View from the summit of South Twin, White Mountains, New Hampshire, November 2024. Photo by Emilie-Noelle Provost

Living Madly: Making Life “Easier” Won’t Make You Happier

By Emilie-Noelle Provost

Life can be a grind. Working, meal planning, cooking, grocery shopping, cleaning, laundry, paying bills—all of it wears me out sometimes.

Even doing activities I enjoy often requires a fair amount of effort and planning.

Hiking in the White Mountains, for example, is one of my favorite things to do. But hiking safely takes a lot of work. The day before a hike, I check weather reports repeatedly so I can pack and organize my backpack accordingly. I make lightweight, nutritious meals and snacks that won’t go bad on the trail. I make sure I have an adequate amount of water, rain gear, sunscreen, bug spray, an extra change of clothes, a first-aid kit, a headlamp. The list of essentials is long. On top of all that, I often have to be up and on the road by six a.m. in order to give myself enough daylight hours to complete whatever hike I’m hoping to do.

Sometimes, all this effort feels like too much. There are days that I just want to sleep in, relax, and not do anything strenuous or that requires too much thought.

Once in a while, this is OK. Everyone needs to rest at times. But I’ve discovered that there’s a limit to the amount sleeping in I can do before I start feeling restless and bored, even kind of depressed. When I pull myself together and get back on the trail, I always feel much better. I feel happy, much happier than if I hadn’t done a bunch of planning and packing and driving and dragged myself out of bed at the crack of dawn to climb a 4,000-foot-tall pile of rocks.

This led me to wonder about the connection between happiness and effort. And as it turns out, being happy requires us to get off of our butts.

Not everything you do that involves work makes you happy, of course. But putting effort into things that have been proven to make people’s lives richer and more meaningful, such as maintaining close friendships, pursing hobbies, volunteering, or achieving a personal goal, will almost always make you happier than sitting on the couch binge-watching old episodes of Downtown Abbey will (not that there’s anything wrong with Downton Abbey).

According to a recent Upworthy.com article, people are happiest when they avoid the urge to seek relaxation and instead make an effort to get out of their comfort zones. Tod Perry, the article’s author, cites a 1980s study conducted by Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, which determined that people are happiest when they are engaged in “optimal experiences.”

An optimal experience, according to Csikszentmihalyi, is one that requires all of one’s mental concentration and physical effort. Like hiking, for example. Other optimal activities mentioned by Csikszentmihalyi include playing basketball, learning to play a musical instrument, practicing yoga, and enjoying dinner with close friends.

By contrast, Csikszentmihalyi says that excess comfort often results in feelings of boredom, anxiety, guilt, or uselessness, and can eventually lead to depression and even substance abuse and eating disorders.

This is because evolution wired our brains to seek out and learn from new experiences. Visiting new places, meeting new people, and learning new skills all make us happy because they keep our brains active and healthy. These things also help us form new memories, help keep us motivated, make us more mentally and emotionally flexible, and add to our personal libraries of skills and knowledge—all things that make us feel good.

I think Yvon Chouinard, Maine native, rock climber, and founder of Patagonia, summed it up well when he said, “I’ve found the cure for depression is action.”

So, the next time you’re feeling lazy or burned out and are tempted to spend the afternoon on the couch, resist the urge and find something else to do: Call a friend, pick up a book, go for a hike. It might feel like work at first, but you’ll be much happier for it.

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Émilie-Noëlle Provost is the author of The River Is Everywhere, a National Indie Excellence Award, American Fiction Award, and American Legacy Award finalist, and The Blue Bottle, a middle-grade adventure with sea monsters. Visit her at emilienoelleprovost.com.