Delivering Happiness

part of a culture whose values match their own personal values—the thing
that ties all of these things together is happiness.
In 2009, we expanded our vision and purpose to a simple statement:
Zappos is about delivering happiness to the world.
It’s been interesting to look at the evolution of the Zappos brand promise
over the years:
1999—Largest Selection of Shoes
2003—Customer Service
2005—Culture and Core Values as Our Platform
2007—Personal Emotional Connection
2009—Delivering Happiness
From my perspective, it seemed to make sense to try to learn more
about the science of happiness so that the knowledge could be applied to
running our business. We could learn about some of the science behind how
to make customers and employees happier. Today, we even offer a Science
of Happiness class to our employees.
As I studied the field more, I learned that one of the consistent findings
from the research was that people are very bad at predicting what will
actually bring them sustained happiness. Most people go through their lives
thinking, When I get ___, I will be happy, or When I achieve ___, I will be
happy.
In fact, the research shows that the happiness they thought they would
achieve fades fairly quickly. For example, there have been of studies on
lottery winners that compare their happiness levels right before winning the
lottery with their happiness levels a year later. The studies generally find
that a person’s happiness level reverts back to wherever it was before.
To me, learning about this phenomenon was incredibly interesting. It
meant that for most people, finally achieving their goal in life, whatever it
was—whether it was making money, getting married, or running faster—
would not actually bring them sustained happiness. And yet, many people

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have spent their entire lives pursuing what they thought would make them
happy.
The question for you to ask yourself is whether what you think you want
to pursue will actually get you the happiness you think it will get you.
If the ultimate goal is happiness, then wouldn’t it make sense for you to
study and learn more about the science of happiness so that you can apply
the research that’s already been done to your own life?
With just a little bit of knowledge based on the findings from scientific
research, how much happier could you be?
How much happier could your customers and employees be if you
applied the knowledge to your company? How much healthier would your
business be as a result?
I ran my first marathon in 2006. Prior to that, I had never run more than
a mile in my life. Like summiting Kilimanjaro, it was something that I just
wanted to check off my list of things to do. I didn’t know anything about
how to train for a marathon, so I started reading articles and books about it.
As it turned out, there had been plenty of research done about the
science of running and training for a marathon. I had initially assumed that I
would have to run really hard for several months every day in order to
achieve the best results in the marathon, but that turned out not to be the
case.
In fact, the research has shown that the best way to train for a marathon
is to do long runs at a slower pace than you would actually run the
marathon at. A rule of thumb is to run slow enough so that you can
comfortably carry on a long conversation without being out of breath.
When I tried to do that the first time, it felt almost uncomfortably slow. This
training strategy is now accepted as common knowledge among marathon
runners, but for the rest of us it can seem pretty counterintuitive.
Just like we instinctually know how to run, we instinctually think we
know what will make us happy. But research has shown that you can
perform better in a marathon if you train yourself in ways that may initially
seem to go against your gut instinct. Similarly, research in the science of
happiness has shown that there are things that can make you happier that
you may not realize will actually make you happier. And the reverse is true
as well: There are things that you think will make you happy but actually
won’t in the long run.

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I don’t claim to be an expert in the field of the science of happiness. I’ve
just been reading books and articles about it because I find the topic really
interesting. So I wanted to briefly share some of the frameworks of
happiness that I personally found the most useful in helping shape my
thinking, with the goal of whetting your appetite to do a little bit of reading
yourself so that you can maximize your own personal level of happiness.