The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want (Sonja Lyubomirsky)

It is never too late to be what you might have been.
Create a media-free zone in your house and reserve it for conversations.
Source: The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want – by
What assumptions do you hold about the world and why things are the way they are?
A deep sense of shared rituals, dreams, and goals underlies thriving relationships.
The happier the person, the less attention she pays to how others around her are doing.
People have a remarkable capacity to become inured to any positive changes in their lives.
Forgiving is something that you do for yourself and not for the person who has wronged you.
Forgiving people are less likely to be hateful, depressed, hostile, anxious, angry, and neurotic.
Don’t be the person who is waiting for this, that, or the other thing to happen before she can be happy.
Frank Lloyd Wright observed: “Many wealthy people are little more than the janitors of their possessions.
Not only does materialism not bring happiness, but it’s been shown to be a strong predictor of unhappiness.
Studies show that people who perceive God as distant and punitive are more likely to be distressed and ill.
Working toward a meaningful life goal is one of the most important strategies for becoming lastingly happier.
The research shows that the happier the person, the less attention she pays to how others around her are doing.
Establish the precise time periods and activities during which you find yourself in flow… and then multiply them.
If you’re not happy today, then you won’t be happy tomorrow unless you take things into your own hands and take action.
One prominent psychologist suggests that the magic number is to have three friends or companions you can really count on.
If people got just one more hour of sleep each night, our Western “sleep-sick” society would be much healthier and happier.
Happiness level is entirely in your hands, that your “unhappy genes” do not doom you to unhappiness or, worse, to depression.
Writing out your ruminations can help you organise them, make sense of them, and observe patterns you haven’t perceived before.
Be open to beauty and excellence. Allow yourself to truly admire an object of beauty or a display of talent, genius or virtue.
Happiness, more than anything, is a state of mind, a way of perceiving and approaching ourselves and the world in which we reside.
One of the great obstacles to attaining happiness is that most of our beliefs about what will make us happy are in fact erroneous.
In the long run, the preoccupation, hostility and resentment that we harbor serve only to hurt us, both emotionally and physically.
In a nutshell, the fountain of happiness can be found in how you behave, what you think, and what goals you set every day of your life.
Learn how to appreciate and take pleasure in mundane, everyday experiences like eating a meal, taking a shower or walking to the subway.
In the most flourishing relationships, partners evoke the best in each other, helping them to come closer in reaching their ideal selves.
I prefer to think of the creation or construction of happiness, because research shows that it’s in our power to fashion it for ourselves.
If we can accept as true that life circumstances are not the keys to happiness, we’ll be greatly empowered to pursue happiness for ourselves.
An important way that you can bolster the effectiveness of a happiness activity is to vary it. By varying it, we ensure that we don’t adapt to it.
It may be obvious that to achieve anything substantial in life—learn a profession, master a sport, raise a child—a good deal of effort is required.
Surveys show, and large-scale randomised interventions confirm, that exercise may well be the most effective instant happiness booster of all activities.
Why do we need a sense of meaning? Because we need to feel that we matter, that our suffering and hard work aren’t futile, and that our life has purpose.
Your face (and body and voice) send signals (feedback) to your brain, informing it that you are experiencing a particular emotion and lead you to feel it.
Take pleasure in the senses. Focus on the sweetness of the ripe mango, the aroma of the bakery, or the warmth of the sun when you step out from the shade.
It turns out that the process of working toward a goal, participating in a valued and challenging activity, is as important to well-being as its attainment.
Replay happy days. The practice of repetitively replaying your happiest life events serves to prolong and reinforce positive emotions and make you happier.
In the face of stressful events, smiling and laughter can help “undo” negative emotions, distract, and bring about feelings of peace, amusement, or even joy.
When a person is distraught or stressed or nervous or insecure, no insight is gained from overthinking. To the contrary, ruminations makes things only worse.
Distract, distract, distract. The distracting activity you select must be engrossing enough so that you don’t have the opportunity to lapse back into ruminations.
Studies show that those proficient at reminiscing about the past – looking back on happy times, rekindling joy from happy memories – are best able to buffer stress.
Truly happy people have the capacity to distract and absorb themselves in activities that divert their energies and attention away from dark or anxious ruminations.
Especially in the face of stressful events, smiling and laughter can help undo negative emotions, distract, and bring about feelings of peace, amusement, or even joy.
I use the term happiness to refer to the experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a sense that one’s life is good, meaningful, and worthwhile.
You can’t be envious and happy at the same time. People who pay too much attention to social comparisons find themselves chronically vulnerable, threatened, and insecure.
A compelling case can be made that the level of material comfort (or lack thereof) you are experiencing today is equivalent to how the top 5 percent lived a half century ago!
Gratitude is an antidote to negative emotions, a neutralizer of envy, hostility, worry, and irritation. It is savoring; it is not taking things for granted; it is present oriented.
Happy moods, no matter what the source, lead people to be more productive, more likeable, more active, more healthy, more friendly, more helpful, more resilient, and more creative.
The research study revealed that less than a year after winning, lottery ticket winners reported being no more happy than regular folks who had not experienced the sudden windfall.
I have found that truly happy people have the capacity to distract and absorb themselves in activities that divert their energies and attention away from dark or anxious ruminations.
Practice empathy. The more successful you are at achieving understanding, concern, and consideration of the other person’s perspective, the more likely you are to forgive him or her.
This may be because happy people frequently experience positive moods and these positive moods prompt them to be more likely to work actively toward new goals and build new resources.
We habitually fail to enjoy, savor, and live in the present, as our minds are often someplace else. However, when you think about it, the present moment is all we are really guaranteed.
Before you part in the morning, find one thing that each of you is going to do that day. When you meet again in the evening, have a “reunion conversation” in a low stress setting and listen.
We cannot allow our happiness to depend on our external circumstances, for every positive event and accomplishment we experience are accompanied by rapid adaptation and escalating expectations.
People prone to joyful anticipation, skilled at obtaining pleasure from looking forward and imagining future happy events, are especially likely to be optimistic and to experience intense emotions.
If you understand your guiding values and have a clear sense of your preferences and desires, you will likely instantly recognise when there’s a match between you and a particular activity or life task.
Happy people are more likely than their less happy peers to have fulfilling marriages and relationships, high incomes, superior work performance, community involvement, robust health and even a long life.
Aerobic exercise was just as effective at treating depression as was Zoloft, or as a combination of exercise and Zoloft. Yet exercise is a lot less expensive, usually with no side effects apart from soreness.
Researchers believe that a genuine sense of meaning in life must be rooted in a person’s own thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Blindly embracing someone else’s meaning won’t bring about happiness and growth.
In sedentary older adults, a very low-intensity exercise program (walking or resistance / flexibility training) reduces depression and increases confidence and maintains the improvement for an amazing five years.
Our expectations about what our lives should be like are greater than ever before; we believe that we can do anything, and we are profoundly disappointed when reality doesn’t meet or even come close to perfection.
Dispute or challenge your pessimistic thoughts. Identify any negative beliefs triggered by the adversity or problem. Dispute the negative belief, challenging it, thinking of other possible reasons for the problem.
One benevolent act can set in motion a series of kind acts. Recent research shows that simply witnessing or hearing about a kindness leads people to feel “elevated” and increases their desire to perform good deeds.
Every week, try to do at least one thing that supports your partners roles or dreams. The goal should be to honour and respect each other and each other’s life dreams and interests, even if you don’t share them all.
The combination of rumination and negative mood is toxic. Research shows that people who ruminate while sad or distraught are likely to feel besieged, powerless, self-critical, pessimistic, and generally negatively biased.
There is sometimes powerful meaning in anguish and trauma. Suffering may bring about posttraumatic growth, including spiritual growth, a timeless perspective on possible life paths, and a sense that life has renewed meaning.
Granting forgiveness does not necessarily imply excusing or tolerating the offender’s behaviour, but it does entail trying to let go of your hurt, anger, and hostility and adopting a more charitable and benevolent perspective.
Religion and spirituality undoubtedly help us to find meaning in life. Why do we need a sense of meaning? Because we need to feel that we matter, that our suffering and our hard work aren’t futile, and that our life has a purpose.
Researchers define savouring as any thoughts or behaviours capable of “generating, intensifying, and prolonging enjoyment.” The habit of savouring has been shown in empirical research to be related to intense and frequent happiness.
Pretending that you’re happy – smiling, engaged, mimicking energy and enthusiasm – not only can earn you some of the benefits of happiness (returned smkiles, strengthened friendships, success at work) but can actually make you happier.
Not surprisingly, commitment is especially potent when made in front of other people. A University of Scranton study found that people who made public New Year’s resolutions were a remarkable ten times more likely to succeed at their goal.
One of the strongest findings in the literature is that happy people have better relationships than do their less happy peers. It’s no surprise, then, that investing in social relationships is a potent strategy on the path to becoming happier.
Another way to appreciate being forgiven is to seek forgiveness for yourself. Write a letter of apology. Describe what you have done, acknowledge it was wrong, describe the harm it has done and apologise. Whether you send the letter is up to you.
The key to happiness lies not in changing our genetic makeup (which is impossible) and not in changing our circumstances (i.e. seeking wealth or attractivness or better colleagues, which is usually impractical), but in our daily intentional activities.
People who strive for something personally significant, whether it’s learning a new craft, changing careers, or raising moral children, are far happier than those who don’t have strong dreams or aspirations. Find a happy person, and you will find a project.
Essentially, all optimism strategies involve the exercise of construing the world with a more positive and charitable perspective, and many entail considering the silver lining in the cloud, identifying the door that opens as a result of one that has closed.
Thus the key to happiness lies not in changing our genetic makeup (which is impossible) and not in changing our circumstances (i.e., seeking wealth or attractiveness or better colleagues, which is usually impractical), but in our daily intentional activities.
It takes hard work and a great deal of practice to accomplish effectively, but if you can persist at these strategies until they become habitual, the benefits could be immense. Some optimists may be born that way, but scores of optimists are made with practice.
The label comes from the conviction that empowering people to develop a positive state of mind—to live the most rewarding and happiest lives they can—is just as important as psychology’s traditional focus on repairing their weaknesses and healing their pathologies.
If we train ourselves to obtain flow in as many circumstances as possible, we will have happier lives. Flow is inherently pleasurable and fulfilling, and the enjoyment you obtain is generally of the type that is lasting and reinforcing. Flow provides a natural high.
Happiness is not out there for us to find. The reason that it’s not out there is that it’s inside us. As banal and cliched as this may sound, happiness more than anything is a state of mind, a way of perceiving and approaching ourselves and the world in which we reside.
Last but not least, the happiest people do have their share of stresses, crises, and even tragedies. They may become just as distressed and emotional in such circumstances as you or I, but their secret weapon is the poise and strength they show in coping in the face of challenge.
[Optimism] is not about providing a recipe for self-deception. The world can be a horrible, cruel place, and at the same time it can be wonderful and abundant. These are both truths. There is not a halfway point; there is only choosing which truth to put in your personal foreground.
All that is required to become an optimist is to have the goal and to practice it. The more you rehearse optimistic thoughts, the more ‘natural’ and ‘ingrained’ they will become. With time they will be part of you, and you will have made yourself into an altogether different person.
Studies show that spiritual people are relatively happier than nonspiritual people, have superior mental health, cope better with stressors, are physically healthier and live longer lives. People who perceive the divine being as loving and responsive are happier than those who don’t.
You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.
If you suddenly experienced a financial windfall, you would ultimately be much happier if you spent the money on numerous pleasant, mood- boosting things occurring on a day-to- day or weekly basis – rather than spend it all on a single big-ticket item that you believe you would really love.
Self-disclosure, revealing intimate thoughts and feelings, is difficult for some individuals, but it’s critical to friendships, especially women’s friendships. This is because honest self- disclosure, when it occurs unhurriedly and appropriately, breeds more self-disclosure and cultivates intimacy.
Sometimes when I’m facing a horrendous week or am upset over a perceived slight, I remind myself that I won’t remember it (much less care about it) one month, six months, or a year from now. (The more extreme version of this strategy is to use the deathbed criterion: Will it matter when you’re on your deathbed?)
Researchers have studied people’s responses to a variety of traumas. When a challenge or trauma is profound, unsettling a person’s foundations and forcing him to confront his personal priorities, sense of meaning and identity, a small subset of individuals report personal growth, strengthening and even thriving.
Express admiration, appreciation and affection. One of the key conclusions of two decades of research on marriage is that happy relationships are characterised by a ratio of positive to negative affect of five to one. This means that for every negative statement or behaviour, there are at least five positive ones.
Research showed that people who wrote about their visions for twenty minutes per day over several days, relative to those who wrote about other topics, were more likely to show immediate increases in positive moods, to be happier several weeks later, and even to report fewer physical ailments several months thence.
The world’s most prominent researcher and writer about gratitude, Robert Emmons, defines gratitude as “a felt sense of wonder, thankfulness and appreciation for life.” By definition, the practice of gratitude involves a focus on the present moment, on appreciating your life as it is today and what has made it so.
Human beings are actually lucky to have to have the ability to adapt quickly to changing circumstances, as it’s extremely useful when bad things happen. Some studies of hedonic adaptation show, for instance, that we have a phenomenal ability to recover much of our happiness after a debilitating illness or accident.
One of the great ironies of our quest to become happier is that so many of us focus on changing the circumstances of our lives in the misguided hope that those changes will deliver happiness… An impressive body of research now shows that trying to be happy by changing our life situations ultimately will not work.
The key to creating flow is to establish a balance between skills and challenges. A flow experience falls in just the right space between boredom and anxiety. To maintain flow, we continually have to test ourselves in ever more challenging activities. We have to stretch our skills or find novel opportunities to use them.
Greater meaning in life comes from having a coherent “life scheme.” Sit back and write, or share with someone, your own life story. Who are you now, and who were you before? What future do you imagine for yourself? What are the obstacles in your path? What assumptions do you hold about the world and why things are the way they are?
Don’t go through life wearing blinders to everything that is touching, beautiful, virtuous, and magnificent. Consider the example of the poet Walt Whitman, whose ‘favourite activity was to stroll outdoors by himself, admiring trees, flowers, the sky, and the shifting light of the day, listening to birds, crickets, and other natural sounds.
No one in our society needs to be told that exercise is good for us. Whether you are overweight or have a chronic illness or are a slim couch potato, you’ve probably heard or read this dictum countless times throughout your life. But has anyone told you— indeed, guaranteed you—that regular physical activity will make you happier? I swear by it.
Write down your barrier thoughts, and then consider ways to reinterpret the situation. In the process, ask yourself questions like… What else could this situation or experience mean? Can anything good come from it? Does it present any opportunities for me? What lessons can I learn and apply to the future? Did I develop any strengths as a result?
The notion that happiness must be found is so pervasive that even the familiar phrase “pursuit of happiness” implies that happiness is an object that one has to chase or discover. I don’t like the phrase. I prefer to think of the “creation” or “construction” of happiness because research shows that it’s in our power to fashion it for ourselves.
Be open to beauty and excellence. This strategy involves allowing yourself to truly admire an object of beauty or a display of talent, genius or virtue. Strive even to feel reverence and awe. Positive psychologists suggest that people who open themselves to the beauty and excellence around them are more likely to find joy, meaning, and profound connections in their lives.
Find meaning through expressive writing. Write about your distressing or painful life experience. Describe the experience in detail and explore your personal reactions and deepest emotions fully. When an experience has structure and meaning, it seems much more manageable and controllable than when it’s represented by a chaotic and painful jumble of thoughts and images.
Some of the common transformative experiences reported by trauma survivors were renewed belief in their ability to endure and prevail, improved relationships (in particular discovering who one’s true friends are), feeling more comfortable with intimacy and a greater sense of compassion for others who suffer and developing a deeper, more sophisticated and more satisfying philosophy of life.
Approximately one-third of all homes in 1940 did not have running water, indoor toilets, or bathtub/showers, and more than half had no central heating. If you were twenty-five years or older in 1940, you would have stood only a 40 percent chance of having completed the eighth grade, a 25 percent chance of having graduated from high school, and only a 5 percent chance of having finished college.
We found that the happiest people take pleasure in other people’s successes and show concern in the face of others’ failures. A completely different portrait, however, has emerged of a typical unhappy person—namely, as someone who is deflated rather than delighted about his peers’ accomplishments and triumphs and who is relieved rather than sympathetic in the face of his peers’ failures and undoings.
Consider how much you agree with the following statements: 1. I’ll make him/her pay. I want to see him/her hurt and miserable. I live as if he/she doesn’t exist, isn’t around. 4. I keep as much distance between us as possible. The more you agree with any of these items – the first two tapping revenge and the second two measuring avoidance – the more work you still need to do in order to forgive.
There are questions of faith, such as “Does God exist?” There are questions of opinion, such as “Who is the greatest baseball player of all time?” There are debate questions, such as “Should abortion be legal?” And then there are questions that can be answered to a degree of certainty by the application of the scientific method, which are called empirical questions—in other words, those that can be largely settled by the evidence.
Flow is a state of intense absorption and involvement with the present moment. You’re totally immersed in what you’re doing, fully concentrating, and unaware of yourself. The activity you’re performing is engrossing, stretching your your skills and expertise. When in flow, people report feeling strong and efficacious, at the peak of their abilities, alert, in control, and completely unselfconscious. They do the activity for the sheer sake of doing it.
Take twenty to thirty minutes to think about what you expect your life to be one, five, or ten years from now. Visualize a future for yourself in which everything has turned out the way you’ve wanted. This writing exercise in a sense puts your optimistic ‘muscles’ into practice. Even if thinking about the brightest future for yourself doesn’t come naturally at first, it may get there with time and training. Amazing things can come about as a result of writing.
Why does hedonic adaptation occur? The two biggest culprits are rising aspirations (e.g. the bigger house you buy after your windfall feels natural after a while; you experience a kind of “creeping normalcy” and begin to want an even bigger one) and social comparison (e.g. your new friends in the neighbourhood are driving BMWs and you feel you should too). As a result, even as people amass more of what they want with every year, their overall happiness tends to stay the same.
People who are consistently grateful have been found to be relatively happier, more energetic, and more hopeful and to report experiencing more frequent positive emotions. They also tend to be more helpful and empathic, more spiritual and religious, more forgiving, and less materialistic than others who are less predisposed to gratefulness. Furthermore, the more a person is inclined to gratitude, the less likely he or she is to be depressed, anxious, lonely, envious, or neurotic.
Only about 10 percent of the variance in our happiness levels is explained by differences in life circumstances or situations – that is, whether we are rich or poor, healthy or unhealthy, beautiful or plain, married or divorced, etc. If with a magic wand we could put a group of people into the same set of circumstances (same house, same spouse, same place of birth, same face, same aches and pains), the differences in their happiness levels would be reduced by a measly 10 percent.
Consider how much time and commitment many people devote to physical exercise, whether it’s going to the gym, jogging, kickboxing, or yoga. My research reveals that if you desire greater happiness, you need to go about it in a similar way. In other words, becoming lastingly happier demands making some permanent changes that require effort and commitment every day of your life. Pursuing happiness takes work but consider that this ‘happiness work’ may be the most rewarding work you’ll ever do.
A series of studies conducted at the University of Rochester focused on people high in mindfulness – that is, those who are prone to be mindfully attentive to the here and now and keenly aware of their surroundings. It turns out that such individuals are are models of flourishing and positive mental health. Relative to the average person, they are more likely to be happy, optimistic, self- confident, and satisfied with their lives and less likely to be depressed, angry, anxious or self- conscious.
The face of happiness may be someone who is intensely curious and enthusiastic about learning; it may be someone who is engrossed in plans for his next five years; it may be someone who can distinguish between the things that matter and the things that don’t; it may be someone who looks forward each night to reading to her child. Some happy people may appear outwardly cheerful or transparently serene, and others are simply busy. In other words, we all have the potential to be happy, each in our own way.
If we observe genuinely happy people, we shall find that they do not just sit around being contented. They make things happen. They pursue new understandings, seek new achievements, and control their thoughts and feelings. In sum, our intentional, effortful activities have a powerful effect on how happy we are, over and above the effects of our set points and the circumstances in which we find themselves. If an unhappy person wants to experience interest, enthusiasm, contentment, peace, and joy, he or she can make it happen by learning the habits of a happy person.
In sum, across all the domains of life, happiness appears to have numerous positive byproducts that few of us have taken the time to really understand. In becoming happier, we not only boost experiences of joy, contentment, love, pride, and awe but also improve other aspects of our lives: our energy levels, our immune systems, our engagement with work and with other people, and our physical and mental health. In becoming happier, we bolster as well our feelings of self-confidence and self-esteem; we come to believe that we are worthy human beings, deserving of respect.
Finally, if you resolve that the trouble you’re enduring now is indeed significant and will matter in a year, then consider what the experience can teach you. Focusing on the lessons you can learn from a stress, irritant, or ordeal will help soften its blow. The lessons that those realities impart could be patience, perseverance, loyalty, or courage. Or perhaps you’re learning open-mindedness, forgiveness, generosity, or self-control. Psychologists call this posttraumatic growth, and it’s one of the vital tools used by happy, resilient people in facing the inevitable perils and hardships of life.
Intrinsic goals are those that you pursue because they are inherently satisfying and meaningful to you, which allow you to grow as a person, to develop emotional maturity, and to contribute to your community. By contrast, extrinsic goals reflect more what other people approve or desire of you – for example, pursuing goals for such superficial reasons as making money, boosting your ego, seeking power of fame, and bowing to manipulation or peer pressure. Research shows following intrinsic goals make us happier, in part because they are more inspiring and enjoyable and because they satisfy our most basic psychological needs in life.
This is a mental exercise in which you visualise the best possible future for yourself in multiple domains of your life. You imagine yourself in the future, after everything has gone as well as it possibly could. You have worked hard and succeeded at accomplishing all your life goals. Think of this as the realisation of your life dreams, and of your best potentials. An advantage of the Best Possible Selves exercise is that it is conducted through writing. Because writing is highly structured systematic, and rule bound, it prompts you to analyse your thoughts in a way that would be difficult, if not impossible, to do if you were just fantasising. Writing about your dreams helps you to better understand your priorities, your emotions, and your motives, your identity, who you really are and what’s in your heart. Research shows that people who write about their visions for twenty minutes per day over several days, relative to those who write about other topics, are more likely to show immediate increases in positive moods, to be happier several weeks later, and even to report fewer physical ailments several months thence.
Still others assert that they have grown enormously as a result of their traumatic experience, discovering a maturity and strength of character that they didn’t know they had—for example, reporting having found “a growth and a freedom to…give fuller expression to my feelings or to assert myself.” A new and more positive perspective is a common theme among those enduring traumas or loss, a renewed appreciation of the preciousness of life and a sense that one must live more fully in the present. For example, one bereaved person rediscovered that “having your health and living life to the fullest is a real blessing. I appreciate my family, friends, nature, life in general. I see a goodness in people.”12 A woman survivor of a traumatic plane crash described her experience afterward: “When I got home, the sky was brighter. I paid attention to the texture of sidewalks. It was like being in a movie.”13 Construing benefit in negative events can influence your physical health as well as your happiness, a remarkable demonstration of the power of mind over body. For example, in one study researchers interviewed men who had had heart attacks between the ages of thirty and sixty.14 Those who perceived benefits in the event seven weeks after it happened—for example, believing that they had grown and matured as a result, or revalued home life, or resolved to create less hectic schedules for themselves—were less likely to have recurrences and more likely to be healthy eight years later. In contrast, those who blamed their heart attacks on other people or on their own emotions (e.g., having been too stressed) were now in poorer health.

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The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want (Sonja Lyubomirsky)

The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want (Sonja Lyubomirsky)

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