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

by Arthur C. Brooks

The thirteenth-century philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas listed what he called idols that occupy our days and waste our lives: money, power, pleasure, and prestige.

They substitute pleasure for enjoyment, set our hedonic treadmill on “extra high” to make satisfaction harder to attain and keep, and focus us on things that obviously are trivial, not

Similarly, the four idols are distractions to numb us to emotional circumstances we dislike and feel we can’t control. Don’t like how you feel about your marriage?

Emotional self-management lowers the attractiveness of these distractions. If you could call someone and solve the flight delay, you would immediately do that instead of goofing around on your phone. And when we have the tools to manage our emotions, the world’s baubles and time-wasters no longer attract us so much—nor do we have the time to waste on them. We aren’t stuck in place anymore. We are willing and able to build for the future instead of frittering away our time in the present.

What exactly should we focus on instead of the idols?

The four pillars are family, friendship, work, and faith.

Family. These are the people we are given in our lives and generally don’t choose (except our spouses). Friendship. This is the bond with people we love deeply but who aren’t our kin. Work. This is our toil to earn our daily bread, to create value in our lives and in the lives of others. It might be paid or unpaid, in the marketplace or at home. Faith. This does not mean a specific religion, but rather is a shorthand term for having a transcendent view and approach to life.

As you read, you’ll begin to appreciate what I think of as the inner-outer paradox—the fact that, as we saw earlier in the book, the surest way to improve your inner world is to focus on the outer world, because happiness inside comes from looking outside. I’m not saying that happiness depends on external circumstances; we’ve already seen that waiting for someone or something else to make you happy is a losing game. My point is that our lives are spent in connection—to other people, to our work, to nature and the divine—and the more we do to improve those connections, the better off we are.

Though at the time it seemed that the experience might crush me, what happened with Beloved ultimately freed me. Today, everything I do, anything I make, any suggestion I float or advice I give—it’s all just an offering. If it works, it works. If it’s accepted, it’s accepted. If not, I have lost nothing because I had no attachment to a particular result. This has made for a much, much happier life for me, and I wish the same for you. But all I can do is wish it—what you do with it is up to you.