The How of Happiness

The How of Happiness Plot Summary

Introduction

Have you ever wondered why some people seem naturally happier than others, regardless of their circumstances? The answer lies in a fascinating discovery: while 50% of your happiness is determined by genetics and 10% by life circumstances, a full 40% is within your control through intentional activities and mindset shifts. This means that no matter your natural disposition or current situation, you have significant power to increase your happiness. This journey into intentional happiness isn't about forcing positivity or denying life's challenges. Rather, it's about understanding the science-backed strategies that can help you access that crucial 40% - your happiness solution. As you explore these principles, you'll discover practical tools to elevate your daily experience, strengthen your resilience, and create a life of deeper meaning and joy.

Chapter 1: Discover Your Happiness Set Point

What determines your happiness? Is it your genetics, your circumstances, or your daily choices? Groundbreaking research reveals a surprising answer: while 50% of your happiness is determined by genetics and 10% by life circumstances, a full 40% is influenced by your intentional activities and thoughts. This means that regardless of your natural disposition or life situation, you have significant power to increase your happiness through deliberate practices. The concept of a happiness set point helps explain why some people seem naturally more cheerful while others struggle to maintain positivity. Just as we have a set point for weight that our bodies gravitate toward, we have a genetically determined happiness baseline. However, unlike your genetic makeup which cannot be changed, you can overcome the limitations of your happiness set point through consistent, intentional activities that target that crucial 40% portion of your happiness equation. Understanding your personal happiness set point begins with honest self-reflection. Are you someone who naturally bounces back quickly from setbacks, or do you tend to dwell on negative experiences? Do small pleasures bring you lasting joy, or do you quickly adapt to positive changes? By recognizing your natural tendencies, you can identify which areas of the 40% solution might benefit you most. Angela's story illustrates the power of working with your set point rather than against it. Despite enduring an abusive childhood, a failed marriage, and significant financial struggles including bankruptcy and welfare, Angela maintained remarkable happiness. When interviewed, she expressed profound gratitude for her daughter Ella, their close relationship, and simple pleasures like reading together and attending free concerts. Angela's infectious sense of humor and appreciation for her supportive community demonstrated how intentional practices can transform even difficult circumstances. The key insight from Angela's experience is that she didn't try to force herself to be someone she wasn't. Instead, she recognized her natural tendencies and deliberately cultivated practices that worked with them - focusing on gratitude, nurturing close relationships, and finding humor in challenges. These strategies allowed her to elevate her happiness beyond what her genetics might have predicted. To begin working with your own happiness set point, start by observing your natural responses to both positive and negative events over the course of a week. Notice patterns without judgment. Then, choose one area from the chapters that follow that seems most relevant to your personal happiness equation. Remember that small, consistent changes often yield more sustainable results than dramatic overhauls.

Chapter 2: Practice Daily Gratitude Rituals

Gratitude is a powerful metastrategy for achieving happiness. It involves appreciating what you have rather than focusing on what you lack. Research conducted by Robert Emmons defines gratitude as "a felt sense of wonder, thankfulness, and appreciation for life." People who consistently practice gratitude experience more positive emotions, greater energy, and increased optimism. Consider the case of Angela, a 34-year-old single mother who participated in a happiness study. Despite enduring an abusive childhood, a failed marriage, and significant financial struggles including bankruptcy and welfare, Angela maintained remarkable happiness. When interviewed, she expressed profound gratitude for her daughter Ella, their close relationship, and simple pleasures like reading together and attending free concerts. Angela's infectious sense of humor and appreciation for her supportive community of friends demonstrated how gratitude can transform even difficult circumstances. This transformation isn't merely anecdotal. In controlled studies, participants who wrote down five things they were grateful for once a week showed significant increases in happiness compared to control groups. The practice works by promoting savoring of positive experiences, bolstering self-worth, helping cope with stress, encouraging moral behavior, building social bonds, inhibiting negative comparisons, and counteracting hedonic adaptation. To incorporate gratitude into your life, consider keeping a gratitude journal where you record three to five things you're thankful for each week. The research suggests that doing this once weekly is most effective for most people. Alternatively, you might express gratitude directly to others through heartfelt letters or conversations. One participant named Nicole described writing a gratitude letter to her mother: "I felt overwhelmed with a sense of happiness... tears streamed down my face." Later, she found that simply rereading the letter instantly improved her mood during stressful moments. For maximum benefit, vary your gratitude practice to keep it fresh and meaningful. You might focus on different life domains each week, use different methods of expression, or time your practice to coincide with moments when you need an emotional boost. Remember that authenticity matters more than formality – genuine appreciation, however expressed, is what creates lasting happiness.

Chapter 3: Build Meaningful Social Connections

The centrality of social connections to our happiness cannot be overstated. Happy people have better relationships than their less happy peers, and investing in social connections is a powerful strategy for becoming happier. This includes both practicing kindness toward others and nurturing your existing relationships. In a groundbreaking study, participants were instructed to perform five acts of kindness per week over six weeks. Those who performed all five acts on a single day each week showed significant increases in happiness, while those who spread their kind acts throughout the week did not experience the same boost. Acts ranged from small gestures like buying a friend a sundae to more substantial efforts like donating blood or helping a stranger with computer problems. One participant even reported "telling a professor thank you for his hard work" as a meaningful act of kindness. The benefits of kindness are numerous. Being kind and generous leads you to perceive others more positively, fosters a sense of interdependence, relieves guilt, provides distraction from your own troubles, and enhances your self-perception. As one study participant noted after helping others, "I saw myself acting in a role of competence where I had to pull on all my resources just to get through sometimes... I came away with a feeling of competence and strength and gratitude." To practice kindness effectively, timing and variety are crucial. Choose one day per week to commit one large or several small acts of kindness that go beyond your usual routine. Vary what you do to prevent adaptation – offer your time, surprise someone, develop your compassion, or perform anonymous good deeds. Remember that kindness often creates ripple effects, inspiring others to pay it forward. Similarly, nurturing your existing relationships requires intentional effort. John Gottman's research on successful marriages reveals that happy couples spend about five hours more per week talking and being together. Make time for meaningful conversations, express admiration and appreciation directly, celebrate each other's successes, and manage conflict constructively. For friendships, create regular rituals to stay connected, communicate openly, be supportive, and don't underestimate the power of physical connection – one study found that participants who gave or received at least five hugs daily for four weeks became significantly happier.

Chapter 4: Find Flow in Everyday Activities

Have you ever been so absorbed in what you were doing that you completely lost track of time? This state of intense absorption and involvement with the present moment is called "flow," a concept pioneered by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. During flow, you're totally immersed in an activity, fully concentrating, and unaware of yourself. You feel strong, efficacious, in control, and completely unselfconscious. Csikszentmihalyi discovered this concept while researching creative artists who would ignore hunger, discomfort, and fatigue while painting, yet lose interest once the work was finished. These artists described feeling carried along by a current – hence the term "flow." The key to creating flow is establishing a balance between skills and challenges. If an activity is too challenging for your skill level, you'll feel anxious; if it's not challenging enough, you'll become bored. Philipp, a study participant, described how he created flow during frustrating traffic jams: "I picked a particular beat from my music and did my best to tap my finger or foot with the exact rhythm... I was able to drive perfectly but at the same time concentrate on the song and my tapping." This simple technique transformed a potentially stressful situation into an engaging experience. By creating this "microflow" activity, Philipp found a way to control his attention and experience enjoyment even in circumstances most people find unpleasant. To increase flow experiences in your life, start by controlling your attention. William James wrote, "My experience is what I agree to attend to." Your life is defined by what you notice and where you invest your attention. Practice directing your full concentration to tasks that engage your skills and expertise, whether writing, playing chess, or having a conversation. When your mind wanders, gently bring it back to the present activity without judgment. Transform routine tasks by creating your own microflow activities with specific goals and rules. For instance, you might turn cleaning into a game by setting a timer and seeing how much you can accomplish, or make cooking more engaging by challenging yourself to create something new from whatever ingredients you have available. Look for opportunities to add elements of challenge, creativity, or focused attention to otherwise mundane activities. For maximum benefit, identify when and where you naturally experience flow and increase those opportunities. Many people find flow more often at work than at home, despite believing they'd rather be doing leisure activities. Consider how you might craft your job to maximize engagement and meaning, as demonstrated by hospital cleaners who transformed routine cleaning into something more significant by focusing on how their work improved patients' lives and added creative elements to their tasks.

Chapter 5: Develop Resilient Coping Strategies

Life inevitably includes stress, adversity, and sometimes trauma. Nearly half of all adults will experience at least one severe traumatic event during their lifetimes. How you respond to these challenges significantly impacts your happiness and well-being. Effective coping strategies allow you to not just survive difficulties but potentially thrive through them. Lynn's story illustrates this powerfully. After watching her husband slowly die from Lou Gehrig's disease, she reflected: "I don't mean to be a Pollyanna, but I had 20 wonderful years with that man. There are people who don't have one day as happy as I had... It's like the Grand Canyon. There's this big hole, and it hurts like hell, but it's beautiful." Similarly, a colleague who lost his closest friend and collaborator to cancer said, "I am the luckiest man I know. I wish on each of you the marvelous collaboration that I had." These examples demonstrate what psychologists call "construing benefit in trauma" – finding value or meaning in loss or negative events. Research shows that 70-80% of people who've lost loved ones report finding some benefit in their experience. A classic study of breast cancer survivors found that two-thirds claimed their lives had been altered for the better after diagnosis, reporting a wake-up call that helped them reorder priorities and focus on what truly mattered. Effective coping involves both problem-focused strategies (taking action to resolve situations) and emotion-focused strategies (managing emotional reactions). When facing uncontrollable circumstances, techniques like expressive writing can be particularly powerful. In studies by James Pennebaker, people who wrote about traumatic experiences for 15-30 minutes daily over several days showed remarkable improvements – fewer doctor visits, enhanced immune function, less depression, and better academic performance. To develop your coping skills, try one of these evidence-based approaches: First, use expressive writing to explore your deepest thoughts about difficult experiences, focusing on finding meaning rather than just venting emotions. Second, practice identifying benefits from challenges by acknowledging your suffering while also recognizing personal growth, new perspectives, or strengthened relationships. Third, learn to dispute negative thoughts using the ABCDE technique (Adversity, Belief, Consequence, Disputation, Energization) to challenge pessimistic interpretations and generate more balanced perspectives.

Chapter 6: Pursue Authentic Personal Goals

"If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden, or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi Desert," observed psychiatrist W. Béran Wolfe. People who strive for something personally significant are far happier than those without strong dreams or aspirations. Find a happy person, and you will find a project. The process of working toward a goal is as important to well-being as its attainment. After spending a decade helping build the architecturally exquisite Walt Disney Concert Hall, music director Esa-Pekka Salonen described feeling joy but also "sadness that he doesn't seem able to shake. Now that the impossible dream has been realized, how to move on to the next thing? And what could possibly top this." This illustrates how the journey toward meaningful goals often provides more sustained happiness than their achievement. Committed goal pursuit provides at least six benefits: a sense of purpose and control over your life; bolstered self-esteem through accomplishments; structure and meaning in daily life; improved time management skills; better coping during crises; and enhanced social connections through shared activities. However, not all goals are equally beneficial. Research shows that intrinsic goals (those pursued because they're inherently satisfying) bring more happiness than extrinsic goals (pursued for external rewards like money or approval). To maximize happiness through goal pursuit, choose goals that are authentic to your values and personality. In one study, participants who were taught to make their goals more personally meaningful not only achieved more but became happier over time. Commit to your goals with passion, as the pursuit often involves challenges that require persistence. Public commitments are particularly effective – people who made public New Year's resolutions were ten times more likely to succeed than those who kept their intentions private. Break down larger goals into concrete subgoals with specific implementation plans. A study of retirees who participated in workshops on managing life goals found they became significantly happier and maintained that improvement for six months afterward. The program taught them to identify meaningful goals, develop specific action plans, and celebrate progress along the way. Remember to remain flexible, adapting your approach when obstacles or new opportunities arise, while maintaining your higher-order objectives.

Chapter 7: Savor Life's Positive Experiences

We rarely live in and savor the present moment, believing that what counts most will happen in the future. We postpone our happiness, convincing ourselves that tomorrow will be better than today. Yet the ability to savor positive experiences is one of the most important ingredients of happiness. Most people truly understand what it means to savor after overcoming uncomfortable symptoms or following a brush with mortality. Researchers define savoring as any thoughts or behaviors capable of "generating, intensifying, and prolonging enjoyment." When you "stop and smell the roses" instead of walking by obliviously, you are savoring. When you bask in your accomplishments or become fully aware of life's pleasures, you are savoring. Studies show that people who savor regularly are more self-confident, extraverted, and gratified, and less hopeless and neurotic. In one remarkable study, prisoners in a concentration camp would meet regularly to share an imaginary fancy dinner, visualizing every detail: "My friend, a French painter and Resistance fighter... entirely by means of conversation and gestures... dressed for dinner in immaculate white shirts that did not exist, and placed pearl or ruby studs and cuff links in those shirts.... They drank Châteauneuf-du-Pape throughout the meal." These individuals were able to experience "pleasures of the mind" even under severe deprivation. To foster savoring in your life, start by relishing ordinary experiences. In one study, depressed participants were asked to take a few minutes daily to savor something they usually hurried through, like eating a meal or walking to the subway. Within fifteen days, they showed significant increases in happiness. Try lingering over your morning pastry, absorbing its aroma and sweetness rather than consuming it mindlessly. Bask in the feeling of accomplishment after completing a task instead of immediately moving to the next item on your list. Share positive experiences with others to heighten enjoyment. Research shows that mutual reminiscence – sharing memories with other people – generates abundant positive emotions like joy, accomplishment, and pride. You might reminisce together about a shared vacation or flip through a scrapbook while listening to music that triggers pleasant memories. Practice mindfulness to stay present and aware. Studies from the University of Rochester found that people high in mindfulness – those attentive to the here and now – are more likely to be happy, optimistic, and satisfied with their lives. Take pleasure in sensory experiences by focusing concentrated attention on certain elements: close your eyes when listening to music, notice the texture of foods, or observe the changing light during sunset.

Summary

The journey to greater happiness isn't about dramatic transformations or overnight success. It's about consistently applying the principles we've explored to access that crucial 40% of happiness within your control. As George Eliot wisely noted, "It is never too late to be what you might have been." No matter your circumstances or past experiences, you possess the capacity to cultivate greater meaning, connection, and joy through deliberate practice. Your invitation today is simple but powerful: choose just one practice from what you've learned – perhaps a daily gratitude ritual, a strategy for creating more flow experiences, or a new approach to meaningful connection – and commit to implementing it consistently for the next week. Notice what shifts, adjust as needed, and remember that transformation happens not through perfection but through persistence. The journey to your most meaningful life begins with a single intentional step.

About Author

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Sonja Lyubomirsky

The majority of my research career has been devoted to studying human happiness. Why is the scientific study of happiness important? In short, because most people believe that happiness is meaningful, desirable, and an important, worthy goal, because happiness is one of the most salient and significant dimensions of human experience and emotional life, because happiness yields numerous rewards for the individual, and because it makes for a better, healthier, stronger society. Along these lines, my current research addresses three critical questions: 1) What makes people happy?; 2) Is happiness a good thing?; and 3) How and why can people learn to lead happier and more flourishing lives?Why Are Some People Happier Than Others?I have always been struck by the capacity of some individuals to be remarkably happy, even in the face of stress, trauma, or adversity. Thus, my earlier research efforts had been focused on trying to understand why some people are happier than others (for a review and theoretical framework, see Lyubomirsky, 2001). To this end, my approach had been to explore the cognitive and motivational processes that distinguish individuals who show exceptionally high and low levels of happiness. These processes include social comparison (how people compare themselves to peers), dissonance reduction (how people justify both trivial and important choices in their lives), self-evaluation (how people judge themselves), and person perception (how people think about others). All of these processes, it turns out, have hedonic implications – that is, positive or negative consequences for happiness and self-regard – and thus are relevant to elucidating individual differences in enduring well-being. My students and I have found that truly happy individuals construe life events and daily situations in ways that seem to maintain their happiness, while unhappy individuals construe experiences in ways that seem to reinforce unhappiness. In essence, our research shows that happy individuals experience and react to events and circumstances in relatively more positive and more adaptive ways. For a recent example, we found that happy individuals are relatively more likely than their less happy peers to “endow” positive memories (i.e., store them in their emotional “bank ACCOUNTS”) but to “contrast” negative memories (i.e., “life is so much better now”) (Liberman, Boehm, Lyubomirsky, & Ross, 2011).On-going studies in my laboratory are exploring additional cognitive and motivational processes that support the differing worlds of enduring happiness versus chronic unhappiness. For example, several investigations have revealed that unhappy individuals are more likely than happy ones to dwell on negative or ambiguous events (Lyubomirsky, Boehm, Kasri, & Zehm, 2011). Such “dwelling” or rumination may drain cognitive resources and thus bring to bear a variety of negative consequences, which could further reinforce unhappiness. These findings demonstrate some of the maladaptive by-products of self-reflection, suggesting that not only is the “unexamined life” worth living, but it is potentially full of happiness and joy.To cast our work on happiness in a broader framework, we have also been exploring the meaning, expression, and pursuit of happiness across cultures, subcultures, and age groups (e.g., Boehm, Lyubomirsky, & Sheldon, 2011). For example, despite media reports, we have found that parents actually experience more happiness and meaning than do non-parents–both when evaluating their lives as a whole, when going about their days, and when caring for their children (versus doing other ACTIVITIES; Nelson, Kushlev, English, Dunn, & Lyubomirsky, 2013). Of course, parents’ happiness is impacted by myriad factors, including their age and SES and their children’s ages and temperaments (Nelson, Kushlev, & Lyubomirsky, in press). Furthermore, we are currently carrying out happiness-increasing interventions among Japanese engineers,

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