After learning that my wife was pregnant with our second child several years ago, we made the decision to look for a larger house. We were living close to a major city and housing prices were high. We loved the community but couldn’t afford to stay if we wanted more space.

So, we made the big decision to move away from the city where larger houses were much more affordable. In the end, I don’t think we made a bad decision, but I don’t think we really could have made a more informed decision.

I have thought about the choice we made many times but a recent lecture at the IPPA World Congress by one of the pioneering researchers in positive psychology (Dr. Ed Diener) helped me understand what we did and how we can do better in the future. ‘Materialists,’ Ed mentioned, say that getting what we like will bring happiness while positive psychology tells us to simply like what we have already.

According to the materialists, my wife and I should have been overjoyed to get the bigger house we had just purchased. We’re two educated, rational adults who make dozens of decisions every day. Instead, we spent the first few months ruminating about our ‘poor decision’ and figuring out how to spend more time with the friends we had left behind.

We were certainly pleased with the new house and we constantly reminded ourselves how fortunate we were to be in a nice house and in a beautiful neighborhood. But, all the gratitude in the world did not change the fact that we were now over an hour away from a city that we loved and friends that we loved even more.

At the conference last week, Dr. Diener gave an alternative model for making decisions that I would like to pass along: focus on wanting what we really like. His simple formula was to write down the things that you know you like. Then compare this list to what may take place with a given decision. In our case, our “likes” would have included our proximity to the city, the yearly block party in our neighborhood, having frequent dinners with close friends, etc. When listing the outcomes of the decision to move, we probably would have listed bigger house, longer commute, far from the city, less traffic, and several other things. Upon seeing that the two lists were independent of each other, I am sure we would have paused and thought this through differently.

In retrospect, we have made some great friends, our kids are thriving, and we are closer to my sister and her family. But, the next time we are facing the decision to move, take a new job, or any other big decision, I plan to use Dr. Diener’s model since I now know that the bigger house does not necessarily make me happier.

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