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

by Arthur C. Brooks

We all know how envy feels—how it sours our love and dries up our soul.

“Of the seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all.”[26] Envy, in short, is a happiness killer.

Ordinarily, people become psychologically healthier as they age; envy can stunt this trend.

happiness consists of the macronutrients of enjoyment, satisfaction, and purpose. To build happiness we need to grow in all three of these elements, consistently and consciously.

management—metacognition, emotional substitution, and adopting an outward focus—we tend to spend a lot of time doing things that make these macronutrients hard to attain.

four big happiness pillars stand out far above all others. These are the most important things to pay attention to in order to build the happiest life each of us can,

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

Angela’s experience isn’t unique. Family can bring us to the highest highs and lowest lows. On the one hand, there are few things as deeply satisfying as family harmony.

challenges are actually opportunities to learn to grow in this unique and powerful area of love, as long as we use the tools we developed earlier in this book.

Challenge 1 conflict

you know very well that trying to avoid unhappiness is never the right way to make life better.

Conflict is the cost of abundant love. The objective is not to make it go away—it is to manage it metacognitively, replace it

What accounts for family conflict? Generally, it is a misalignment between how family members view their relationships and the roles that they each play—in other words, mismatched expectations.

Acknowledging family conflict is good, because it improves communication and gives you opportunities to solve problems.

Here are three ways to do so. First, don’t try to read minds.

As the years go by, many families fall into a tendency to assume that communication need not be spoken—that everyone understands one another without saying anything. This is an invitation to miscommunication.

One way to do this is with regular family meetings, where each of you can air issues that are on your mind before they fester into a major problem or misunderstanding.[10]

The key isn’t asking anyone to change their reactions to your actions or feelings; it’s giving them the chance to hear your side of things

Second, live your life, but don’t ask them to change their values.

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

Challenge 2 insufficient complementarity

but we wind up pursuing long-term relationships with people who are different from us. The attractive force of difference may have biological roots.

If you have been in a relationship for a long time and are struggling to keep it together, you might have assumed that you simply aren’t compatible enough. This is possible, of course; every couple needs some things in common. More than likely, the real problem is that you and your partner have not been working to turn your differences into the complementarity a healthy relationship needs.

To get more complementarity into your love life, here are three things to do. First, seek out differences in personality and tastes.

Second, focus more on what really matters.

Third, if you are dating, let humans make your matches instead of machines.

Challenge 3 the negativity virus

If the temperature in your house is a hundred degrees and you are feeling too hot, it doesn’t really matter how many clothes you take off—you’ll still be too hot. Similarly, a negative culture in a family can make problem-solving impossible, so there is no growth or learning, just chronic unhappiness.

we can help those we love by accepting their emotions. But we don’t have to take on their unhappiness in the process.

“put on your own oxygen mask first.” Work on your own happiness and unhappiness before trying to change your family’s.

you need to protect yourself precisely so you can help others. Say you are living with or near an unhappy parent. Start each day by tending to your own happiness hygiene: exercise, meditate, call a friend. Give yourself an hour or two of space from the unhappy person, if you can, and focus on what you enjoy and are grateful for.

don’t take negativity personally, if you can.

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.”

actively communicate with others to help keep your relationships healthy. Perhaps this means telling your sibling, “I want you to know that although I am going through a hard time right now, it’s not your fault.”

Challenge 4 forgiveness

The thing about talking through a problem or telling someone, “I forgive you,” is that it takes a lot of effort and bruises your pride, and might mean giving up something you want. So sometimes people try shortcuts that seem like good ways to resolve a dispute but don’t work in the end.

Researchers have written about conditional forgiveness, in which vindication is deferred and stipulations are made (“I will forgive you when you do X and Y”), and pseudo-forgiveness,

Pseudo-forgiveness can prolong an unhappy family relationship because no actual forgiveness takes place, which, the research shows, bodes ill for a relationship’s survival.

Conditional or pseudo-forgiveness are monkey traps—a handful of emotional rice chosen over freedom from anger and bitterness.

when you’re choosing forgiveness, remember that resolving a conflict is not charity—it primarily benefits you.

“you are like a man who wants to hit another and picks up a burning ember . . . and so first burns himself.”[47] Abundant modern research backs up this idea, showing that forgiveness benefits the forgiver mentally and physically.[48]

Challenge 5 dishonesty

Some lies might make life easier, but like most inward-focused behavior, they don’t necessarily make life happier. When a lie is discovered, it generally harms trust.

Friendship is the second pillar of building a happier life. Friends can lighten the load of the heaviest days. There are few joys in life as wonderful as seeing a close friend after a long separation. Without friends, no one can thrive.

Introverts find sharing personal hopes and dreams with strangers uncomfortable. What they should do is talk about their castles in the sky with their close, one-on-one friendships.

The humility to admit when we are wrong and to change our beliefs can lead us to make more friends and get happier.

admit quickly when you think you are wrong. People despise entertaining the idea that they aren’t right, because they fear that doing so will make them look stupid or incompetent.

Companionate love is the right goal—to be the closest of friends, who are also still in love.

There can obviously be disagreements, anger, and bitterness—even unhappiness. The objective is not to avoid this, but to learn and grow through problems. It is to see them as shared challenges to manage jointly.

there are five ways to develop the deep friendship of companionate love that lasts. First, lighten up. Passionate love tends to be heavy—it is usually serious and unfunny. Good companionate love, which leads to rising happiness, is much lighter, because best friends bring out the lighter side in each other.