Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier

by Arthur C. Brooks

Meanwhile, the percentage saying they are “very happy” has fallen from 36 percent to 19 percent.[3] These patterns are seen all over the globe, too, and the trend existed even before the COVID-19 pandemic started.[4]

the boss of your own life, not an observer. You can learn to choose how you react to negative circumstances and select emotions that make you happier even when you get a bad hand.

Happiness Is Not the Goal, and Unhappiness Is Not the Enemy

What do people mean when they say they “want to be happy”? Usually, two things: First, they are saying they want to achieve (and keep) certain feelings—joyfulness, cheerfulness, or something similar. Second, they are saying there is some obstacle to getting this feeling. “I want to be happy” is almost always followed by “but . . .”

Margaret, and Ted all are living in a state of “I want to be happy, but . . .” If you break that down, you’ll see that it’s predicated on two beliefs: 1. I can be happy . . . 2. . . . but my circumstances are keeping me stuck in unhappiness.

You can’t be happy—though you can be happier. And your circumstances and your source of unhappiness don’t have to stop you.

That’s because happiness is not a destination. Happiness is a direction.

We can stop wondering what’s wrong with us because we can’t find or keep it. We can also stop believing that our individual problems are the reasons we haven’t achieved happiness.

The biggest reason people don’t get happier is because they don’t even know what they are trying to increase. And the reason they feel stuck in their unhappiness is because they can’t define what it is.

Epicurus (341–270 BCE) led a school of thought named after himself—Epicureanism—that argued that a happy life requires two things: ataraxia (freedom from mental disturbance) and aponia (the absence of physical pain).

it is scary or painful, avoid it.” Epicureans saw discomfort as generally negative, and thus the elimination of threats and problems as the key to a happier life.

Epictetus lived about three hundred years after Epicurus and was one of the most prominent Stoic philosophers. He believed happiness comes from finding life’s purpose, accepting one’s fate, and behaving morally regardless of the personal cost—and he didn’t think much of Epicurus’s feel-good beliefs.

They saw the key to happiness as accepting pain and fear, not actively avoiding them.

Today, people still break down along Epicurean and Stoic lines—they look for happiness either in feeling good or in doing their duty.

In the West, happiness is usually defined in terms of excitement and achievement. Meanwhile, in Asia, happiness is most often defined in terms of calm and contentment.

And similarly, happy feelings are not happiness; they are evidence of happiness. The happiness itself is the real phenomenon, and like the dinner, it can be defined as a combination of three “macronutrients,” which you need in balance and abundance in your life. The macronutrients of happiness are enjoyment, satisfaction, and purpose.

Enjoyment takes an urge for pleasure and adds two important things: communion and consciousness.

Pleasure is easier than enjoyment, but it is a mistake to settle for it, because it is fleeting and solitary. All addictions involve pleasure, not enjoyment.

The second macronutrient of happiness is satisfaction. It’s that thrill from accomplishing a goal you worked for.

Rolling Stones’ 1965 megahit “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” It’s actually not right: you can get satisfaction; you just can’t keep no satisfaction.

That’s why, as Jagger sings, we try, and we try, and we try to keep it, a behavior that psychologists call the hedonic treadmill, in which we adapt quickly to good things and have to keep running and running to keep feeling satisfaction.[9]

The third macronutrient is the most important: purpose. We can make do without enjoyment for a while, and even without a lot of satisfaction. Without purpose, however, we are utterly lost, because we can’t deal with life’s inevitable puzzles and dilemmas. When we do have a sense of meaning and purpose, we can face life with hope and inner peace.

The common strategy of trying to eliminate suffering from life to get happier is futile and mistaken; we must instead look for the why of life to make pain an opportunity for growth.

Happiness is a combination of enjoyment, satisfaction, and purpose. To get happier is to get more of these elements, in a balanced way—not all of one and none of another. But if you were reading closely, you noticed one funny thing about all three: they all have some unhappiness within them. Enjoyment takes work and forgoing pleasures; satisfaction requires sacrifice and doesn’t last; purpose almost always entails suffering. Getting happier, in other words, requires that we accept unhappiness in our lives as well, and understanding it isn’t an obstacle to our happiness.

Frankl’s words, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

But the right response is not trying to change the weather (which would be impossible) or wishing the weather were different (which doesn’t help). It is having contingency plans in place for bad weather, being ready, and managing projects in a way that is appropriate to the conditions on a given day.

Metacognition (which technically means “thinking about thinking”) is the act of experiencing your emotions consciously, separating them from your behavior, and refusing to be controlled by them.[2]

Feelings are associated with happiness and unhappiness, however, and are something we experience forcefully and directly every day.

Therefore, while we already touched on emotions, and you measured your affect levels using PANAS, here we need to dig more deeply into the science of emotions.

According to MacLean, the oldest part is the brain stem, sometimes called the reptilian brain because it does things that even lizards can do, like regulating instinctive behaviors and motor functions. The second is the limbic system, or paleomammalian brain, which is more recently evolved and translates basic stimuli into emotions that we feel, signaling to us what’s going on around us and thus how we should react. Finally, there is the neocortex, which MacLean suggested is the newest part—the most human, or neomammalian, brain. This is the part that governs decision-making, perception, judgment, and language.

Detection. Something happens in your environment.

Reaction. Your amygdala—a part of the limbic system deep within your brain—receives a signal that there is a threat to your safety, which is translated into the primary emotion of fear.

Decision. Meanwhile, your prefrontal cortex—the large mass of tissue right behind your forehead—is getting a signal about what’s happening. Your brain stem and limbic system have already saved your life, but now you have to decide consciously how to react. Laugh it off? Shake your fist? You decide, using your prefrontal cortex. Recognition of the feelings in your body caused by the stress hormones can alter that decision.

Similarly, metacognition is what you were taught to do when you are angry: before saying anything, count to ten. That is basically giving your prefrontal cortex time to catch up to your limbic system so it can decide how to react. Social scientists refer to people who react automatically without thinking as “limbic,” and now you know why.

One good rule of thumb devised by psychologists is to wait thirty seconds while imagining the consequences of saying what’s in your head.[11]

Metacognition doesn’t mean you can avoid negative feelings. Rather, it means you can understand them, learn from them, and make sure they don’t lead to detrimental actions, which is principally how they become a source of misery in your life.

The fear becomes a problem when it makes you behave with hostility or timidity, which hurts you and others for no good reason.

Everyone—even the most privileged among us—has life conditions they would like to change.

Sometimes it’s possible to change your circumstances. If you hate your job, you can usually look for a new one. If

Here, metacognition comes to the rescue. Between the conditions around you and your response to them is a space to think and make decisions. In this space, you have freedom. You can choose to try remodeling the world, or you can start by changing your reaction to it.

As you read a minute ago, negative emotions such as anger and fear activate the amygdala, which increases vigilance toward threats and improves your ability to detect and avoid danger. In other words, stress makes you fight, flee, or freeze—not think,

In the modern world, however, stress and anxiety are usually chronic, not episodic.[13]

No surprise, then, that chronic stress often leads to maladaptive coping mechanisms in modern life.[14] These include the misuse of drugs and alcohol, rumination on the sources of stress, self-harm, and self-blaming. These responses don’t just fail to provide long-term relief; they can further compound your problems through addiction, depression, and increased anxiety. What these coping techniques do is try to change the outside world—at least as you perceive it.

Metacognition offers a much better, healthier, and more permanent solution. Consider the emotions that your circumstances are stimulating in you. Observe them as if they’re happening to someone else, and accept them. Write them down to make sure they are completely conscious. Then consider how you can choose reactions not based on your negative emotions, but rather based on the outcomes you prefer in your life.

During the day, take a few minutes every hour or so, and ask, “How am I feeling?” Jot it down. Then after work, journal your experiences and feelings over the course of the day. Also write down how you responded to these feelings, and which responses were more and less constructive. Do this for two weeks, and you will find you are feeling more in control and acting in more productive ways.

change his attitude toward them. “So true is it that nothing is wretched, but thinking makes it so,”

You can’t alter history. You can, however, change your perception of it.

Humans are time travelers by nature; in fact, scientists have found that we may retain memories of the past precisely so that we can envision and predict the future.[18]

Thirty months later, they asked the same students the same question. In 93 percent of the cases, the accounts were inconsistent, despite the respondents remembering the details vividly and feeling confident in their memories. You

The reason your memories change is that you construct stories of past events from fragments of memories in accordance with your current self-narratives.[21] You look to days gone by to figure out who you are and why you are doing what you’re doing now. To make past information fit your current circumstances, friends, and enterprises, you unconsciously paraphrase your history.