Short-Term Happiness: The Four Stages of an Event
After years of thinking about and researching happiness, I came to the conclusion that when we’re unhappy it’s because one or more of Six Needs are not being met and/or our expectations are not being met. I covered the Six Needs in a post about the Right Hand of Long-term Happiness. Now we’re going to take a look at the Four Stages of an Event.
I relate the Four Stages of an Event to short-term happiness because very often the time-scale of the four stages can pass so quickly we don’t even realize what’s happening. However, just like it’s possible to get a short-term happiness boost by working toward meeting your Six Needs, it’s also possible that you’ll notice the Four Stages of an Event having an impact on your (un-)happiness years down the road.
The Four Stages of an Event are as such:
The setting of expectations—Your expectations can be influenced both by external inputs, such as stories told by friends/family, marketing literature, and your own research, and by internal inputs, mainly your previous experiences with similar events.
The event itself—Our days are made up of hundreds of events, ranging from the inconsequential, such as getting stopped by a stop light, to milestone events, for example: obtaining a diploma/degree, getting married, births, and deaths. Events tend to repeat to a greater or lesser extent, but the younger we are, the more often we encounter firsts.
The outcome—How the event impacts our lives: What further events transpire? How much does the event affect our lifestyle, a situation, our moods? Does it require a response?
And then finally, reflection—What do we think about the event and its outcome, and how do we respond? Our thoughts/response have the potential both to amplify and dampen the outcome.
When expectations>outcome*reflection, we are disappointed or unhappy.
When expectations≤outcome*reflection, we land on the spectrum of content/satisfied to thrilled/ecstatic.
Understanding the Four Stages of an Event then gives us the power to boost our own happiness by lowering our expectations where it makes sense and by using reflection to improve the outcome.
—
Let’s take, as an example, hosting a party as the big event for our day (because Mr. Transportation and I recently hosted a Bingo night amongst friends). We might form a number of expectations for the event, some of them based on previous parties we’ve hosted and some might be dreams that morph into expectations. Maybe we expect it to be the event of the year with a 100% invitation acceptance rate and that, even though we’re inviting people from diverse backgrounds, everyone gets along famously and ends up becoming best friends. These would be high expectations, and it would be easy to feel disappointed: if any invitees decline to attend, if any attendees feel shy and keep to themselves, and so on. Instead we have the option to lower our expectations or remove them altogether. We have no idea how this party is going to go. Let’s just invite a bunch of people over who might enjoy a social game and see what happens!
Because it’s an event with other attendees whom we do not have any control over, it can be easy for the mood of the party to be derailed: perhaps one of the kids in attendance has a meltdown, perhaps someone is feeling fired up about a news story he read just before the party and decides to go on a political rant that makes other members of the party uncomfortable, perhaps an elderly attendee trips on her way up to the front door, arrives with an injury, and can’t be mollified. These are all negative outcomes, but it is up to us whether we reflect and respond positively or negatively. We could dwell on the fact that our party is not living up to expectations, or we can embrace what we do not control and roll with the circumstances: distract the unhappy child, deftly change the subject from politics, call on a caregiving member of the party to help with the injury, etc. Furthermore, we can reflect on the event with love and gratitude: be thankful for the child whose later interest in Bingo made everyone smile, feel love for the gentleman who cares so much about the world and our future that the news bothered him, be appreciative for the elderly friend who is willing to leave her house at night (when she doesn’t see well) to support our event.
—
Though events can spawn or feed into multiple other events, the simplest graph of the Four Stages of an Event is a repeat event where the outcome and reflection of one event help form the expectation for the next event in a cycle:
Thus, I use the image of a wrap bracelet to evoke a never-ending cycle of Four Event Stages along with the Right Hand of Long-Term Happiness:
How can you apply the idea of the Four Stages of an Event to a recent event that disappointed or satisfied you? How does the outcome combined with your reflection line up with your expectations for that event? Can you see how changing your expectations or your interpretation (reflection) of that event might change your perception of it being a happy or unhappy event?