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

by Arthur C. Brooks

The decisions she made—not her primal feelings—led her to try to transform less productive emotions into positive ones such as gratitude, hope, compassion, and humor.

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

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.

we are better suited to processing unhappy feelings than happy ones, to keep us safe and alert to danger. This is called negativity bias.[19]

valuable lessons so we don’t make mistakes again and again.

Too much regret can even affect your hormones and immune system.[22]

Extinguishing your regrets doesn’t put you on a path to freedom; it consigns you to making the same mistakes over and over again. True freedom requires that we put regret in its proper place in our lives and learn from it without letting it weigh us down.

happier is not a state of being, but a state of doing—not a thing you wait around and hope for, but an achievable change you actively work toward.

Negative emotions are protective against threats like predators; positive emotions reward us for things that we need, like good food.

Sadness makes us want to avoid losing the things and people we need (which explains grief, the psychological distress of being unable to locate a loved one).

humans make progress and prosper when they learn new things. Thus, evolution favors the people who love learning and rewards them with pleasure.

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.

Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “When angry, count ten, before you speak; if very angry, an [sic] hundred.”[10] In other words, count longer the angrier you are, or the lower your general level of self-control.

“So true is it that nothing is wretched, but thinking makes it so,” he wrote, “and conversely every lot is happy if borne with equanimity.”[16]

If you don’t want to try prayer, a similar contemplative exercise can help, such as a quiet walk in which you repeat the phrase “I am blessed and will bless others.”

Sometimes your negative emotions are not the ones interfering with your life the most. Rather, it is the emotions of someone close to you.

Empaths can’t help others commit to difficult resolutions, because their assistance stops at the victim’s feelings. But compassionate people, toughened up to act, can do hard things that the person suffering might not want or like but that are for their own good. Compassion can feel like tough love, giving honest counsel that is difficult to hear, saying goodbye to an employee who is not a suitable fit, or saying no to a disappointed child. This can start a virtuous cycle, in which the recipient of compassion gets a little more resilient and becomes better able to show compassion themselves.

We are replacing it instead with emotions we genuinely want: gratitude, humor, hope, and compassion.

Start by making more purely observational statements rather than values-based ones. Reframe “This coffee is terrible” as “This coffee has a bitter flavor.” At first this is very tricky, because we are just so used to judging everything. Once you get the hang of it, it is a huge relief to not have to have an opinion on everything. You will find yourself not weighing in on political debates and giving fewer opinions; this will keep you calmer and in a greater state of inner peace.

(By the way, neuroscientists have noticed that an over-the-counter remedy for physical pain that targets the dACC—acetaminophen, or Tylenol—can also lower negative feelings associated with exclusion!)[17]

In the Tao Te Ching, the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu wrote, “Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner.”[22]

Next time you feel self-conscious, notice that you are thinking about yourself.

Unfortunately, it is also completely natural, and no one escapes it entirely. The possible explanations for its natural, evolutionary roots are easy to see. Social comparison is how we gauge our relative place in society, and thus how we know what to strive for in order to stay competitive for resources and viable in mating markets.

in experiments, scholars have shown that, indeed, passive Facebook use (although no doubt this is not limited to Facebook) measurably decreases well-being through increased envy.[33]

The solution is not to ditch social media; it is to unfollow people you don’t know and whose posts you simply look at because they have what you want.

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.

Fears about loved ones’ health and mortality are the second and fourth most common fears that Americans hold.[2] (Fears number one and three are corrupt government officials and nuclear war, in case you are curious.)

Third, don’t treat your family like emotional ATMs.

take the lead by treating your family the way you do your friends, both generously giving and gratefully accepting emotional support. Research shows that the relationship can be greatly enhanced when adult children and their parents treat each other as individuals with past histories and limitations; in other words, as real people.[12]

First, as we’ve shown throughout this book, “put on your own oxygen mask first.” Work on your own happiness and unhappiness before trying to change your family’s.

Second, don’t take negativity personally, if you can. Whether there is conflict or not, thinking that someone else’s unhappiness is directed specifically toward you is only human.

Psychologists studying this tendency find that taking negativity personally can lead to rumination, which damages your mental and physical health and ruins your relationships by encouraging you to avoid others and seek revenge.[40]

If you care for an unhappy family member, or even just spend time in the same room as them, remind yourself each day, “It’s not my fault, and I won’t take this personally.” View unhappiness in the same way you would a physical malady. The afflicted person might lash out and blame you because of sheer frustration, but you wouldn’t likely accept this blame unless you’re the one who injured them.

Third, break the negative culture w...

Finally, prevent the spread.

The bottom line is that while you may not be able to will your feelings to improve, you can choose how you talk to and treat others, which will give your loved ones more energy to help you when you need it.

Abundant modern research backs up this idea, showing that forgiveness benefits the forgiver mentally and physically.[48]

If you’re the one who’s been wronged, escalate to explicit forgiveness. If the problem is mutual, try discussion, and talk it out.

For getting happier, closeness beats momentary harmony.

offer truth to heal, never to harm.

Look for the virtues rather than the imperfections in others. If you do that, most of the truth you speak will be honest appreciation and praise.

The secret weapon in all families is forgiveness. Almost all unresolved conflict comes down to unresolved resentment, so a practice of forgiving each other explicitly and implicitly is extremely important.

When families withhold the truth, they cannot be close.

one source of happiness for almost everyone is hope about the future, a sense of life purpose, and self-esteem.

Avoid trivial subjects like hobbies and politics, and move toward deep issues like faith, love—and happiness. This will deepen some of your friendships, and in other cases show you in a hurry that you should look elsewhere for depth.

Most of us work with other people, so during the workweek we have less time for our family than for our colleagues, let alone for friends outside of work. In this way, deal friends can easily crowd out real friends, leaving us without the joys of the latter.

Strike up a friendship with someone who truly can do nothing for you besides care about you and give you good company.

One of the great paradoxes of love is that our most transcendental need is for people whom, in a worldly sense, we do not need at all. If you are lucky and work toward deepening your relationships, you’ll soon find that you have a real friend or two to whom you can say: “I don’t need you—I simply love you.”

In a busy life, you can’t realistically maintain too many of these friendships—perhaps just a couple. Aside from your spouse, you need at least one. To that person, the highest compliment you can pay her or him is “You are useless to me.”

In one 2016 study, researchers created a humility score.[31] They found that it was negatively associated with depression and anxiety, and positively associated with happiness and life satisfaction. Furthermore, they found that humility buffers the negative impact of stressful life events. The reason is not something neuroscientifically complicated; humble people just have more real friends, because they are more fun to be with.