Where is your happy place?

This just in! Hot off the presses (for those of you who remember what a press is)! After years of searching, explorers for National Geographic have discovered the happiest city in the United States.  And the winner is ... drum roll please, pass the envelope, cast a knowing smirk-and-chuckle at the audience, and announce ... Boulder, Colorado.

Well, duh.  Aren't all the cool kids already living in Boulder?  Even Mr. Money Mustache lives there.

What makes Boulder so happy?  

According to NatGeo, there is a simple formula for happiness:

breathtaking scenery, a pleasant climate, a charming downtown, and enough outdoor activities to keep even the most active person busy. There’s simply no excuse not to get out and play.

 The actual formula (produced by Dan Buettner) is a bit more complicated, but not much.  Applying the same formula to other cities, Buettner produced a ranking of the happiest places in the U.S.

1. Boulder Colorado
2. Santa Cruz/Watsonville, California
3. Charlottesville, Virginia
4. Fort Collins, Colorado
5. San Luis Obispo/Paso Robles/Arroyo Grande, California
6. San Jose/Sunnyvale/Santa Clara, California
7. Provo/Orem, Utah
8. Bridgeport/Stamford, Connecticut
9. Barnstable Town, Massachusetts
10. Anchorage, Alaska
11. Naples/Immokalee/Marco Island, Florida
12. Santa Maria/Santa Barbara, California
13. Salinas, California
14. North Port/Sarasota/Bradenton, Florida
15. Honolulu, Hawaii

There are ten more on the list, but I got tired of cutting-and-pasting.  And I live in Honolulu, so why bother looking any farther if I am already living in one of the happiest cities in the country?

Not my happy place

A peripatetic adult life has carried me to several different cities, some better than others from a happiness perspective.  And my ranked list of happy places looks a lot different than the National Geographic list.

So here we go, happiest to least happy.

1. Los Angeles, California
2.  Houston, Texas
3. Tucson, Arizona
4. Baltimore, Maryland
5.  Honolulu, Hawaii
6. Champaign, Illinois

Full disclosure: one of my all time happiest years was spent in Paris (France, not Texas), which is outside the U.S., so I left it off the list.   I also think it is unfair to hold Boulder (or nearly any other city, for that matter) to the standard set by Paris.  For me, Boulder's charming downtown isn't even in the same discussion as the 3rd arrondissement, where I lived.  But then again, my favorite U.S. city is LA, which the National Geographic article only mentions because of the shrillness of its sirens.

On balance, I would describe myself as having been happy in LA, Houston, and Tucson, neutral in Baltimore (which is pretty good because I was in graduate school), and unhappy in Honolulu and Champaign.

The average is a bit misleading; I became significantly happier the longer I lived in every city on the list, mostly because of a growing network of friends.  Even the isolation and cultural disconnect of life in Honolulu is easier to bear after a night of karaoke.

Cities are people

Unhappy in Honolulu?  How is that possible?  Endless summers.  Beaches, mountains, and rain forests, all within a ten minute drive of each other.  The city has even turned a few car lanes into bike paths and started a bike share program, Biki.  No wonder National Geographic ranked it number 15.

All true, but I knew from the beginning that I was in for a difficult transition to island living.  Shortly after I arrived in Honolulu, I came across the following quote in Who's Your City by Richard Florida:

One person I interviewed said that after moving his family to a new city, he immediately sensed it was wrong.  He found it hard to resonate with people there.  His neighbors were nice enough and of similar age.  That wasn't the problem.  They just didn't share his attitudes and values, likes and dislikes.  The place just didn't feel right.  He began to feel negative and angry for inexplicable reasons.  Nothing about his environment - despite the nice house and good job - really excited him.  He analogized it to feeling like a visitor in his own skin.  It took him a while to put it together, but ultimately he realized that he was not somewhere he felt free to be himself and realize his dreams.

Bingo.  That's me.  And I am not alone.  A friend who lived in Honolulu for 30 years before returning to Houston a couple years ago confessed that she never felt at home in her own skin in Hawaii.  Not even after marrying a kama'aina and raising a family here.

So Honolulu is where I part ways with the survey-says approach to finding happy places.  Focusing on the external factors implies that everyone needs the same things to be happy. Not true. Who you are matters, too.

In Who's Your City, Florida identifies three distinct groups of people based on aggregates of the characteristics of their personalities: outgoing, conventional/dutiful, and experiential.  Outgoing personalities are social, enjoy group activities, and play team sports.  Conventional personalities are hard working, friendly, trusting, helpful and compassionate.  Experiential personalities do not need to be around other people, question authority, and quest after extreme experiences.

Places also have personalities.  Chicago and Minneapolis are outgoing.  Sunbelt cities tend to be conventional, as is Portland, Oregon, strangely enough.  New York City tops the list of experiential cities, and LA is in the mix.

Living in a place that matches your personality seems conducive to happiness.  Florida summarizes:

Were people happier in places with higher concentrations of personality types like themselves?  The short answer is a resounding yes.

Does this mean you should move to place full of like minded people if you want to be happier?  Not so fast.

Wherever you go

Dissatisfaction with home and a desire to light out for the territories is nothing new, it's practically a defining feature of American life.  But what reason is there to believe that moving, even moving to Boulder, is going to make anyone happier?

Neither Buettner nor Florida provide an overly compelling answer to this question.  The catch is that these studies measure the feelings of people that are already living in a place. On average, people living in Boulder report being happier than people living in, say, Los Angeles.  And people with experiential personalities who live in Manhattan report feeling happier than people with experiential personalities living in Fort Lauderdale. 

However, neither approach directly demonstrates that moving will make you happier, even if you move to Boulder.  As far as I know, there aren't any studies that map the happiness of people before and after inter-city moves.  And what if a hundred thousand National Geographic readers upped sticks and relocated to Boulder next year?   A lot of Boulder residents would probably report feeling much less happy.

The lesson I take from this is simply: move with care.  Jon Kabat-Zinn puts his finger on the problem in Wherever You Go, There You Are:

The romantic notion is that if it's no good over here, you have only to go over there and things will be different.  If this job is no good, change jobs.  If this wife is no good, change wives.  If this town is no good, change towns.  If these children are a problem, leave them for other people to look after.  The underlying thinking is that the reason for your troubles is outside of you - in the location, in others, in the circumstances.  Change the location, change the circumstances, and everything will fall into place; you can start over, have a new beginning.

But if the source of the problem is internal, moving might not do any good. That doesn't mean you should never move; just be sure you are in the fire and not the frying pan.