In the 80’s psychologists started to study happiness and organised a simple survey.
They gave a large group of people (all walks of life) pagers (it was the 80’s) and when the pager buzzed, each person had to stop, and write down the answer to these 2 questions:
- On a scale of 1 – 10, how happy are you at this moment?
- What has been going on in your life?
What they found was surprising…
Pretty much everyone wrote 7 most of the time.
When disaster struck it dipped to maybe a 3 or when an extremely positive event happened it rocketed to 9 or 10. But after a short while it returned once again to 7.
This proved that nobody is happy or unhappy all the time. Regardless of circumstances. We live in a constant state of mild (but not fully satisfying) happiness.
Our brains then play a little trick, telling us. “If I could just have a little bit more, I’d finally get to and stay at a happiness level of 10.”
And when you get that little bit more (maybe a new dress) and get to 10, after a little while you revert-back to 7, with our brains tricking us again into wanting more, with the cycle continuing.
In customer service terms, we’re happy always reverting to a 7, and then having our brains constantly tell us, we need to strive to be a 10, as it’s become our continual improvement model.
…but maybe at home, we need to stop competing so much with the neighbours.
