The Road to Happiness

What makes us happy? In recent decades, researchers in psychology and economics have started using the tools of their profession to develop sophisticated, reliable models to answer this ageless question across countries and through time.

The emergence of positive psychology in the 1970s resulted from a desire among psychologists to emphasize individual strength and virtue in a field that had traditionally focused on treating mental illnesses and addressing emotional deficits. Since then, positive psychologists have made a lot of progress in identifying the things that bring us happiness. They have found that we experience happiness in many ways, through our emotional orientation to the past, present, and future; through the activities in which we are engaged; and in our ability to use our personal strengths and talents in work, leisure, relationships, and to contribute to something greater than ourselves.

Paralleling this development in psychology was a similar movement in the field of economics. Beginning in the 1970s, researchers started to find some truth to the axiom that “money doesn’t buy happiness” when they discovered that that nation’s level of happiness increases more slowly once it reaches a certain level of wealth. As a result, many economists believe measures of happiness complement measure of income or wealth by providing a more holistic gauge of well-being and life satisfaction.

Yesterday, one of my longtime friends, Dr. Elizabeth Dykens, Professor of Psychology and Human Development at Vanderbilt University and Co-Director of the Vanderbilt Kennedy University Center for Excellence on Developmental Disabilities, led a wonderful discussion at Special Olympics about how we can use the tools of positive psychology to study the happiness of people with intellectual disabilities. She is interested in learning the ways in which people with intellectual disabilities find happiness, hope, and contentment and live engaged lives with their families and communities.

So many times people with intellectual disabilities are defined by negatives—what they do not have or cannot do relative to others—causing many of us to forget that people with intellectual disabilities can be happy, lead meaningful lives, and bring happiness and fulfillment to the lives of others. In fact many studies note that having a family member with an intellectual disability can help us to lead richer, more meaningful lives, teach us patience, tolerance, and make us more able to accept differences with others.

My own experience suggests that millions of people with intellectual disabilities around the world lead engaged and happy lives, and find tremendous joy and meaning in relationships with family and friends. You don’t have to be a researcher to know this to be true.

What is your road to happiness?