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

by Arthur C. Brooks

The macronutrients of happiness are enjoyment, satisfaction, and purpose.

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

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

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 secret to the best life is to accept your unhappiness (so you can learn and grow) and manage the feelings that result.

“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.”

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

Friendship accounts for almost 60 percent of the difference in happiness between individuals,

you need at least one close friend besides your spouse, and there is an upper limit of perhaps ten friendships that you can realistically spend enough time on to regard them as close.

A lot of research has indicated that one of the best predictors of well-being in middle age is being able to name a few truly close friends.[23]

Seek intrinsic rewards from your work. The right goals to get the greatest satisfaction from work are not money and power, but rather, earned success and service to others.