Brain researcher reveals which factors really make you happy in the long term

One moment we feel infinitely happy and the next our life seems boring and empty. How can that be? Why is happiness sometimes so fleeting? Can we ever be happy in the long run? Brain researcher Professor Doctor Martin Korte has the answers.

At the concert in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium, 70,000 lights flashed yellow on people’s wrists and the band played the song that you will always associate with your first great love. When you get that dream job you never dared hope for. When he or she asks for your hand. In such moments we typically feel maximally happy. In such moments we would most like to stop time or somehow conserve it and make it available forever so that we can experience it again and again. But then the moments are suddenly over. And with them the happiness we felt. Puff, just go.

Is this our destiny? Do we have to give up the dream of lasting happiness? If we ask the neurobiologist Professor Doctor Martin Korte, maybe only to a limited extent. According to him, we can experience two fundamentally different types of happiness – and one of them can last for a long time.

What is short-term happiness?

“There are a number of reasons that indicate that short-term happiness is something completely different than long-term happiness,” says Martin Korte. In the case of short-term happiness, which we are dealing with in the examples mentioned above, a region in our brain that has made a name for itself as a reward center is predominantly active. The nucleus accumbens in particular plays a role here. It is located below the cerebral cortex, belongs to a developmentally very old, original area of ​​our brain and always triggers the release of dopamine, endogenous opiates and endorphins when something pleasant happens to us, such as a compliment, a windfall or a nice concert . These substances give us a feeling of joy, a pleasant intoxication of happiness. However, as soon as the triggering happy moment is over, the nucleus accumbens stops releasing the happy hormones and their concentration in our blood decreases. The rush of happiness is over. And probably not so easy to repeat in the same way.

“In the case of drugs, we know that if we use them regularly, we have to increase the dose over time in order to achieve the same level of happiness as we did at the beginning,” says the brain researcher. “The pursuit of happiness, in the sense of a short-term feeling of euphoria, is no different.” In both cases it is the same substances and regions in our brain that are activated. Martin Korte says: “It is anchored in our evolutionary psyche to want more of what made us happy in a certain moment.” It is true that short-term happiness and situations in which we find joy have an undeniable value and meaning in our lives. Apparently, however, focusing our path solely on this can become exhausting, disappointing and dangerous – and possibly never really go well. But there is a second category of happiness, which Martin Korte calls contentment.

What is Long Term Happiness?

“In contrast to a short-term emotion like joy, we would describe satisfaction as a basic feeling in neurobiology,” says the brain researcher. “It’s located in a different brain region, namely the frontal lobe.” Put simply, the frontal lobe is the seat of our consciousness and our personality. Among other things, we owe him our willpower, our ability to speak and our ability to plan or consider the future. According to Martin Korte, a basic feeling of contentment usually occurs in our frontal lobe when the following criteria are met in our life.

6 factors that can make us happy

1. We are doing similarly (well) to other people around us

“Our frontal lobe derives its basic feeling of contentment from comparisons with other people,” says the neurobiologist. Is my balcony the same size as my neighbor’s? Am I making as much money as my girlfriend? Is my workload comparable to that of my colleagues? If the basic conditions of our life roughly correspond to those of other people that we have on our radar, this is a good prerequisite for us to feel satisfied.

2. Fairness

When we compare people around us to discrepancies between their lives and ours, we can feel satisfied if we can see a certain fairness in them. For example, if our balcony is smaller than that of our neighbors, but we always have the sun on our side. Or if our friend earns more than us, but her job is more stressful or more important than ours or she had to do a longer apprenticeship for it.

3. Long term goals

Completing training, surviving a probationary period, reducing working hours or taking a sabbatical, moving in together, having a child, learning Arabic, giving up responsibility and becoming more independent – depending on our life plan and personality, these could be long-term goals for us that give us orientation and contribute to our satisfaction . “The desire to pursue long-term goals is what distinguishes us as a human species and distinguishes us from other animals,” says the brain researcher. This desire, like the goals themselves, is encoded in our frontal lobe, but can sometimes collide with our short-term goals or our need for short-term happiness.

“We have different systems in our brain that compete with each other,” says Martin Korte. “One wants to plan and make provisions, the other wants something immediately. We can’t get out of the number.” Occasionally we can come into conflict because of these two conflicting systems, but in the course of evolution this peculiar combination has prevailed because it is the most advantageous for our (survival) life.

4. Memories

According to Martin Korte, our memory plays an important role in our happiness in two ways: On the one hand, in difficult times (e.g. in the dark winter) it can give us strength and satisfaction to think back to beautiful moments (summer). On the other hand, we can derive satisfaction from comparing our current situation with an earlier stage in life when we realize that we have evolved. Whether it concerns our financial situation, our priorities, our self-confidence, certain skills or our health, when we look back we see progress in our life, our frontal lobe switches to the status “satisfied”.

5. Autonomy

According to the brain researcher, a certain degree of self-determination and autonomy is essential for a happy life. “Feeling at the mercy of not being able to make your own decisions is incompatible with long-term happiness,” he says, “so there’s actually a lot to be said for democratic society or for employers to give their employees certain freedoms.” If we have the feeling that we can shape our life situation ourselves and change it if necessary, we can draw satisfaction and energy from it, even if all the circumstances may not correspond to our wishes.

6. Relationships

“As humans, we are primarily cooperative beings, so it is essential for our satisfaction that we are with other people or do something together,” says Martin Korte. In a professional context we feel happiest when we work in a harmonious team, in our private life it is our circle of friends or it is our partnership or family relationships that give us satisfaction. From our relationships we derive the feeling of being needed and having a purpose. And that is very important for our frontal lobe, which is always looking for explanations.

The happiness formula and the variable of individuality

On the one hand, as human creatures, we have a lot in common. We need to eat and drink to survive, and we can donate kidneys to one another because they perform the same functions in our bodies. We tend to have the same needs and demands, are subject to the same rules and laws of nature, and experience similar conflicts. When we are treated unfairly or off course toward our long-term goals, a large region in the center of our brain kicks in and sounds the alarm, triggering feelings like fear, stress, or disgust. Then we are anything but satisfied. Despite all of our similarities, we are also very different. And the freer and more mature our community, the more diversely we can live out our individuality.

So, one person likes to read historical novels, another loves fantasy and science fiction. One person dreams of a family as a child, another of an independent, free single life. Some people strive for a career and professional success, others for a life model in which the job takes up as little time and energy as possible. And we can all change at any time. Of course we can take our bearings from other people and we will always compare ourselves to them. It is vital that we can better understand ourselves by studying principles that apply to the human species. But many questions cannot be answered in general, but only individually and subjectively. And the question of how we lead a happy, content, fulfilled or successful life is probably at least partly part of it.

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Professor Doctor Martin Korte is a neurobiologist and head of the department “Cellular Neurobiology” at the Technical University of Braunschweig. His research focuses include the cellular basis of learning and memory and the interaction between the immune system and the brain in the development of Alzheimer’s disease. In his books “Hirngeflüster”, “We are memory” and “Young in the head” he prepares findings from brain research that are relevant to everyday life and for a wide audience. TV viewers may know Martin Korte from the RTL quiz show with Günther Jauch “Am I smarter than…”, for which he developed the questions.

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