When we think about our happiness, we tend to focus on general questions. We look at our life as a whole, examining the broad outlines of our careers, friendships, and romantic relationships. Will I get that big promotion at work, we wonder? Should I move to a new city? I’ll get married? or could I end up divorced? Will my children go to college?
Clearly, these are all important issues. But over the last decade or so, a growing number of happiness scientists have chosen to narrow their focus. Instead, they are now concentrating on “small wins,” the little moments of unexpected joy thought to make life worth living. Think about the compliment you received on your new outfit this morning; or the free coffee they offered you at your hairdresser before getting a haircut. Happiness scientists used to dismiss questions like these as unimportant “noise.” But now those “little wins” are seen as the bread and butter of happiness itself.
British Airways executives clearly agree. The airline announced this week that it will bring complimentary food and drinks for passengers as its chief executive, Sean Doyle, issued a mea culpa for customer service lapses during the pandemic. Complimentary snacks were eliminated on short-haul economy flights six years ago as part of a cost-cutting exercise that was predicted at the time to save £400m each year. Now, BA passengers will once again be entitled to a snack and a bottle of water (although not the previously offered snacks and hot and cold drinks).
Many of these small victories were denied to us during the Covid lockdowns. There were no free coffees from our hairdresser; no chocolates on our pillow in a hotel; no glasses of wine on Friday nights at our friend’s house; our children didn’t come home and they showed us a new drawing they had done at school. Now that society reopens and we are out of Covid, it is important once again to treasure the little moments of joy.
From birth, humans are hardwired to appreciate small moments of incremental progress: small milestones that give us momentum and help propel us toward a goal.
My book, Little Wins: The enormous power of thinking like a little child, looks at what adults can learn from the psychology of young children. We tend to think that adults represent the pinnacle of mental and physical development, and that young children are simply in the waiting room, slowly developing the skills and maturity they need to live independently. But I think that only tells half the story. Young children are not just adults in the making, they are extraordinary people in their own right, with creativity, curiosity, determination, ambition and sociability.
In fact, it was a conversation with my four-year-old son Patrick around our kitchen table in 2005 that served as the inspiration for some of the key products sold by Ella’s Kitchen, the baby and toddler food company I founded in 2006 (named after my daughter). Ella’s Kitchen later grew to become the UK market leader and expanded to 40 countries.
A particularly significant aspect of the psyche of young children is their ability to appreciate small moments of happiness. Any parent of a young child understands how easily it is possible to please their young child, whether it be the appearance of his favorite animated TV character or playing the same game of ‘Peek-a-boo’ 25 times in a row.
Even more important, young children get to learn a lot from these little moments. Think of a three-year-old who is learning to use a knife and fork. That process involves hundreds of small steps of progress. First they learn to hold a knife and fork. They then learn to coordinate their hands to move the knife and fork in sync. Then they learn to put the fork in their mouth and bite into the food. Each milestone fills the little boy with happiness and pride, prompting him to take the next step in his journey.
But, as we get older, we tend to lose that ability. Our minds are clouded with the big questions of careers and relationships. Unfortunately, we tend to forget the importance of the little joyful moments. When we try to learn something new as adults, we don’t have the same sticking power that we had when we were young children. We are not happy about small moments of progress; As a result, we quickly get frustrated and give up.
It is well known that we are more likely to lose weight if we choose to celebrate our small achievements, for example. Maybe you’ll step on the scale and find that you’ve lost 2 pounds after a month of diet and exercise. It probably won’t be enough to make a noticeable difference in your appearance, and you may still be classified as medically overweight. But psychologically, if you can learn to embrace the small win, it will be much easier to continue on your weight loss journey.
It’s the psychological equivalent of patting yourself on the back. In our demanding and cut-throat modern world, we often forget how to do it. It seems childish and condescending. But we must.
It’s something I’ve suspected for years, and now there’s a lot of scientific research to back up the theory. In recent years, for example, psychologists have become interested in the emotional power of “wonder,” defined by psychologist Professor Dacher Keltner as “the feeling of being in the presence of something vast and larger than oneself”. Think of a starry night in the countryside or watching a sunset from the perfect angle.
And when it comes to friendships, a growing body of research now suggests that loose, loosely held “acquaintances” are more important than we think. Think of the barista at your local coffee shop whose face you recognize and whose name you almost remember. In 2014, Dr. Gillian Sandstrom, a psychology professor at the University of Essex, asked volunteers to record their social interactions. She found that participants with large networks of loose “acquaintances” were happier overall and that participants felt happier on days when they had a higher number of casual interactions.
Over the weekend I saw the Spanish tennis legend Rafael Nadal triumphs in the Australian Open final, winning his 21st Grand Slam title (a new men’s record). He is an incredible player, with natural ability and ferocity. But he is also a man who has put in 30 years of long and arduous practice. To an outsider, training for the same sport day after day can seem boring and repetitive. But someone like Nadal learns to savor the small moments of victory. He could serve 0.5 km/h faster than his personal average; or he might find out that he has reduced his body fat by a fraction of a percent. It’s a small step, but every time he does it, he appreciates the progress. This is how you become one of the most successful tennis players in the world.
Covid took a lot from us, but it also helped some of us appreciate the value of these little moments. Confined during the first lockdown to one exercise trip each day, many people rediscovered the joys of nature in their local park or countryside. They noticed flowers on the trees, they watched the seasons change, often for the first time in years. As we come out of Covid, we must learn to harness that feeling. Little moments can matter big time.
As he told Luke Mintz
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