In a sorta philosophical mood today, so I’d like to share something I read about recently.

Essentially, it’s about Pat Riley’s theory that once athletes get a taste of winning as a team, they start wanting “more” individually – more money, more endorsements, more accolades, more playing time, etc. He dubbed this theory “the disease of more”.

Mark Manson took this idea further and linked it to our innate psychology – that humans, in general, can never be 10/10 contented or happy (by our own definitions), as we tend to always feel that there should be something “more”. In his blog post, he cited how surveys on happiness always yielded a rating of 7, no matter what the individual’s circumstance or life situation is.

I cite:

Pretty much everybody wrote ‘7,’ like, all the time, no matter what.

At the grocery store buying milk. Seven. Attending my son’s baseball game. Seven. Talking to my boss about making a big sale to a client. Seven.

Even when catastrophic stuff did happen — mom got cancer, missed a mortgage payment on the house, junior lost an arm in a freak bowling accident — happiness levels would dip to the 2-5 range for a short period, and then, after a certain amount of time, promptly return to seven.

It seems like the magic number for happiness is 7.

I wanted to see if this actually held true, so I went to look at all the posts related to “happiness” on SenseUs.

This is what I found.

It’s up to your personal interpretation, but from the way I see it, the overall trend tends to hover around 3. That’s the magic number here. And you rarely see anyone respond with a 5.

That seems to support the idea that most people always feel kinda “average”, no matter what phase of life they are in.

How should I feel about that? On one hand, it is validating that the ephemeral state of “not fully contented” resonates with most people, but on the other hand, it’s a sign that what you believe WILL make you happy might just be a hopeless illusion.

Mark said, “it means that we have to be driven by something greater than ourselves.”

I wonder what that means.