What if everyone had a fixed monthly budget dedicated to making people happy?
Regardless of size, such a budget flips a conceptual switch in the mind. You must optimise for happiness. You become a happiness optimiser.
You are forced into serious consideration about what actions would bring most joy into the world. What a way to step out of the egocentric, and into empathy.
You consider the question “how can I make this person happy” on a frequent basis – but even better, you consider “how can I make this person most happy”!
I have a happiness budget (recently instated). It’s small. Perhaps that is part of why it brings me such great pleasure to work with it. Given a tougher constraint, I have to try harder, dig deeper, into what might make another human happy, and how I can maximise the overall happiness per spend.
Try it. It’s fun, it’s rewarding, and it’s probably the right thing to do.