality check stage. Some experts refer to it as the early attachment stage, because of the brain regions that kick in.

Now we’re here on the chart:

Here’s what’s happening:

• The euphoria of the reward cycle starts to fade out and the pre-frontal cortex starts to yank back the steering wheel.

• Activity in the ventral pallidum starts to tick up. This brain region is responsible for feelings of attachment, dialing up hormones like vasopressin and oxytocin.

The good:

As this happens, you slowly become less obsessed with your partner and more capable of getting to work on time.

You also start to see their idiosyncrasies differently. So you’ve now gone from “awww, I love our conversations!” to “OMG, STFU, WYSOWM!” (Email me with what the last one means and I’ll give you a prize.)

This lets you make better judgments about long-term compatibility. 

The bad:

It’s not uncommon for disenchantment to bubble up, making this the make-or-break stage for young relationships.

If you make it to the end, you’re pretty committed. This is when your mom, grandma, all of your aunts, and your gay uncle repeatedly ask when you’re getting married. 

Believing that gay uncles know best, you start to think it’s a good idea, get a ring, and dive into the marriage pool.

The Negotiation Stage (AKA Early marriage; Years 5-8)

Now that you’re the victor of the quarter quell, the real work begins: the negotiation stage. 

This is also where marital satisfaction and happiness commonly take a dive. This is why it is also called the crisis stage or the power struggle stage. 

We’re now here on the chart:

Early marriage has unique challenges. Communication issues, tolerating differences, accepting that your spouse is never going to crossfit with you again, etc. (What, you couldn’t tell they hated it?)

Sprinkle on the boredom joy of monogamy, add a dash of colicky adorable baby, and, bam, you have a marriage.

• One neuroimaging study noted that the nucleus accumbens is more active during and after conflict resolution. This means the brain’s reward system is telling us to keep our better half happy.

• A meta-analysis found that cognitive reappraisal (re-interpreting your partner’s quirks and foibles) activated the pre-frontal cortex. This helps with self-control and conflict resolution.

• The same meta-analysis found that reappraisal helped quiet the amygdala, which is directly responsible for threat perception. 

Children cut both ways. (Shocked?) There’s usually a happiness bump after a baby arrives. Then post-partum gets real. Couples who manage conflict well co-parent better. The rest argue over whose turn it is at 3 AM.

The good:

Happy couples keep their calm and view their spouses positively. Their prefrontal cortexes are more active, allowing them to regulate their emotions and step back from conflicts.

If you can do that (no biggie) the negotiation stage will be constructive and cooperative. Fortunately, with a shit ton of little work you can develop these skills. (Cue the therapy bills.)

The bad:

Many couples are primed for conflict, making the negotiation stage harder. This is due to an overactive amygdala during conflict, which leads to escalation.

Takeaway: Ladies, next time you see a guy with a big amygdala, walk away—after hooking up with him a few times.

The Barry Manilow Stage (AKA Looks like we made it. Years 9-15)

Couples that survive the negotiation stage typically see a bump in happiness during what I call the Barry Manilow stage. 

Now we’re here on the chart:

This part goes by different names, all of which have their own merit. Some call it the stability stage. Others call it the deep attachment stage.

Competing monikers aside, there’s a consistent theme of calmness and security. (Where are these people??? If you’re one, email me NOW for a prize.)

• If you get here and feel the happiness spike, it’s likely that you’ve achieved neural synchrony. This means your prefrontal cortexes are seriously vibing each other.

• If your anterior cingulate cortexes also synchronize, its stability-palooza.

The good:

By this time, you truly get your spouse and accept that sex is a triumph of wills. (I hear scheduling it helps. Nothing says yowza like “INTERCOURSE” on Google calendar.)

Jokes aside, there’s a lot to celebrate here.

Couples in the stability stage report mutual feelings of deep attachment. This is especially true for couples who share core values, prioritize intimacy, and pursue novelty.

A key factor is expectations. Couples seem to know what to expect from each other. This gives them high expectations for their future, a strong predictor of marital satisfaction. 

The bad:

This is often where life gets heated, with kids reaching tough ages. Money can also become a strain on relationships. Couples who aren’t aligned suffer.

There’s a theme about adaptation here. Those who can adapt to the new realities do okay. Those who don’t, well—at least the house has appreciated a bit. 

The Plateau Stage (AKA why aren’t you dead yet? Years 16+)

Things have gotten better, but the hot air balloon can only go so high. Dropping those sandbags isn’t gonna do much. (Is that even how hot air balloons work?)

But if things are good, keeping it level isn’t bad.

We’re now at the end of the chart:

• A few factors are important at this stage: being less critical, more tolerant, emotionally expressive, and mutually supportive. (Somebody’s gotta drop you off at that colonoscopy.)

• Thriving couples show lasting activity in the reward pathway, especially the ventral tegmental area and dorsal striatum. This means, to some extent, they’re still motivating each other and getting the feels. (Cute.)

• Maintaining neural synchrony is still important, maybe more.

• Being social together and continuing to have new experiences is also critical.

• Oh yeah, and don’t be poor.

The good:

If you get to the plateau stage, you’re more likely to be satisfied with your marriage than unhappy with it. This has a direct impact on overall happiness.

What else do you need?

The bad:

People can change or get bored.

Again, the ideas of novelty and core values are critical. Couples who don’t change together tend to grow apart. And it’s very easy for “stable” to become mundane, even insufferable.

The “grey divorce” phenomenon, where older couples are divorcing at higher rates, exists for a reason. In fact, at this point Baby Boomer divorce rates are higher than Millennials’.

But, to be fair, they’ve been married a helluva lot longer and married younger. How younger generations fare at this stage remains to be seen.

Conclusion

Romance is a complex, Janus-faced part of the human experience. And marriage is how most of us will experience the bulk of it in our lives.

That’s why it’s so critical to overall happiness. But it’s also full of ups and downs, as our chart clearly shows:

The early dip in relationship satisfaction is normal, especially in the first few years of marriage. Don’t panic if that’s you. (I know, you’re asking for a friend.)

Most importantly, keep in mind that those who stay married report being happier later in life. 

If you can stay together, resolve conflict, and view each other as positively as possible, you’ll reap the benefits. 

Then again, people are often happier in second marriages, especially women. Sooo…there’s that. 

Don’t tell wifey.

I was miserable.

But everything changed the day I finished and snagged a flexible teaching job. 

My relationship with time transformed.

My stress levels plummeted. 

I rediscovered self-care and personal joys. 

Today, as a parent, I can drop everything when the school calls because (name redacted) just had a pants-shitting accident at school and is holed up in the bathroom. 

Advice: Bring a paper bag and lighter fluid. Talk softly, trauma taking place.

These are the benefits you can reap with a flexible work arrangement (FWA), one where you significantly control when and where you work. 

Everybody knows this superpower over work impacts our lives. But how much does it really matter for your happiness and why? 

Let’s dig into the data.

The science of flexibility and happiness

First, studies show that FWAs positively impact job satisfaction, which then impacts job performance. Simply put, flexibility makes for a happier and more productive worker.

One meta-analysis showed that FWAs led to higher job satisfaction, which in turn leads to higher life satisfaction. There’s a strong connection between how you feel about your job and how you feel about your life. This is called the “spillover effect.”

Quick pearl: The same analysis found that choosing when you work has more impact on satisfaction than choosing where you work. If you have to choose one or the other, consider giving the nod to hours over location.

Explaining the connection between FWAs, job satisfaction, and happiness: 

• Social exchange theory zooms in on our cost-benefit analysis brains. An FWA is a benefit, which makes us feel better compensated. We then feel better about work and are happier.

• Conservation of Resources theory suggests we’re motivated by building and protecting resources. FWAs help us build resources elsewhere (social, personal, etc.). More resources, more well-being, more happiness.

• Boundary theory focuses on roles. FWAs let us transition between “employee”, “parent”, and “spouse” easier. Thus we’re better parents and spouses, which contributes to life satisfaction.

EXAMPLE: Not more than 10 minutes ago, I took a writing break to set up a date night for me and the wife. (Tommy Davidson better still be funny). Being able to hop the boundary from worker to husband improved my marriage and home life. Now I’m happier and will possibly get laid. (Tommy Davidson better still be sexy.)

Pick your theory or combo and run with it. Whatever the case, they combine to explain a couple of things:

1. Why the General Social Survey (GSS) found that work flexibility increases job satisfaction by 62%, and reduces work stress by 20%.

2. Why job satisfaction has been shown to heavily impact life satisfaction and happiness, both in the short and long term. Again, the idea of the “spillover effect.”

Putting it all together, we can visualize the path from flexible work to more happiness:

Who gets FWAs? The impact of industry and job type

The onus for finding work-life balance is often placed on the individual. People talk about setting boundaries, time management, and practicing self-care. 

This is all good advice. But it skips a critical question: Do you have a flexible job in an amenable industry?

Workplace studies show that certain industries cater to flexibility better than others. Some by leaps and bounds. 

Upper-level jobs typically come with FWA perks while underlings toil in cubicles from 8 to 5.

The kind of work you do (and for whom) matters.

Consider a list of industries/jobs that offer either lower or higher flexibility:

• Higher flexibility: education, engineering, tech, finance, and professional services.

• Lower flexibility: food & hospitality, healthcare, transportation/delivery, retail, lower-level service jobs.

You might be the most steadfast boundary-setter since the Treaty of Westphalia. But you are still unlikely to negotiate an FWA if you manage a restaurant or drive a truck for a living.

Quick example: It never escapes me that my trash in Dallas gets picked up every Monday. Rain, sleet, snow, 4th of July—none of it gets in the way of trash pickup. Those guys have to show up every morning. They have little autonomy, and probably even less PTO.

In short, an FWA isn’t always on offer if you’ve walked into certain industries or jobs. Those industries come with lower job satisfaction and less happiness.

Other industries are rosier. They open a broad window of flexibility and autonomy.

For example, I’m confident that higher education is the FWA champion. Here’s why:

As I write, I’m teaching 4 summer sections for extra money between camp drop offs. It’s all online, when I want, with the amount of effort that I choose (generally speaking). 

There’s work to be done, don’t get it twisted. But I have ample time for breakfast with the kids, morning chat with wifey, a little doom scrolling, and a high-intensity workout. (I mean I could if I really wanted to.)

Then I work for a couple hours until it’s time for my urban Buddha walk that helps me reach enlightenment—which I still can’t find.

Can anybody beat that?

More qualifiers: Why education matters so much

Let’s continue with the education industry, switching to the demand side.

There’s a rising tide of anti-education sentiment, many believing that college isn’t worth it. The degree juice, they say, simply isn’t worth the debt squeeze. Most will cite loan debt vs income to support their claim.

As an educator I’m clearly biased. But I think these views are, at best, myopic. At worst, those who hold them may unwittingly compromise their future happiness.

Here’s why education still matters:

• Having at least a bachelor’s degree buys you access to upper-level jobs in most industries. This means higher income, improved benefits, and autonomy.

• As we’ve seen, one common fringe benefit is an FWA.

• Proof: 47% of workers with a Bachelor’s (or higher) work from home at least occasionally. This number shrinks to 9% with only a high school diploma.

• More proof: Less educated workers often have lower job satisfaction, more job stress, and less overall wellbeing.

• Degrees → FWA → greater job satisfaction → happier life. This isn’t usually part of the degree value calculation, but it’s real.

Of course, none of this is universal or certain. 

Many PhD’s sacrifice sleep in the name of publishing their work. And upper-level jobs can come with added task pressure and longer hours. But the benefits seem to outweigh these costs for most workers. 

I, for one, will insist that my kids go to college.

What you can do to snag an FWA

You may already feel like you have a good amount of flexibility at work. If so, I hope you’re feeling the fringe benefits described above.

If you don’t currently have an FWA, there are a few paths to achieving it:

• Peel back your industry’s curtain to see if FWAs are really a thing. If they’re not, you might reconsider your future in that industry—or at least your role.

• If FWAs exist, spot the cultures/companies that offer them and make your way over. Or, seek out the specific jobs/roles that have this benefit. Then seek out professional development or mentoring to get you there.

• You might already have a job that can offer an FWA. If you do, communicate what you want. More flexible hours, remote work, whatever you value most. If they say no, go full Milton from Office Space and set the place on fire.

Because of their impact on job satisfaction, FWAs are an important tile in the mosaic of happiness. The data is clear. 

But we don’t need the data, do we? It’s intuitive. 

We know the late nights are aging us quickly. And that the missed time with family and friends can never be recouped. And that working in sweatpants hasn’t gotten less awesome since Covid.

Don’t miss out on this sliver of life (and work) that’s so important to your happiness.

SIDE NOTE: In case you’re curious, the 3 leading anxieties are physical decline, mental decline, and finances. Stay strong, Social Security.

Then, out of nowhere, comes the survey data, which convincingly quibbles with this prevailing narrative. In fact, the data shows that old age presents us with a crystal opportunity to relive happiness with fresh eyes. 

Did I say fresh? I meant tired, bespectacled eyes that need cataract surgery. But still…

The U-Shaped Happiness Curve

Over the typical human life cycle, happiness looks something like this:

This is what stats geeks refer to as a “U-shaped” relationship, higher on the ends with a dip in the middle. 

On average, people report being happier in their youth before seeing a dip in middle age, starting at about 40. As I write, I’m 45. And I’ll admit that this makes a SHIT TON of sense.

Then, something sunny happens, whipping our happy brain back in shape somewhere in our 50s. The consistent upward trend shows staying power, lasting right up until our twilight years. 

I don’t have the data to confirm it, but I strongly suspect there’s a waterfall at the end, about the time an oxygen tank becomes our therapy animal.

There, that’s better. Now we have more detail and can expect our happiness to kick the bucket right before we do.

FWIW, humans may be in good  sad company, as the same mid-life crisis has been observed in great apes. When you see a greying chimp cruising I-95 in a drop-top Aston Martin, you’ll know why. 

Explaining the U-Shaped Happiness Curve

Peak youth happiness sits at about 20 years old. This is a time when we are typically healthier, more social, indifferent to hangovers, and have multiple sex partners in a year. Importantly, those partners have velvety skin and are very bendy.

The bendier the partners, the more optimistic your view of life. (Pretty sure I just paraphrased Wittgenstein.)

Forty, on the other hand, is a valley of distinct lows. The most commonly cited reasons for the dip in life satisfaction are career strain, family stress (read: marriage and offspring), aging parents, and, you guessed it, worries about getting old.

A quick read of the literature, and you’ll find that life stressors shoulder most of the blame. 

In our 20s, our responsibilities are fewer and failure less dire. Getting an F in Econ 101 means a lost semester. Getting an F in parenting means your kid rocks a scar for life. Lower stakes = fewer worries—and a rosier outlook. That’s the idea, anyway.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the dip starts when a lot of people’s kids are approaching their tween years. Then it intensifies as the kids get their learner’s permit. 

I’m not there yet as a parent. But this also makes a shit ton of sense. 

The Old Age Rebound in Happiness

Just when depression takes the lead, joy makes a fourth-quarter comeback.

Most of the research agrees that, if conditions are right, there’s often a surge in fulfillment as our kids finally get out of our house and fold their own laundry.

The most common explanation for the rebound is that our silver years have more perspective and emotional balance. This explanation falls a little flat for me, maybe overly simplistic. I also think the aforementioned conditions add a gaggle of caveats.

That said, there’s probably something to this notion, that greying perspective realigns our actions toward things that are more fulfilling. 

I thought Margit Cox Henderson put it well:

“With age, the focus turns away from social competition and toward social connection. As the end of life nears, priorities shift towards savoring life, love, and this present moment together. This gratitude for what matters most is easier to experience when life’s fleeting nature is salient.”

Translation: Your mortality sharpens, so you quit your bitchin’ and appreciate life more.

There are a bevy of life experiences associated with the old age bump. Research out of the UK showed a significant spike in life satisfaction after becoming a grandparent. Research out of Hong Kong supported that conclusion. 

And, for what it’s worth, grandparents who are actively involved with grandchildren are more likely to experience the benefits.

So don’t belly ache when you get babysitting duty, Mom, I’m doing you a favor.

Retirement has also been shown to produce bumps in life satisfaction. A 2024 study by Mass Mutual showed that 67% of retirees reported being “somewhat” or “much more happy” after retirement. 

Sounds kickass, but here come the conditions: They were more likely to feel the joy if they were financially prepared and in good health.

Young MC said it way back in 1989: If you got no money and you got no car, then you got no woman, and there you are. 

(In this reference, woman = happiness. Apologies for the objectification. Also, preach, Young MC.)

But is the U-shaped curve really real?

So you’re sniffing out the weaknesses with this argument, huh? Good for you. Because there’s quite a few.

First, the entire relationship is based on data out of developed nations that don’t represent the full human experience. 

In rural subsistence communities, for example, there’s a gradual decline in life satisfaction after middle age. This is likely because of sagging productivity and the lack of financial support for the elderly. 

In other words, older folks in these communities are missing out on key staples of American retirement. 

Like railing against the feds while watching Newsmax in the air conditioning…just before a Medicare-funded doc’s appointment…and cashing their Social Security check in Reno. 

(This is what retirees do, right?)

In fact, a rural subsistence economy often produces an inverted U-shape, with happiness peaking in middle age. Their chart, fittingly, makes a frowny face.

Most importantly, researchers noted that age didn’t explain a ton. The more important determinants of happiness were physical health and a  loss of productivity.

This takes us back to the “conditions” of happiness from before, namely money and health. Those factors explain happiness as much as (or more) than age.

In the end, there’s a clear path to making your happiness curve smiley instead of frowny (or Bell’s palsy-ish). 

First, financial health. Then, physical health. Finally, healthy relationships. 

Those are the planets you’ll want to align to make your sun shine brighter in old age. 

As the story goes, climbing the job ladder is how our most youthful/productive years should go, since this will act as a prelude to the status and income that will open a window to happiness.

Work first, then fall in love, then work more, then family, then work more, then happy. This is the “deferred living” mindset, the idea that “less happy” is okay for a little while.

But is this really how the flow of life should go?

Neil Pasricha’s Success Triangle

In The Happiness Equation, Neil Pasricha tells a story about meeting an aspiring writer who asks about his secret to professional success. To give her a visual, Neil scribbled his “success triangle” onto a napkin. It looked like this:

For Neil, there are “3 S’s of success” that make up the triangle: sales, social, and self. Here’s what they mean to me:

• Sales success means money and ladder climbing. What do you accomplish at work and how is it recognized? This includes raises, promotions, maybe the occasional plaque for “X years of dedicated service.”

• Social success is about prestige and status. Pasricha says this is about “critical success”, coming from people that you respect. Invitations to give talks, mentoring roles, leadership positions, that kind of thing. The day they give you a virtual assistant that speaks solid English is the day you’ve earned respect and social success.

• Self success is about personal fulfillment. This one is entirely between your ears. As Pasricha puts it, “Only you know if you have it.” It means you’ve achieved what you set out to achieve and are now allowed to feel good about your work. (Notice I said “your work.” You should still feel morose about your parenting, sugar addiction, and love handles, just like the rest of us.)

Pasricha told his convo partner that she first needed to decide what kind of professional success she wanted. Then she could pursue that type of success for a while before moving on to the others. Bang, boom, pow, a nice roadmap to fulfillment and happy days.

Now comes the twist

There are 2 problems with the success triangle. First, the order we chase them.  We think we should pursue sales success first, then social, then self—each one sets up the other in a “work now, feel good later” mentality. It looks like this:

If that works for you, great. I’m not here to yuck your yum. But, for most of us, it’s backward. In fact, studies consistently show that happiness opens the door for productivity and success, not the other way around. In that case, the flow should look more like this:

The second problem, and the real kicker, is that it’s impossible to have all three. Pasricha himself says that he has yet to see it happen and thinks the prospect is dubious, at best. Consider a few examples of trading one for the other:

• Putting in extra hours at work to land that promotion (sales) and leadership role (social), only to realize that managing people sucks and you now hate your job (self). Or that it’s the next promotion that will really make you happy at work (self again).

• Volunteering to speak at that conference (social) and spending time with your favorite mentors while you’re there (self) leads to subpar work that almost misses the Monday deadline (sales).

• Staying true to your feelings about “X” in a meeting (self) gets you what you want for your department and you can hit your goals (sales). But those feelings are unpopular among colleagues, who now take turns stealing your lunch from the refrigerator (social).

The last one shows us that sales success and social success aren’t always aligned. Doing the right thing doesn’t always lead to status perks. You’ve gotta hope feeling good about it is enough for you. As we all know, the journey to both sales success and social success is potentially eternal. There’s always another metric, pay grade, or promotion dangling in front of us. Another accolade from our peers to confirm suspicions of excellence. It behooves us to recognize this reality and embrace a wild idea: There is no amount of money (sales) and status (social) that justifies putting off feeling good about what you do (self). Simply put, deferred living can go on forever….if you let it.

What you can do

Pasricha consistently invokes a simple solution for ditching deferred living. Do it for you.  He writes:

“Don’t do it for others.

It’s hard to compete endlessly because there’s always more to compete with when you get there.

Remember we will always be number two to seven billion at everything in the world. And every level we go up has new peers, new benchmarks, new competitors.

But the next level never ends unless you are literally the best in the entire world.” Neil Pasricha

It’s that simple. When you do it for you, your sense of purpose, direction, and self-confidence soars. In other words, doing it for you naturally leans into self success, simply because you’ll feel good about what you’ve accomplished (and continue to accomplish).

The best part is that starting with self success will relieve the burdens of sales and social success. You’ll spend less time and energy focusing on those things, because you’re doing it for you and that no longer matters.

You’ll become the Robin Hood of your own life, stealing time from work and giving it back to yourself (or others).

You know what else? You’ll probably actually become more productive and efficient with work when this happens. Dare I say, focusing on self success first will move you closer to sales and social success.

Pasricha should have told the aspiring writer that she should choose self success first. Because, like you, she has no good reason to defer her best life any longer.