Have I reached the happiness threshold?

In 2007, I met a woman named Angela Russell. She was a teammate of mine at CIA, where we both were analysts. Because we were about the same age, we developed a professional friendship. During one of our conversations, Angela said something that turned out to be some of the wisest advice I’ve ever heard.

She said that there are three things that determine your happiness:

·         liking the city/place you live in

·         having friends and family around

·         enjoying your job

While having all three areas satisfied was the goal, you only needed two of these three to meet the happiness threshold. Having only one or none spelled trouble…you would be unhappy no matter what happened.

Reflection on my own unhappiness

A few months before this conversation, I moved from a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio to the Washington, DC area to start this new position at CIA. Her wise words made me think. Why did I make such a huge change, leaving a career I had established for something uncharted?

The more I thought about it, the more I realized she was right. In Cleveland, I liked my job, but I didn’t like where I lived, and I didn’t have friends and family around.

According to Angela’s theory, I only had one out of three parts of the happiness threshold. And she was right. I wasn’t happy. And that’s why I took a new job and moved to the DC area.

Having grown up a Washingtonian, I had friends and family in and around the city. I liked the area and thought the region had a lot to offer: sports, recreation, outdoor activities, food, culture, etc. My job satisfaction at CIA ebbed and flowed, but even when it ebbed, I was still happy overall, as I still satisfied two of the three things Angela suggested. I had met the happiness threshold.

My brother finds the happiness threshold in Chicago

In 2021, about a year after the COVID-19 pandemic changed just about everything, my brother called me on the phone. He told me he was thinking about this very topic, the happiness threshold.

He told me that he was reflecting on it and realized that he didn’t really like living in the DC area, and besides me, our parents, and our grandfather, most of his friends and other family had moved away, and that he really didn’t like his job.

Overall, he just wasn’t happy. He was zero out of three for the happiness threshold.

He and his then-girlfriend, now-wife Emma had made a decision.

“We’re moving to Chicago,” he said. “I really like the city and we have a lot of friends there.” So, according to Angela’s advice, Garrett would be happier there than in DC because he would like the city and have a large support network of friends. Even if he didn’t like his new job, he’d be more satisfied than before.

I commended him for making the decision to find happiness. Three years later, he’s happier than he has ever been.

I have countless other friends who have felt the same way. This theory from Angela might as well be law, because from the people I’ve interviewed, the happiness threshold applies to everyone. Each person I asked about this agreed and acknowledged that they had made similar decisions based on their level of happiness (though many didn’t recognize these three pieces until I mentioned it).

The happiness threshold combinations

The thing about Angela’s advice is that it works in any way: in my brother’s situation, he was moving to a place he liked and had friends around, so he wasn’t worried about loving his job. And looking back, he didn’t really like his new job, but he was happier than he had ever been living in the DC area.

When I worked at the US Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, I met countless people loved their job and had a strong support network of friends there, and some were even posted there with their spouses. At the time, Baghdad was still a dangerous area, but while people weren’t happy about being on a secured compound in the middle of a war-torn city, they had satisfied two of the three happiness threshold. Overall, they were very happy and loved the experience.

What about people who love their jobs and love where they live, but they don’t have a lot of friends and family around? They’re happy, too.

The happiness threshold is important to think about when you’re making your decision for your career, the city you’re going to live in, or the companies you might want to work for.

I didn’t think about these when I took my first position out of college as a financial planner for Ameriprise Financial. When I approached one of the two people at the Ameriprise Financial display booth at the Ohio State University career fair, the interviewer asked me where I preferred to work: Columbus or Cleveland.

“I’ll go wherever I’ll be more successful,” I said. He smiled and recommended Cleveland. He scheduled me for an in-person interview for a few weeks later at his office in Westlake, Ohio, a suburb on the westside of Cleveland. Why did he recommend Cleveland and not Columbus? The answer was simple: He was a manager in the Westlake office.

If I had thought about his question and applied Angela’s advice (if I had known it at the time), I probably would have preferred Columbus, simply because I had a large network of college friends there, many of whom were staying in the city for jobs themselves. I knew the city, had a good apartment I could have stayed in, and had my friends around. Even if I wasn’t happy with this new career choice, I liked Columbus and had a strong network, and I would have satisfied two of the three pieces of the happiness threshold. I would have been happy.

My eventual unhappiness in Westlake led me to make that major change to move back to the Washington DC area and start a new career. That career has led me to where I am now, and I can confidently say that I have satisfied all three areas of the happiness threshold. It took 17 years to get there, but it was all worth it.

Be intentional about your pursuit of happiness

Think about Angela’s theory and how satisfied you are with those three areas in your own life. Do you like your job? Do you like where you live? Do you have friends and family around to support you?

If you can answer yes to all three, that’s great. If you’ve got two, I would bet that you’re happy overall. If you have one or less, I’d make a bigger bet that you’re not happy. If that’s the case, think about these questions again and imagine the scenario in which you can satisfy at least two of the three pieces.

Doing so might require a big change in life. Maybe you have to move to a new city, or take a new job, or spend a lot of energy building a support network. Those can be very risky or take an incredible amount of energy. Maybe so. But the most important question is this: Do you want to be happy? Or in other words, do you want to reach the happiness threshold?