We Can’t Predict What Will Make Us Happy

And This Is Surprisingly Good News

On Halloween day in 2003, thirteen-year-old Bethany Hamilton went surfing with a friend off the coast of Kauai, Hawaii. It was a picture-perfect morning—blue skies, gentle waves, the kind of day made for gliding across the ocean. Then, in a flash of unimaginable horror, a 14-foot tiger shark clamped down on her left arm and tore it clean off.

Just months earlier, across the mainland in Utah, mountaineer Aron Ralston had been hiking alone in a remote canyon when a falling boulder trapped his right arm against the canyon wall. After five excruciating days of dehydration and desperation, he freed himself by doing the unthinkable: he amputated his own arm with a dull, pocket-sized multitool.

These are the kinds of stories that send shivers down our spines. We imagine the pain, the trauma, the sheer magnitude of the loss—and we instinctively recoil. Surely, nothing good could come from such devastation.

And yet…

Fast forward a few years. Bethany Hamilton is back on her surfboard, riding waves like the shark never happened. She’s become a professional surfer, motivational speaker, and author. She often talks about her attack not as a tragedy, but as a strange kind of gift. “It was a terrible thing that happened to me,” she once said, “but so many good things have come out of it that it’s turned into a beautiful thing.”

Ralston, too, returned to the mountains—and to life. He now refers to the experience as “a blessing.” Yes, a blessing. Losing an arm. A blessing.

Wait, What?

If you’re like most people, your first reaction is probably skepticism. Sure, they’ve found meaning in it now, you think. But I’d rather be shot in the head than paralyzed, or lose a limb. No way I’d ever be grateful for something like that.

You’re not alone. Most of us think we have a decent sense of what would make us happy—and what would devastate us. But over and over, science shows we’re terrible at predicting how future events will actually affect our long-term happiness.

It’s called affective forecasting, and we suck at it.

Why We’re So Bad at Predicting Happiness

Psychologists Daniel Gilbert and Timothy Wilson coined the term affective forecasting to describe our tendency to misjudge how future experiences will make us feel. And not just a little bit—we’re wrong in both magnitude and duration.

We think getting that dream job or winning the lottery will make us ecstatically happy for a long time.
We think a breakup, job loss, or illness will leave us miserably broken forever.
Neither is usually true.

That promotion you fantasized about? It becomes your new normal in about six months.
That awful breakup? Painful, yes—but you eventually bounce back, maybe even stronger.
That traumatic injury? Strangely enough, people often find new meaning, stronger relationships, and even greater happiness on the other side.

It turns out that human beings are remarkably resilient. We adapt—often more quickly and more thoroughly than we think.

Enter the Psychological Immune System

Gilbert refers to this bounce-back ability as our psychological immune system. Just as our biological immune system helps us fight off viruses and bacteria, the psychological one helps us recover emotionally from setbacks.

But here’s the twist: we don’t believe it works until it does.
In hypothetical situations, we expect the worst. We underestimate our capacity to cope, to find meaning, and to thrive.

So we waste enormous energy trying to plan our lives in ways that guarantee happiness and avoid pain. We chase “perfect” outcomes, make safe choices, and fear big changes—not because they’re truly bad, but because we fear we won’t be able to handle them.

Spoiler alert: we almost always can.

The Happiness You Didn’t See Coming

In one study, lottery winners and paraplegics were both asked about their levels of happiness a year after the life-altering event. The results? Surprisingly similar. Despite radically different circumstances, both groups reported comparable levels of happiness.

How is this possible?

Because happiness doesn’t come from the external circumstances we think it does. It comes from how we interpret those circumstances, and what we do with them.

Hamilton and Ralston aren’t anomalies. They’re examples of what psychologists call post-traumatic growth—a phenomenon where people emerge from hardship with a greater appreciation for life, deeper relationships, and a stronger sense of purpose.

You don’t have to lose a limb to experience this (thankfully). You just have to stop assuming that you know exactly what will make you happy—or what will destroy you.

So… What Do We Do With This?

If we can’t predict what will make us happy, does that mean we should stop trying altogether?

Not exactly.

It means we should loosen our grip on our expectations. It means we should take risks, make choices, and face changes with the knowledge that we’re more emotionally agile than we realize. It means we should stop assuming that bad = forever bad, or that good = forever good.

It means we should worry less about choosing the perfect life and focus more on how we show up for the one we have.

The Surprisingly Good News

So here it is—the big twist:

The fact that we can’t predict what will make us happy is liberating.

It frees us from the myth that there’s a perfect job, perfect relationship, perfect plan that will unlock happiness like a cheat code. It reminds us that happiness isn’t always found where we expect it—but it can be found, even in the mess, the pain, and the unplanned.

Hamilton and Ralston didn’t choose what happened to them. But they chose what came next. And in doing so, they remind us that even our darkest days can become part of a story worth telling.

We may not be able to predict happiness—but we can be open to finding it in the most unexpected places.

And honestly? That’s some of the best news we’ll ever get.