Dare to Act Differently and Be Happier
Dare to Act Differently and Be Happier
What seems the safe option is not necessarily the best one in challenging times.
By Arthur C. Brooks
June 12, 2025
In financial circles, the investment strategy many people pursue during chaotic times is known as the “flight to safety.” That means dumping risky assets such as stocks and buying safer ones such as government bonds. This is not just a financial strategy, but a human one. When things get chaotic, eliminate your exposure to risk and hunker down. That’s the safe bet.
Or is it? In 1932, when economic circumstances were far scarier than anything we face today—unemployment had soared to 23.6 percent and economic growth was negative 12.9 percent—Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was running for president that year, gave a speech at Oglethorpe University, in Atlanta, in which he proposed experimenting and risk-taking as a response to trouble. “It is common sense to take a method and try it,” he told the students. “If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.” He won, and he did try something—launching the New Deal, which permanently changed the role of the federal government in American life.
Just as the flight to safety has a human dimension beyond financial advice, Roosevelt’s exhortation to adopt an experimental mindset holds a daring bit of advice for all of us—one that applies not just to our economic choices but to our life more generally. Are you in a period of particular personal turbulence, feeling like a cork tossed about in currents beyond your control? Is your well-being showing red numbers as the American economy was in 1932? Consider what FDR famously went on to say at his inauguration in 1933: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Forget flying to safety in your old routines and familiar habits. Instead, go experiment with your happiness.
So what might a happiness experiment be? In effect, the academic literature that I cite almost every week in this column is loaded with examples. Such studies are behavioral interventions that, in their scientific methodology, are designed to mimic the sort of clinical trials used in testing new drugs; these tests are considered the gold standard for establishing causality.
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https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/embrace-spirit-experimentation/683089/
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