One statistic that’s pretty constant across countries, cultures, classes, and centuries is that 99% of people want to be happy (yes, there are some people who prefer to be miserable).

But the vast majority of that 99% are looking for happiness in the wrong places.

Ask them what they think would make them happy and most will reply: more money, more friends, more success, more health, more fame, more beauty, more muscles, etc.

Scientists of happiness, (yes, there are such beings) have discovered that improvements in life circumstances or situations only accounts for about 10% of our happiness.  In other words, for all the effort people are putting into becoming more wealthy, healthy, popular, muscular, etc., the emotional return on the investment is miniscule.   These positive events do create happiness, but it’s minimal and brief.

Baseline Happiness
These scientists (often called positive psychologists) have also found that each of us has a baseline happiness that is difficult to change. Just like we all have a baseline weight that we tend to return to regardless of our efforts at dieting or muscle-building, so our parents have bequeathed us a happiness set point in our genes that we tend to return to no matter how many setbacks or triumphs we experience. Research has indicated that our genes explain about 50% of our happiness or lack of it.

Now if you can count, you’re beginning to get worried. If happiness is 10% life circumstances plus 50% genes, that leaves only 40% to work with.

The good news is that that is still a relatively large number. No, it’s not 90%, but neither is it 5%. There’s still quite a lot of potential, a lot that’s in our power to change, in this 40%. And what makes up that 40%?

Scientists tell us that’s our daily actions and attitudes – what we do and how we think. In The How of Happiness Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky argues:

Thus the key to happiness lies not in changing our genetic makeup (which is impossible) and not in changing our circumstances (i.e., seeking wealth or attractiveness or better colleagues, which is usually impractical), but in our daily intentional activities [22].

All helpful analysis up to this point, nothing that Christians need disagree with. Where we may begin to differ is in the actual thoughts and actions that scientists say make people happy. But even there, as we’ll see tomorrow, there are some quite surprising overlaps.

What’s the best summer or part-time job for young people? Cleaning hotel toilets for $7 an hour or working as an unpaid intern in a professional environment?

Over at the Harvard Business Review, Simon Wong argues for more toilet cleaners than internships, and pleads with parents not to make every decision with a view to their childrens’ future careers.

Like many parents, I am troubled by the growing fixation with careers. We seem to be putting young people on the career treadmill at an earlier and earlier age. Choosing extracurricular activities, summer jobs, and even preschool is increasingly undertaken with a calculating eye towards securing career success.

Wong did have one professional internship but says that he learned so much more working in a restaurant, cleaning windows, and being a busboy. These jobs may not have helped his career, but they laid the broad foundation for a successful life. He learned how to interact with a diverse range of people, how to relate to difficult superiors, and the importance of treating the lowest employee with respect. He concludes:

Perhaps the most important life lesson from that period — though not always remembered — was that it didn’t take much for me to be happy.

Potato Peeling and Pot Scrubbing
I’m in complete agreement with Wong. It jives with my own experience of being a milk delivery boy at age 14, bread delivery (using a shopping cart!) from age 15-16, and potato peeler/pot washer for two summers in a hotel.

I left High School one year early to work for an insurance company, where I earned the princely sum of $75 a week for 35 hours work.

After 5-6 years of climbing the slippery ladder in the life assurance, pension, and investment industry, I was converted to Christ and called to the ministry. That meant leaving a now well-paid and enjoyable job, and, at age 22, returning to summer and part-time jobs while I went to university and seminary for six years. These jobs included being a delivery driver, a mailman, and then a goods-lift operator (I still bear the scars).

Irrelevant but invaluable
None of these jobs seem to have any relevance to my present calling, and yet I learned more valuable life lessons in them than in any university or seminary. I now look back with much joy at all God taught me in them.

So, whether you are scrubbing floors, cleaning toilets, carrying suitcases, changing oil, or in a difficult ministry position, be encouraged that our sovereign God has you in the right class in His University, and use the opportunity to scoop up all the credits you can in these unpopular yet priceless courses.