PORTFOLIO / PENGUIN

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

penguinrandomhouse.com

Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and

creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not

reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing

Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Brooks, Arthur C., 1964- author. | Winfrey, Oprah, author.

Title: Build the life you want : the art and science of getting happier /

Arthur C. Brooks and Oprah Winfrey.

Description: New York : Portfolio/Penguin, [2023] |

Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2023019086 (print) | LCCN 2023019087 (ebook) |

ISBN 9780593545409 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593545416 (ebook) |

ISBN 9780593716250 (international edition)

Subjects: LCSH: Happiness. | Change (Psychology) | Self-realization.

Classification: LCC BF575.H27 B759 2023 (print) |

LCC BF575.H27 (ebook) | DDC 158—dc23/eng/20230504

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023019086

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023019087

Cover design: Jennifer Heuer

Cover art: Lvqi Peng / iStock / Getty Images Plus

BOOK DESIGN BY MEIGHAN CAVANAUGH, ADAPTED FOR EBOOK BY ESTELLE MALMED

pid_prh_6.1_144870801_c0_r0

We dedicate this book to you on your life’s journey. May you get happier,

year after year, and bring greater happiness to others.

Contents
A Note from Oprah
A Note from Arthur
Introduction
Albina’s Secret
One
Happiness Is Not the Goal, and Unhappiness Is Not the Enemy
Managing Your Emotions
A Note from Oprah
Two
The Power of Metacognition
Three
Choose a Better Emotion
Four
Focus Less on Yourself
Building What Matters
A Note from Oprah
Five
Build Your Imperfect Family
Six
Friendship That Is Deeply Real
Seven
Work That Is Love Made Visible
Eight
Find Your Amazing Grace
A Note from Oprah
Conclusion
Now, Become the Teacher
Acknowledgments
Notes
_144870801_

A Note from Oprah

One of the many things I got from doing The Oprah Winfrey Show for

twenty-five years was a front-row seat to unhappiness. Of every, and I mean

every, kind. My guests included people devastated by tragedy, or betrayal,

or deep disappointment. Angry people and people who held grudges.

People full of regret and guilt, shame and fear. People doing everything in

their power to numb their unhappiness but waking up each day unhappy

anyway.

I also witnessed abundant happiness. People who had found love and

friendship. People using their talents and abilities to do good things. People

who reaped the rewards of selflessness and giving, including one person

who’d even donated a kidney to a stranger he’d recently met. People with a

spiritual side that brought richer meaning to their lives. People who’d been

given a second chance.

Where the audience was concerned, the unhappy guests generally

provoked empathy; the happy ones, admiration (and maybe a twinge of

wistful envy). And then there was a third category of guest that audiences

didn’t know what to make of but were genuinely inspired by: people who

had every reason to be unhappy and yet were not. The lemonade-making,

silver-linings-finding, bright-side-looking glass-half-fullers. The Mattie

Stepaneks, is how I came to think of them—Mattie Stepanek being the boy

who had a rare and fatal form of muscular dystrophy called dysautonomic

mitochondrial myopathy, yet managed to find peace in all things and play

after every storm. He wrote lovely poetry, was wise beyond his years, and

was the first guest I ever befriended beyond the show. I used to call him my

angel guy.

How could a boy with a fatal disease be as happy as Mattie was? Same

with the mother who was full of peace and purpose and actual joy even as

she was preparing to die, recording hundreds of voice tapes for her then-six-

year-old daughter about how to live. And the Zimbabwean woman who was

married at age eleven, beaten daily, yet instead of giving in to despair,

maintained hope, set secret goals, and eventually achieved them—including

earning a PhD.

How could these people even get out of bed in the morning, let alone be

such rays of light? How did they do it? Were they born that way? Was there

a secret or pattern of development the rest of the world should know?

Because trust me, if there was such a thing, the world would definitely want

to know. In my twenty-five years of doing the show, if there was one thing

almost everyone in every audience had in common, it was the desire to be

happy. As I’ve said before, after every show I’d chat with the audience, and

I always asked what they most wanted in life. To be happy, they’d say. Just

to be happy. Just happiness.

Except, as I’ve also said before, when I asked what happiness was,

people suddenly weren’t sure. They’d hem and haw and finally say “losing

X number of pounds” or “having enough money to pay my bills” or “my

kids—I just want my kids to be happy.” So they had goals, or wishes, but

they couldn’t articulate what happiness looked like. Seldom did anyone

have a real answer.

This book has the answer, because Arthur Brooks has studied and

researched and lived the answer.

I first came across Arthur through his column in The Atlantic, “How to

Build a Life.” I started reading it during the pandemic and it quickly

became something I looked forward to every week because it was all about

what I’ve always cared most about: living a life with purpose and meaning.

Then I read his book From Strength to Strength, a remarkable guide to

becoming happier as you age. This man was singing my song.

Clearly, I had to talk to him. And when I did, I instantly realized that if

I’d still been doing The Oprah Winfrey Show, I would have been calling on

him all the time—he would have had something relevant and revealing to

contribute to almost every topic we discussed. Arthur exudes a kind of

confidence and certainty about the meaning of happiness that’s both

comforting and galvanizing. He’s able to talk both broadly and very

specifically about the very same things I’ve been talking about for years:

how to grow into your best self, how to become a better human being. So I

knew from the start that I would somehow end up working with him. That

somehow is this book.

A Note from Arthur

You must naturally be a very happy person.”

I hear this all the time. It makes sense, after all: I teach courses on

happiness at Harvard University. I write a regular happiness column for The

Atlantic. I speak about the science of happiness all around the world. So,

people assume, I must have natural gifts for happiness, like a professional

basketball player must be a naturally gifted athlete. Lucky me, right?

But happiness isn’t like basketball. You don’t have a leg up on

becoming a happiness specialist by being blessed with natural well-being.

On the contrary, naturally happy people almost never study happiness,

because to them, it doesn’t seem like something one needs to study, or even

think much about. It would be like studying air.

The truth is that I write, speak, and teach about happiness precisely

because it’s naturally hard for me, and I want more of it. My baseline well-

being level—the level where I would sit if I didn’t study it and work on it

every day—is significantly lower than average. It’s not as if I have had

huge trauma or unusual suffering. No one should feel sorry for me. It just

runs in the family: my grandfather was gloomy; my father was anxious; left

to my own devices, I am gloomy and anxious. Just ask my wife of thirty-

two years, Ester. (She’s nodding yes as she reads this.) So my work as a

social scientist isn’t research—it’s me-search.

If you are coming to this book because you are not as happy as you

want to be—whether because you are suffering from something in

particular, or you have a good life “on paper” but always find yourself

struggling—you are the kind of person I relate to best. We are kindred

spirits.

When I started studying happiness twenty-five years ago as a PhD

student, I didn’t know if academic knowledge would help. I feared that

happiness wasn’t something you could change in a meaningful way. Maybe

it was like astronomy, I thought. You can learn about the stars, but you can’t

change them. And in fact, for a long time, my knowledge didn’t help me

very much. I knew a lot, but it wasn’t practical in any way. It was just

observations about who the happiest people were—and the unhappiest.

A decade ago during a particularly dark and stormy time in my life,

Ester asked a question that changed my thinking. “Why don’t you use all

that complicated research to see if there are ways you can change your own

habits?” Obvious, right? For some reason, it wasn’t obvious to me at all, but

I was willing to try. I started spending more time observing my well-being

levels to pick out patterns. I studied the nature of my suffering and the

benefits I likely derived from it. I set up a series of experiments based on

the data, trying things like making a gratitude list, praying more, and

pursuing the opposite behavior of my inclination when I was sad and angry

(which was pretty often).

And I saw results. As a matter of fact, it worked so well that in my spare

time from my job running a large nonprofit organization, I started writing

about happiness and real-life applications in The New York Times to share

them with others. People began to get in touch to say the science of

happiness—translated into practical advice—was helping them, too. And I

found that teaching ideas in this way solidified the knowledge in my mind

and made me even happier.

Obviously, I wanted more. So I changed careers. At the age of fifty-five,

I quit my chief executive job, with a plan to write, speak, and teach about

the science of happiness. I started by creating a simple personal mission

statement for myself.

I dedicate my work to lifting people up and bringing them

together, in bonds of love and happiness, using science and ideas.

I accepted a professorship at Harvard University and created a class on

the science of happiness, which quickly became oversubscribed. Then I

started a regular column on the subject at The Atlantic that found a

readership of hundreds of thousands a week. I investigated a new happiness

topic every week by using my background as a quantitative researcher to

read the cutting-edge psychology, neuroscience, economics, and

philosophy. Then I turned the learnings into real-life experiments on

myself. When it worked, I would teach my students what I learned, and

publish it publicly for a mass audience.

As the years turned over, I saw more and more progress in my life. I

observed how my brain was processing negative emotions and learned how

to manage these emotions without trying to get rid of them. I began to see

relationships as an interplay between hearts and brains, and not some

inscrutable mystery. I started adopting the habits of the happiest people that

I saw in the data, and whom I knew in my real life (including someone very

special, whom you will meet in the Introduction that comes next). At the

same time, I began to hear from people all around the world—some I had

never heard of, others very famous—who were learning with me that they

could raise their own happiness levels if they did the work to learn and

apply their knowledge.

In the years since I made this life change, my own well-being has risen

a lot. People notice and remark that I smile more, and I look like I’m having

more fun in my work. My relationships are better than they were. And I

have seen improvements like this in students, business leaders, and ordinary

people who learn the principles. Many of them have experienced pain and

loss beyond anything I have ever faced, and found joy even amid their

suffering.

I still have plenty of bad days, and I have a long way to go, but today I

am comfortable with my bad days, and I know how to grow from them. I

know rough times will come, but I’m not afraid of them. And I am

confident that there is a lot of progress in my future.

Sometimes I think back to myself at thirty-five or forty-five years old,

when I was so rarely joyful and looked to the future with a sense of

resignation. If fifty-nine-year-old me went back in time and said, “You are

going to learn to be happier, and teach the secrets to others,” I probably

would have said that future me had gone insane. But it’s true (the getting

happier part—not the going insane part).

And now I am privileged to team up in my work with someone I have

admired since I was a young man—a person who herself has lifted up

millions of people in bonds of love and happiness all over the world: Oprah

Winfrey. When we first met, we quickly realized that we shared a mission,

even though we pursued it in different ways—I in academia, and Oprah in

mass media.

Our mission in this book is to tie together the two strands of our work,

to open up the amazing science of happiness to people in all walks of life,

who can use it to live better and lift up others. In plain language, we seek to

help you see that you are not helpless against the tides of life, but that with

a greater understanding of how your mind and brain work, you can build

the life you want, starting inside with your emotions, and then turning

outward to your family, friendships, work, and spiritual life.

It worked for us, and it can work for you, too.

Introduction

Albina’s Secret

From Arthur: Albina Quevedo, my mother-in-law, whom I loved like

my own mother, lay in her bed in the small Barcelona apartment she had

occupied for the past seventy years. The bedroom’s austere decor had never

changed: a picture on one wall of her native Canary Islands; a simple

crucifix on another. This was what she saw nearly twenty-four hours a day,

since a fall two years earlier had left her in pain and unable to get up or

walk by herself. At ninety-three, she knew she was in her last months.

Her body was weak, but her mind was still sharp and her memories

vivid. She talked about decades past, times when she was youthful, healthy,

newly married, and starting her beloved family. She reminisced about

parties and days at the beach with close friends, now long dead. She

laughed as she remembered those good times.

“Such a difference with my life now,” she said. She turned her head on

the pillow and looked out the window for a long time, lost in thought.

Turning back, she said, “I am much happier than I was back then.”

She looked over at my surprised face, and explained. “I know it sounds

strange because my life now seems bleak, but it’s true,” she said with a

smile. “As I’ve aged, I have learned the secret to getting happier.”

I was all ears now.

As I sat at her bedside, Albina recounted the trials of her life. As a little

girl in the 1930s, she had lived through the brutal Spanish Civil War, some

of it in hiding, often going hungry and seeing death and suffering all around

her. Her father was arrested and spent years in prison for serving on the

losing side of that conflict as a battlefield surgeon. Despite that, she always

saw her childhood as a happy one, because her parents loved her and loved

each other, and this love was the memory that endured most clearly. And

speaking of love, the man in the prison cell next to her father’s introduced

her to her future husband.

So far, so good. But that’s when trouble started for Albina. After a few

good years and the births of three children, her husband turned out to be

less than stellar, abandoning her without child support and plunging them

into poverty. Her sadness over being deserted was compounded by the

pressures of raising kids alone, while sometimes wondering if she could

keep the lights on.

For several years, she felt stuck and miserable, concluding that a

happier life was unavailable as long as the world dealt her this very bad

hand. Almost every day, she would look out the front window of her small

apartment and cry.

Who could blame her? Her poverty and loneliness, which made her

miserable, were not of her doing—they had been imposed on her, and she

couldn’t see a way to change them. As long as her circumstances didn’t

change, her unhappiness would persist, and a better life seemed impossible.

One day, when Albina was forty-five, something changed for her. For

reasons that were not clear to her friends and family, her outlook on life

seemed to shift. It’s not that she was suddenly less lonely, or that she

mysteriously came into money, but for some reason, she stopped waiting for

the world to change and took control of her life.

The most obvious change she made was to enroll in college to become a

teacher. It wasn’t easy. Studying day and night alongside students half her

age, while raising a family, was completely exhausting, but it was a life-

changing success. At the end of three years Albina finished college at the

top of her class.

She now embarked on a new career she loved, teaching in an

economically marginalized neighborhood where she served children and

families in poverty. She truly became her own person, was able to support

her own kids with her own money, and made friends she would cherish and

who would be by her side until her last days—and who would openly weep

at her funeral.

More than a decade later, Albina’s wayward husband wanted to return;

they had never formally divorced. She considered it and took him back—not

because she needed to, but because she wanted to. Her husband found

Albina completely changed in his fourteen years away: she was stronger

and, well, happier. They never separated again, and in their later years, he

was a different person as well, caring for her lovingly. He had died three

years earlier.

“We were happily married for fifty-four years,” she said. Then,

clarifying with a smile: “Technically, that’s sixty-eight years married, minus

the fourteen unhappy ones.”

Now here she was at age ninety-three, with her circumstances once

again limiting her, but her joy undiminished—and even increasing. I wasn’t

the only one who noticed; everyone marveled at the way her happiness

grew as she aged.

What was her secret to turning the corner at forty-five toward a better

life—and getting happier for nearly five decades after that?

THE SECRET

Some people might dismiss Albina’s story by saying that she was a rare

person with a natural gift for making lemonade out of lemons. But her

perspective on life wasn’t innate; it was learned and cultivated. She wasn’t

just “naturally happy.” On the contrary, by her own account, she was quite

unhappy for a long time before her big change.

Or one might say she was just really good at “whistling past the

graveyard”—ignoring the bad things in life. But that’s not true, either. She

never denied that bad things had happened, or pretended she wasn’t

suffering now. She knew full well that getting old was going to be hard; that

losing friends and loved ones was going to be sad; that being sick would be

scary and painful. She didn’t get happier by blocking out those realities.

Something happened that changed Albina and set her free. Three things,

actually.

First, one day in her midforties, a simple thought occurred to her. She

had always believed that getting happier required the outside world to

change. After all, her problems came from outside—from bad luck and the

behavior of others. This was comfortable in a way, but it left her in a kind

of suspended animation.

Just maybe, she thought, even if she couldn’t change her circumstances,

she could change her own reaction to those circumstances. She couldn’t

decide how the world would treat her, but maybe she had some say in how

she would feel about it. Maybe she didn’t have to wait for the difficulty or

suffering in her life to diminish to start getting on with business.

She began to look for decisions in her life where once there were only

impositions. The despairing hopelessness of feeling herself to be at the

mercy of her estranged husband, of the economy, of the needs of her

children, began to subside. Her circumstances weren’t the boss of how she

felt about life—she was.

Up to that point, Albina said, she had felt like she was stuck in a bad job

at a terrible company. Now she had awakened to realize that she had been

the CEO all along. That didn’t mean she could snap her fingers and make

everything perfect—CEOs suffer in bad times, too—but it did mean she had

a lot of power over her own life, and it could lead to all sorts of good things

down the line.

Further, Albina took action based on that realization. She switched from

wishing others were different to working on the one person she could

control: herself. She felt negative emotions just like anyone else, but she set

about making more conscious choices about how to react to them. 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. She also worked to focus more on the world

around her and less on her own problems. None of this was easy, but she

got better at it with practice, and it felt more and more natural as the weeks

and months went by.

Finally, managing herself freed Albina to focus on the pillars on which

she could construct a much better life: her family, her friendships, her work,

and her faith. Successfully managing herself, Albina was no longer

distracted by life’s constant crises. No longer managed by her feelings, she

chose a relationship with her husband that didn’t deny the past, but that

worked. She built a loving bond with her children. She cultivated deep

personal friendships. She found a career that gave her a sense of service and

earned success. She walked her own spiritual path. And she taught others

how to live this way, too.

In these three steps, Albina built the life she wanted.

THE ROAD AHEAD

If you can relate to Albina’s plight, or if you feel a need to improve your

happiness for other reasons, you are not alone. America is in a happiness

slump. Just over the past decade, the percentage of Americans saying they

are “not too happy” rose from 10 percent to 24 percent.[1] The percentage of

Americans suffering from depression is increasing dramatically, especially

among young adults.[2] 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] People disagree about why this slump is happening on

such a mass scale—blaming technology, or a polarized culture, or culture

change, or the economy, or even politics—but we all know that it is

happening.

Most of us don’t have the ambition of pulling the whole world out of the

slump; we’d be content to help just ourselves. But how, when our problems

come from the outside? If we’re angry or sad or lonely, we need people to

treat us better; we need our finances to improve; we need our luck to

change. Until then, we wait, unhappily, and can only distract ourselves from

discomfort.

This book is about showing you how to break out of this pattern, like

Albina did. You, too, can become 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. You can

focus your energy not on trivial distractions, but on the basic pillars of

happiness that bring enduring satisfaction and meaning.

You will learn how to manage your life in new ways. However, unlike

other books you may have read (we’ve read them, too), this one is not going

to exhort you to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. This isn’t a book about

willpower—it’s about knowledge, and how to use it. If you couldn’t figure

out something about your car, you wouldn’t solve the problem with extreme

willpower—you’d look at an owner’s manual. Similarly, when something

isn’t right in your happiness, you need clear, science-based information

about how your happiness works before anything else, and then instructions

on how to use this information in your life. That’s what this book is.

This also isn’t another book about minimizing or eliminating pain—

yours or anyone else’s. Life can be hard—much harder for some people

than for others, through no fault of their own. If you’re in pain, this book

won’t tell you to wait it out or extinguish it. Rather, it will show you how to

decide to deal with it, learn from it, and grow through it.

Finally, this book isn’t any kind of quick fix for your life. For Albina,

getting happier took effort and patience, and it will for you, too. Reading

this book is just the start. Practicing the skills requires, well, practice. Some

progress will be immediate, and most likely, people around you will notice

positive changes (and ask your advice). Other lessons will take months or

years to become internal and automatic. That’s not bad news at all, because

the process of managing yourself and making progress is a fun adventure.

Getting happier becomes a new way of life.

Building the life you want takes time and effort. To delay means waiting

for no good reason, missing more time being happier, and making others

happier as well. Albina was unwilling to do that—she was unwilling to miss

the life she wanted while waiting for the universe to change.

If you, too, are done waiting, let’s get started.

One

Happiness Is Not the Goal, and Unhappiness Is Not

the Enemy

The professor grinned from ear to ear as he addressed the packed auditorium at

Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh on a September evening in 2007. It was his

last lecture there, and he was ebullient with joy as he looked back on his life’s work,

on finding good in others, overcoming obstacles, and living with passion. He was so

filled with energy and vigor that he could barely contain himself. At one point, he

dropped to the floor and performed a set of one-armed push-ups.[1]

The professor was Randy Pausch, a well-known computer scientist, beloved by his

students and colleagues at Carnegie Mellon. You might think that his joy at his last

lecture was because he was retiring to the Caribbean, or perhaps more likely (he was

just forty-seven) moving to a plum post elsewhere. Neither of these things was true,

though.

It was his last lecture because Professor Pausch had terminal pancreatic cancer, and

had been given just a few months to live.

The audience came to hear him, not sure what to expect. Would it be a tragic

reflection on the shortness of life? A list of should-haves? To be sure, there were a

great deal of tears in the auditorium that night, but not from Randy. “If I don’t seem as

depressed or morose as I should be,” he wisecracked, “sorry to disappoint you.” His

speech was a celebration of life, full of love and joy, to be shared with friends,

coworkers, his wife, and his three young children.

There was simply no denying that Randy was a man who enjoyed a huge amount

of happiness. Even his grim diagnosis could not suppress that self-evident truth that

September night. Over the next few months, as his health permitted, he enjoyed life to

its fullest, inspiring others through the national media (including Oprah’s show) and

posting to his personal web page the details of his health and treatments, as well as

family milestones and many moments of personal joy.

On July 25, 2008, Randy Pausch died, surrounded by his family and friends.

In his final months, Randy had done something most of us would consider

unthinkable: he had spent what would naturally be the hardest, gloomiest part of his

life getting happier. How did he do that?

TWO MYTHS ABOUT HAPPINESS

There’s nothing strange about wanting to be happy. “There is no one who does not

wish to be happy,”[2] the theologian and philosopher Augustine flatly declared in 426

CE, with absolutely no evidence necessary then or now. Find us someone who says, “I

don’t care about being happy,” and we will show you someone either delusional or not

telling the truth.

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 . . .”

Consider Claudia, an office manager in New York. At age thirty-five, she’s been

living with her boyfriend for the past five years. They love each other, but he is not

ready to make a permanent commitment. Claudia doesn’t feel that she can plan for the

future—where she will live, whether she will have kids, how her career arc will go.

This frustrates her and leaves her at loose ends, making her feel sad and angry. She

wants to be happy, but doesn’t think she can be until her boyfriend makes up his mind.

Or consider Ryan. He thought that when he was in college he would make lifelong

friends and set his career goals. Instead, he came out of school more confused about

life than when he went in. Now, at age twenty-five, he’s thousands of dollars in debt,

jumps from job to job, and feels aimless. He hopes he will be happy when the right

opportunity comes along and makes his future clear.

Margaret is fifty. Ten years ago, she thought she had everything figured out—she

worked part-time, her kids were in high school, and she was active in her community.

But since her children left the nest, she’s felt restless and dissatisfied with everything.

She browses houses on Zillow, thinking it might be helpful to move. She thinks a big

change will bring happiness, but she doesn’t know what the necessary change is.

Finally, there’s Ted. Since he retired, he hasn’t had real friends. He’s lost touch

with everyone from work. He’s been divorced for years, and his adult children are

focused on their own families. Sometimes he reads, but he mostly watches television

to pass the time. He thinks he would be happy if there were more people in his life, but

he can’t seem to find them.

Claudia, Ryan, Margaret, and Ted are normal people with normal problems—

nothing strange or scandalous. (They’re actually composites of people whom we have

met and worked with many times.) Each is dealing with the ordinary difficulties that

any of us could face in our lives, even without making big missteps or taking foolish

risks. And their beliefs about happiness and life are normal—but mistaken.

Claudia, Ryan, 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.

The truth is that both those beliefs, as persuasive as they sound, are false. You can’t

be happy—though you can be happier. And your circumstances and your source of

unhappiness don’t have to stop you.

Here’s what we mean when we say you can’t be happy. Searching for happiness is

like searching for El Dorado, the fabled South American city of gold no one has ever

found. When we search for happiness, we may get glimpses of what it might feel like,

but it doesn’t last. People talk about it, and some claim to possess it, but the people

who society says should be completely happy—the rich, the beautiful, the famous, the

powerful—often seem to wind up in the news with their bankruptcies, personal

scandals, and family troubles. Some people do have more happiness than others, but

no one can master it consistently.

If the secret to total happiness existed, we would have all found it by now. It would

be big business, sold on the internet, taught in every school, and probably provided by

the government. But it isn’t. That’s kind of weird, isn’t it? The one thing we all want,

since Homo sapiens appeared three hundred thousand years ago in Africa, has

remained elusive to pretty much everybody. We’ve figured out how to make fire, the

wheel, the lunar lander, and TikTok videos, but with all that human ingenuity, we have

not mastered the art and science of getting and keeping the one thing we really want.

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

find complete happiness on this side of heaven, but no matter where each of us is in

life, we can all be happier. And then happier, and then happier still.

The fact that complete happiness in this life is impossible might seem like

disappointing news, but it isn’t. It’s the best news ever, actually. It means we all can

finally stop looking for the lost city that doesn’t exist, once and for all. 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. No positive circumstance can give us the state of bliss we seek.

But no negative circumstance can make getting happier impossible, either. Here is a

fact: You can get happier, even if you have problems. You can even get happier in

some cases because you have problems.

These two mistaken beliefs, and not what life throws at us, are the real reason so

many people are stuck and miserable. They want something that doesn’t exist, and

they think that any progress is impossible until all the barriers in life are cleared away.

And these errors start with an incorrect answer to a very innocent-sounding question:

What is happiness?

WHAT IS HAPPINESS?

Imagine you asked somebody to define a car. She thinks about your question, and

then answers, “A car is . . . well, it’s the feeling I get when I am in a chair, but like a

chair that I sit in when I want to get groceries.” You would assume she really doesn’t

know what a car is. And you certainly won’t lend her the keys to yours.

Then, you ask her to define a boat. She thinks for a minute and says, “It’s not a

car.”

This is an absurd scenario. And yet weirdly, these are the kinds of definitions we

usually get when we ask someone to define happiness and unhappiness. Try it

yourself. You’ll get something like, “Happiness is . . . well, I guess it’s a feeling . . .

like when I’m with people I love or I’m doing something I enjoy.” And unhappiness?

“It’s the lack of 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. If this is your predicament, don’t feel too bad.

Most people struggle with these definitions. They talk about feelings, or use bland

metaphors, like “sunshine in my soul,” which an old Presbyterian hymn called

happiness.[3]

Even the ancient philosophers struggled to agree on the definition of happiness.

For example, consider the battle between Epicurus and Epictetus.

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). His philosophy

might be characterized as “If 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. Not that they were lazy or unmotivated. They didn’t see

enduring fear and pain as inherently necessary or beneficial, and they focused instead

on enjoying 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. His philosophy could be

summarized as “Grow a spine and do your duty.” People who followed a Stoic style

saw happiness as something earned through a good deal of sacrifice. Not surprisingly,

Stoics were generally hard workers who lived for the future and were willing to incur

substantial personal cost to meet their life’s purpose (as they saw it) without much

complaining. 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. And the definitions only

multiply from there, especially as we travel around the world. Take, for example, the

differences scholars find between Western and Eastern cultures.[4] 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.

Definitions of happiness even depend on the word for it. In Germanic languages,

happiness is rooted in words related to fortune or positive fate.[5] In fact, happiness

comes from the Old Norse happ, which means “luck.”[6] Meanwhile, in Latin-based

languages, the term comes from felicitas, which referred in ancient Rome not just to

good luck but also to growth, fertility, and prosperity.[7] Other languages have special

words just for the subject. Danes often describe happiness in terms of hygge, which is

something like coziness and comfortable conviviality.[8]

If happiness were really this subjective—or even worse, a matter of feelings at any

given moment—there would be no way to study it. It would be like trying to nail Jell-

O to the wall. This book would be two words long: good luck (or maybe good happ).

Fortunately, we can do a lot better than this today. It’s true that different cultures

define happiness somewhat differently, which is why the happiness comparisons

among countries you always see in the news are not very useful or convincing. It is

also true that feelings are associated with happiness. Your emotions affect how happy

you are, and how happy you are affects all your emotions. But this doesn’t mean that

there are no constants across all people, or that happiness is a feeling.

A good way to define happiness is in terms of its component parts. If you had to

define your Thanksgiving dinner, you might do so by listing the dishes—turkey,

stuffing, sweet potatoes, and so on. Or you might list the ingredients, if you are a good

cook. Or, if you are kind of a nutrition buff, you might say that dinner—all food,

actually—is made of its three macronutrients: carbohydrates, protein, and fat. To make

a good and healthy dinner, you need all three of these in proper balance.

The dinner would also have a delicious smell that fills the house. Yet you wouldn’t

say that this smell is the dinner. Rather, the smell is evidence of the dinner. 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.

The first is enjoyment. This might sound like pleasure—“feeling good.” However,

this isn’t correct. Pleasure is animal; enjoyment is completely human. Pleasure

emanates from parts of the brain dedicated to rewarding us for certain activities, like

eating and sex, that in earlier times would help keep us alive and passing on our genes.

(Today the things that bring pleasure—from substances to behaviors—are often

maladapted and misused, leading to all sorts of problems.)

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

and consciousness. For example, Thanksgiving dinner can bring pleasure when it

tastes good and fills your belly, but it brings enjoyment when you eat with loved ones

and make a warm memory together, employing the more conscious parts of your brain.

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.

To be happier, you should never settle for pleasure, but rather make it into

enjoyment. Of course, that involves a certain cost. Enjoyment requires an investment

of time and effort. It means forgoing an easy, effortless thrill. It often means saying no

to cravings and temptations. Sometimes, getting enjoyment is hard.

The second macronutrient of happiness is satisfaction. It’s that thrill from

accomplishing a goal you worked for. It’s that feeling you have when you get an A in

school or a promotion at work; when you finally buy a house or get married. It’s how

you feel when you do something difficult—maybe even painful—that meets your life’s

purpose as you see it.

Satisfaction is wonderful, but it doesn’t come without work and sacrifice. If you

don’t suffer for something—at least a little—it doesn’t satisfy at all. If you study all

week for a test and get a good grade, it gives you a lot of satisfaction. But if you cheat

to get the same grade, in addition to doing the wrong thing, you probably get no

satisfaction at all. This is one of the reasons why cutting corners in life is such a bad

strategy—it ruins your ability to feel satisfied.

While satisfaction can bring a huge amount of joy, it is also extremely elusive: you

think that meeting a goal will give you permanent satisfaction, but it is, of course,

temporary. We all know the 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. It is incredibly frustrating—painful, even—that we strive like crazy, and

as soon as we get that burst of joy, it’s ripped away. 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] This is especially true with worldly things like

money, power, pleasure, and prestige (or fame).

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.

And yet, people who have a strong sense of meaning often find it in their suffering.

That is the argument of psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, whom we

will meet in the next chapter. In his classic memoir, Man’s Search for Meaning, he

writes, “The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the

way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity—even under the

most difficult circumstances—to add a deeper meaning to his life.”[10] 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.

THE ROLE OF UNHAPPINESS

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.

If you think this sounds counterintuitive, you’re not alone. Until well into the

twentieth century, unhappiness was generally seen as the lack of happiness, just like

light and dark. Positive and negative emotions were seen by psychologists as existing

on a continuum. For example, if you felt “less bad” as time passed after a loss or

trauma, that also, simply, meant you felt “more good.”[11]

If you wanted to get happier, then you had to become less unhappy. If your

happiness was decreasing, then your unhappiness was increasing.

The truth is, however, that feelings associated with happiness and unhappiness can

coexist. Modern psychological research has shown that positive and negative emotions

are in fact separable, allowing us to conclude that happiness is not the absence of

unhappiness.[12] (Remember, happiness and feelings are not the same, but they go

together like dinner and the smell of dinner.) Positive and negative emotions can each

be felt in the absence of the other, simultaneously, or in rapid succession. Some

neuroscientists believe that happy and unhappy feelings largely correspond to activity

in different hemispheres of the brain, noting that negative emotions align with activity

on the left side of the face, positive on the right.[13]

People generally assess their feelings as a blend. “I feel good” means happiness >

unhappiness. However, when instructed to do so, they separate out their positive and

negative emotions fairly accurately. For example, researchers in one experiment found

that people could identify their emotions about 90 percent of the time.[14] They

classified their feelings as purely positive about 41 percent of the time and purely

negative about 16 percent of the time. The rest (33 percent) were mixed between

positive and negative. All together, then, people discern some negative feelings about

half the time, on average, and positive feelings about three-quarters of the time.

In an experiment, people were asked to go through their entire days and think

about how much positive or negative “affect”—that is, feeling—they got from each

activity, instead of blending the two emotions together.[15] In general, people had more

positive feelings than negative feelings, but this depended a lot on the activity. Some

activities (like socializing) had really high positive feelings and low negative ones.

Others (like taking care of children or working) were more of a blend. The activities

that were most negative and least positive were commuting and spending time with

one’s boss. (Obviously, then, it’s definitely best not to commute with your boss.)

What all of this means is that you could have high happiness and high unhappiness

at the same time, or vice versa. One does not depend on the other. It might sound like

splitting hairs here, but this is actually a crucial point. If you believe you have to

eradicate your feelings of unhappiness before you start getting happier, you’re going to

be unnecessarily held back by the perfectly normal negative feelings of everyday life,

and you’re going to miss out on understanding what makes you you.

YOUR UNIQUE MIX OF HAPPINESS AND UNHAPPINESS

We all have our own natural mix of happiness and unhappiness, depending on our

circumstances and character, and our job is to use the mix we’re given to best effect.

The first task in doing that is learning where, in fact, we are.

One way to get evidence of your natural happy-unhappy mix is by measuring your

levels of positive and negative affect—mood—and how they compare to others’, using

the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, or PANAS. PANAS measures the intensity

and frequency of positive and negative affect, and was invented by three psychologists

at Southern Methodist University and the University of Minnesota in 1988.[16] PANAS

indicates whether you tend to experience higher or lower positive and negative

emotional states than average.

To take the test, find a time when you feel relatively neutral about life—say, right

after lunch. Don’t pick a time when you are unusually stressed out or happier than

normal. The test will ask you how deeply you feel a series of emotions. Answer in

general, or on average—not at this very moment.

You have five possible answers for each emotion:

1 = very slightly or not at all

2 = a little

3 = moderately

4 = quite a bit

5 = extremely

Assign these scores to the following twenty emotions:

1. Interested

2. Distressed

3. Excited

4. Upset

5. Strong

6. Guilty

7. Scared

8. Hostile

9. Enthusiastic

10. Proud

11. Irritable

12. Alert

13. Ashamed

14. Inspired

15. Nervous

16. Determined

17. Attentive

18. Jittery

19. Active

20. Afraid

Now, calculate your positive affect by summing your scores for questions 1, 3, 5,

9, 10, 12, 14, 16, 17, and 19. Calculate your negative affect by summing your scores

for questions 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 11, 13, 15, 18, and 20.

Unless you are the highly unusual person who is right at the average on both

positive (about 35) and negative (about 18), you will fall into one of four quadrants, as

illustrated in Figure 1.[17] If you have above-average positive affect and above-average

negative affect, you’re one of the “Mad Scientists,” who are always spun up about

something. If you’re below-average positive and below-average negative, you’re a

sober and cool “Judge.” “Cheerleaders,” with above-average positive and below-

average negative, celebrate the good in everything and don’t dwell on the bad. “Poets,”

who register below-average positive and above-average negative, have trouble

enjoying good things, and always know when there is a threat lurking.

FIGURE 1: The four types of people, based on positive and negative affect

We know, we know: you wish you were in the cheerleader quadrant. But we can’t

all be cheerleaders, and the world needs the other profiles as well. On a moment’s

reflection, you’ll likely realize that it would be a nightmare if everyone saw only the

bright side of everything, because we’d keep making the same mistakes again and

again. Poets are valuable for their perspective and creativity. (And everyone looks

great in a black turtleneck.) Life is more interesting with Mad Scientists in the mix.

And Judges keep us all from blowing ourselves up with impulsive ideas.

You have a unique role to play in life. Your profile is a gift. But no matter what

your profile is, you have room to increase the happiness in your life. To do that, you

have to understand your natural happiness blend, manage yourself, and then play to

your strengths. For example, let’s say you are a Mad Scientist. You will tend to react

very strongly, good and bad, to things in your life. This might make you the life of the

party, but it can exhaust your loved ones and coworkers. You need to know this, and

work to manage your strong emotions and reactions.

Maybe you are a Judge. You are cool as a cucumber, and perfect for jobs like

surgeon or spy (or anything in which keeping your head is an advantage—like raising

teenagers). But with friends and loved ones, you might seem a little too unenthusiastic

at times. This knowledge can be useful so that you work to muster a little more passion

than comes naturally, for the sake of others.

Or perhaps you are a Poet. When everyone says everything’s great, you say, “Not

so fast.” This is important, because it can literally or figuratively save lives—Poets see

problems before others do. But it can make you pessimistic and hard to be around at

times, and you can tend toward melancholy. You need to learn how to brighten up your

assessments and not catastrophize.

Even a Cheerleader needs emotional self-management. Everyone loves being a

Cheerleader, but keep in mind that you will probably avoid bad news and have a hard

time delivering it. That’s not always a good thing! You will need to work on that so

you can give people the truth, see things accurately in life, and not say everything is

going to be all right when it just isn’t true.

Learning your PANAS profile—your natural blend of happy and unhappy feelings

—can help you get happier because it indicates how to manage your tendencies, but in

separating the two sides, it also points out vividly that your happiness does not depend

on your unhappiness. The PANAS test is empowering, because using it, many people

understand themselves for the first time, and see that there is nothing weird about or

wrong with them. For example, some people go for many years thinking they are

defective because they experience more negative feelings than others around them, and

have a hard time mustering as much enthusiasm as others. They learn they are simply

Poets. And the world needs Poets.

APPRECIATING BAD FEELINGS

How should you think about your unhappiness? First of all, you should be thankful

for it. The human brain reserves space specifically to process negative emotions.[18]

And thank goodness: negative emotions don’t just help us achieve enjoyment,

satisfaction, and purpose; they also keep us alive. Threats are more likely to hurt us

than treats are to help us, which is why you probably wouldn’t accept a simple coin

flip to either double your savings or go completely broke. As a matter of fact, if you

have any kind of nest egg you’ve worked for, you probably wouldn’t even take nine-

to-one odds for this bet, because the one-in-ten chance of losing everything is a

prospect too terrible to face.

Thus, 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] Negative emotions also

help us to learn valuable lessons so we don’t make mistakes again and again. That’s

the case made by the late psychotherapist Emmy Gut, who showed in her research that

negative feelings can be a helpful response to problems in the environment, leading us

to pay appropriate attention and come up with solutions.[20] In other words, when we

are sad or angry about something, we may be more likely to fix it. And that, of course,

leads us to be happier in the long run.

For example, think about regret. No one enjoys their regrets in life. Some declare

they will have no regrets at all (even to the point of tattooing NO REGRETS on their

bodies) so they can be happier. It’s true that when unanalyzed and unmanaged, regret

can be poison for your well-being. Obsessive regret is implicated in depression and

anxiety, especially among ruminators: the people who go over and over their regrets

excessively, cutting a deep groove into their daily life.[21] Too much regret can even

affect your hormones and immune system.[22]

But going to the other extreme is even worse. 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.

As uncomfortable as it is, regret is an amazing cognitive feat. It requires that you

go back to a past scenario, imagine that you acted differently to change it, and with

that new scenario in mind, arrive at a different present—and then compare that

fictional present with the one you are experiencing in reality. For example, if today

your relationship with your partner has soured, your regret might mentally take you

back to last year. You would remember your own pettiness and irritability, and then

imagine yourself showing more patience and being kind instead of hurtful at key

moments. Then you would fast-forward to today and see a relationship that is

flourishing instead of languishing.

This process is why, while uncomfortable, regret leads to learning. As Daniel Pink,

author of a whole book on regret, says, “If we reckon with our regrets properly, they

can sharpen our decisions and improve our performance.”[23] Instead of letting the

specter of your failed relationship make you miserable, by simply wishing it had

turned out differently, you can be honest with yourself about what went wrong and use

that knowledge to enjoy better relationships in the future.

Another area of life where unhappiness helps us is creativity. Artists are known for

being a bit gloomy and finding their inspiration in darkness—the low-positive, high-

negative profile is called the Poet for a reason. No surprise that it was a famous poet,

John Keats, who wrote, “Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles

is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?”[24]

Scientists have found that Keats was right. One study even measured the effect of

unhappiness on the productivity of artists, looking at (among others) the composer

Ludwig van Beethoven, who was most productive after his setbacks in health (he went

progressively deaf) and family (he was the guardian of his nephew Karl, with whom

he had a miserable relationship).[25] The research found that among great composers

like Beethoven, a 37 percent increase in sadness led to, on average, one extra major

composition.

The reason for this is that when people are sad, they focus on the unpleasant parts

of their lives. This tends to stimulate a part of the brain called the ventrolateral

prefrontal cortex, which allows us to focus intensely on other complex problems as

well—like writing a business plan, or a book, or a symphony—or to figure out a

solution to a complicated life problem.[26]

Some psychologists believe that the best target to shoot for is just enough

unhappiness to be in a group we might call “second-happiest.” In 2007, a group of

researchers asked college students to rate their net well-being on a scale from

“unhappy” to “very happy.”[27] Like a lot of general well-being tests, this was intended

to measure something like “happiness minus unhappiness.” They compared the results

with participants’ academic results (GPA, missed classes) and social indicators

(number of close friends, time spent dating). Though the “very happy” participants had

the best social lives, they performed worse in school than those who were merely

“happy.”

The researchers then examined a data set from another study that rated incoming

college freshmen’s “cheerfulness” and tracked their income nearly two decades later.

They found that the most cheerful in 1976 were not the highest earners in 1995; that

distinction once again went to the second-highest group, which rated their cheerfulness

as “above average” but not in the highest 10 percent.

Fine, you might be saying, the happiest people didn’t earn the most—you might

take that trade. But other research suggests this is because of a lack of caution; since

negative emotions can help us assess threats, it stands to reason that too much good

feeling can lead us to disregard these threats. And in fact, the highest levels of purely

positive emotion have been connected to engaging in dangerous behaviors such as

alcohol and drug use and binge eating.[28] Good feelings now, bad feelings later.

Here’s the bottom line: Without unhappiness, you wouldn’t survive, learn, or come

up with good ideas. Even if you could get rid of your unhappiness, it would be a huge

mistake. The secret to the best life is to accept your unhappiness (so you can learn and

grow) and manage the feelings that result.

BE GRATEFUL FOR THE BEES, NOT JUST THE HONEY

To see our lives clearly, to get unstuck from our problems, and to see the

opportunities in our futures, we need to see happiness and unhappiness differently than

most people do: happiness is not the goal, and unhappiness is not the enemy. (Of

course, we are not talking here about medical issues, like anxiety and depression.

These are real maladies that require care and treatment. Rather, we mean the suffering

and trouble that everyone faces in life.)

None of this is to say that we should shun good feelings, or that we’re foolish for

wanting to be less unhappy. On the contrary, the desire for greater joy and less sadness

is natural and normal. However, making the quest for positive feelings—and the fight

to banish negative ones—the highest or only goal is a costly and counterproductive life

strategy. Unmitigated happiness is impossible to achieve (in this mortal coil, at least),

and chasing it can be dangerous and deleterious to our success. More important, doing

so sacrifices many of the elements of a good life.

Perhaps you are wondering if we are suggesting that you look for suffering.

There’s no need; suffering will find you—and everyone else. The point is that each of

us can strive for a rich life in which we not only enjoy delicious honey but can also

appreciate the bees responsible for it. This is more than a shift in mindset. It is a new

way of life, full of opportunities you have never seen before. By embracing your life

without fear, you can manage your emotions. And once you do that, you will be free to

build on the pillars that will set you on the path to getting happier for the rest of your

life.

Understanding happiness and unhappiness is necessary, which is why we started

with this topic. But it is only the first step in building a better life. The second step is

managing our positive and negative emotions, so we get stronger and smarter and

spend less time distracting ourselves from the parts of life we don’t enjoy. We will

cover this in the next three chapters.

Managing Your Emotions

A Note from Oprah

I’ve spent some of my happiest moments sitting under a tree with a good book to read.

Or napping in front of a crackling fire snuggling with my dogs. Or puttering around my

warm kitchen on a chilly, rainy day, assembling ingredients for a hearty stew. Part of the

good feeling is a deep and powerful sense of having everything I need right there. And that

is the great lesson of this book. If you want to make yourself happier, you already have

everything you need to do so, within you, at any moment, at this moment, today.

That last sentence incorporates two lessons we’ve already learned: First, that it’s about

happier—a relative, contextualized, fluid condition, not some perfect fixed ideal of nirvana.

And second, that 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.

This is one of the things I admire about Arthur as a teacher: he does such a good job

defining his terms. One reason I’m sure you’ll find this book so helpful is that it gives you a

language for talking about—and even more important, for thinking about—happiness.

Having a language turns what for most of us is an abstract and vague concept into

something much more concrete—something we can understand, consider from different

angles, experiment with, play around with. You’ll learn a few science-y terms (hello,

behavioral inhibition system). You’ll also relearn, in the specific context of happiness, some

very familiar words (optimism versus hope, empathy versus compassion). You’ll be

introduced to several Arthur-isms—concepts that are terrifically useful because they’re

terrifically sticky, like emotional caffeine and useless friends.

But the two most valuable things you’ll learn—the words you should tape to your

refrigerator or frame and hang on the wall someplace where you’ll see them five or ten

times a day—are these: “Your emotions are signals to your conscious brain that something

is going on that requires your attention and action—that’s all they are. Your conscious

brain, if you choose to use it, gets to decide how you will respond to them.” Once more for

good measure: Your emotions are only signals. And you get to decide how you’ll respond to

them. The emotion is the tap on the shoulder, the elbow nudge in your side. What you do

about it is completely your call.

You see what that means, right? All the times when you’ve felt overwhelmed by your

feelings, when it’s felt as though you’re a prisoner of those feelings, when it’s seemed as

though the feelings are driving the bus and the best you can do is buckle up—you don’t

have to live like that anymore. There are strategies you can use to take back the wheel. As

Arthur will explain, this doesn’t mean you’ll never again have to deal with anger or fear or

jealousy or sorrow or disappointment, but that’s precisely the point: You can deal with

them. You feel the feel, then take the wheel. You get to decide how you’ll respond.

One of the most trying times in my life was when I was literally on trial, back in 1998.

You may have heard of it: I was sued by Texas beef producers for saying something about

hamburgers. Now, to put this in perspective, I wasn’t on trial for my life. If the verdict

hadn’t gone my way, I wouldn’t have had to go to prison. Still, being on trial is a

challenging and exhausting experience. It was difficult and stressful, and it’s never a good

feeling to be wrongly accused.

And yet, looking back, I would say that during those six weeks I spent in Amarillo, I

had reason to be happy. By which I mean my version of happy, which is content. On the

personality test Arthur shared in the previous chapter, I’m a Judge—I generally don’t have

super-high highs or super-low lows.

(By the way, in case you’re wondering, Arthur is a Mad Scientist. It turns out this

combination makes a great team, because Judges and Mad Scientists complement each

other.)

It’s a wonderful thing to be able to make yourself content in trying circumstances. It’s

as though you have a ledger: yes, in the minus column there might be something difficult or

bad or unpleasant, but there’s also a plus column. In Amarillo, my plus column had kind

people who wished me well every morning at the courthouse entrance. And a bed-and-

breakfast I delighted in. It was clean. I had a comfortable bed. I could take a hot bath every

night. There was pie in the refrigerator. (For me, pie means a lot. Not kidding.) I was able to

keep my beloved cocker spaniels, Sophie and Solomon, there. And I was able to keep

working, taping the Oprah show every day after five p.m. when court was over.

Despite my circumstances, in that bed-and-breakfast I had everything I needed,

including the thing I may have needed most: gratitude. It’s an emotion I highly recommend

for anyone who’s going through a trial—any trial life might have in store—and it’s one

Arthur will be talking about in the next section. As you read, I humbly offer you two

Oprah-isms to keep in mind: feel the feel, then take the wheel. And happierness.

Two

The Power of Metacognition

Viktor Frankl, whom we met in the previous chapter, lived through

problems most of us can’t even imagine. A Jewish psychiatrist from

Austria, he was arrested with his loved ones and deported by the Germans

to Nazi concentration camps, where he spent nearly four years, until the end

of the war.[1] Of those captured, he was the only survivor in his family; his

father, mother, wife, and brother all perished. He himself narrowly escaped

death many times, and suffered profound brutality.

After the Allied liberation and his release, Frankl returned to his home

in Vienna. Reflecting on his experience, in 1946 he published his memoir of

life in the concentration camp. It was a global bestseller, and a chronicle of

hope in the midst of suffering. It inspired generations of people all over the

world, with its simple message that life can be lived with beauty even under

the worst circumstances.

Frankl’s message was not that life will automatically be good, however,

which it obviously isn’t. Nor was it that we can somehow escape pain with

some special mind trick. He acknowledges that every life has suffering—

some a lot more than others. Further, as a psychiatrist, he knew that we

react to suffering with negative emotion, which is natural. But a bad life is

not our fate, because we have a choice as to how to respond to our

emotions. In 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.”

In other words, you can’t choose your feelings, but you can choose your

reaction to your feelings. What he was saying is that if someone abandons

you, you will feel sadness and anger, but you can choose whether to be

bitter as a result, and thus affect how quickly you will recover. If someone

you love gets sick, you will be afraid, but you can choose how you express

this fear, and how it affects your life.

Feelings, in the enterprise of your life, are like weather to a construction

company. If it rains or snows or is unseasonably hot, it affects the ability to

get work done. 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.

The process of managing this weather is called metacognition.

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]

Metacognition begins with understanding what emotions are and how

they work. From there, you can learn some basic strategies for reframing

emotions about your present and your past. And with some practice, you’ll

be able to stop letting your feelings direct your behavior—conscious you

can be the adult in charge.

YOUR BRAIN, ON FEELINGS

In the previous chapter, we explained that happiness and unhappiness

are not the same thing as positive and negative feelings. Feelings are

associated with happiness and unhappiness, however, and are something we

experience forcefully and directly every day. Left unmanaged, they can run

amok, making getting happier hard or impossible. Think of this using the

metaphor once again of food versus the smell of food. The food itself is the

most important thing, but if the smell is all wrong, the meal is spoiled.

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.

The most basic understanding of emotions starts with what

neuroscientist Paul D. MacLean in the 1970s called the triune brain.[3] If

you have heard this before, it’s probably because the renowned

astrophysicist Carl Sagan made the idea famous in his books and popular

television show, Cosmos, in the 1980s. This is a theory that human brains

evolved over millions of years in three distinct stages.

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.

A lot of newer research argues that this three-part model is inaccurate

because it isn’t clear when each part evolved, and the functions are not so

neatly segregated.[4] For example, while the limbic system is primarily

responsible for feelings that we believe “happen to us,” the neocortex is not

purely analytical and participates in complex ways in emotional responses

to our environment.

Without getting into technical scientific controversies about evolution

and specific brain functions, it is still useful to think of your brain engaged

in a series of three functions to keep you alive and thriving.

1. Detection. Something happens in your environment. For

example, a car—the modern equivalent of a huge predator—is

speeding toward you while you are walking through an intersection.

Before you are at all conscious of this, the image is processed by the

retinas of the eyes (a part of the brain outside your skull!), sending the

information to the visual cortex of your brain, located in the occipital

lobe, at the very back and bottom of your head.[5]

2. 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. This

happens in something like 0.074 seconds.[6] The amygdala then sends a

signal through the hypothalamus (also part of the limbic system) to the

pituitary gland, a pea-shaped organ at the bottom middle of your brain.

This tells the adrenal glands down by your kidneys to spit out stress

hormones to make your heart pound and give you a lightning-fast

reaction to jump out of the way. Your periaqueductal gray, which also

receives a note from your amygdala, tells your body to move.[7]

3. 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.

In this case, the emotion of fear has helped save your life. Remember

that unhappiness is important because it helps us to learn and improve.

Similarly, negative emotions are crucial because they tell us how to react to

the world in a way that helps us survive and thrive. Negative emotions are

protective against threats like predators; positive emotions reward us for

things that we need, like good food. When neuroscientists look at the

character Spock on Star Trek—a Vulcan who is humanlike but does not

express or react to emotions—they scoff that he’d be dead in a week.

This is the most basic argument for being thankful for bad feelings.

Next time you are regretting negative feelings and wishing you didn’t have

them, think about this. They aren’t fun, but that’s the point. Getting your

attention and making you act is how they protect you.

PRIMARY AND COMPLEX EMOTIONS

You have two types of emotions: primary (sometimes called basic) and

complex. The first can be felt by themselves, or in combinations that make

up the second. Neuroscientists disagree on the exact classification of the

primary positive emotions—neuroscience is a relatively new field, and

neuroscientists still disagree on a lot of things. But there is fairly wide

agreement that the primary negative emotions are sadness, anger, disgust,

and fear.[8] None of these emotions are fun, but they are protective. Fear and

anger help us respond to threats with fight-or-flight reactions. Disgust alerts

us to pathogens by making us avoid contact with something. 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).

Of course, these emotions can be maladapted. For example, while fear

of rejection by others is an evolved trait from a time when it meant being

cast out of your tribe and wandering the frozen tundra and dying alone,

today you might feel it if someone says something critical about you on

Twitter. While disgust is a trait helping you smell rotting food before you

eat it, today a politician might encourage you to feel it for someone who

disagrees with you politically. That’s why we need to learn how to manage

our emotions to live a better life.

Positive emotions usually include joy, which psychologists define as “a

feeling of extreme gladness, delight, or exultation . . . arising from a sense

of well-being or satisfaction.”[9] It is highly pleasurable but fleeting. This

makes it very different from the way a lot of religious thinkers define joy,

which is more of a lasting inner contentment because of one’s relationship

with God. Christians define it as a “fruit of the spirit,” a well-being that

transcends our earthly circumstances.

For neuroscientists and psychologists, joy is a reward for meeting an

objective or getting something you want, and it thus makes you continue to

strive for the things in life that keep you alive and likely to find mates. As

you can see, this positive emotion is similar to the negative ones, but it pulls

us toward things instead of pushing us away.

Another positive primary emotion some researchers include on the list

is interest. Interest is pleasurable. Humans hate boring things and love

interesting things. Of course, tastes differ. Some people find soccer

interesting and baseball boring. Some people adore science documentaries,

and others are fascinated by cooking shows. Despite individual differences,

the overall reason for this emotion is that humans make progress and

prosper when they learn new things. Thus, evolution favors the people who

love learning and rewards them with pleasure.

Complex emotions include shame, guilt, and contempt, which are

cocktails of the primary emotions. For example, contempt is the conviction

that someone or something is totally worthless. That’s actually a blend of

anger and disgust. You can see how it might help you avoid something

terrible for you in society, but you can also imagine how treating others

with contempt because of, say, their religion, could be a really bad idea—

and something to manage.

METACOGNITION: MANAGING YOUR EMOTIONS

Your emotions are signals to your conscious brain that something is

going on that requires your attention and action—that’s all they are. Your

conscious brain, if you choose to use it, gets to decide how you will respond

to them. Think of metacognition as moving the experience of an emotion

from the limbic system of the brain into your prefrontal cortex. You might

compare it to the process of taking petroleum from the well (your limbic

system) to a gas refinery (the prefrontal cortex), where it can be made into

something you can use purposively.

We all know the feeling of lashing out when angry and then feeling

sorry afterward, or shrieking in fear at something without thinking and then

being embarrassed. You might say this is being “authentic,” but it is also

failing to be metacognitive. When you tell your young child, who is having

a tantrum, “Use your words!” you are telling her to be metacognitive: to use

her prefrontal cortex instead of just the limbic system. 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.

By the way, the advice to count to ten can be made a little more precise.

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. 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] Say you receive an

insulting email from a client at work and want to fire back an indignant

response. Don’t write back yet. Instead, slowly count to thirty, imagine your

boss reading the exchange (which she might), then imagine seeing the

person face-to-face after he reads your response. Your response will be

much better, because your prefrontal cortex, not your limbic system,

answered the email.

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. A moment of fear is not necessarily a big deal; it can

even be an interesting bit of data—remember, bad feelings are normal and

fine. The fear becomes a problem when it makes you behave with hostility

or timidity, which hurts you and others for no good reason.

Let’s now turn to some ways to apply these ideas to our lives.

WHEN YOU CAN’T CHANGE THE WORLD, CHANGE HOW YOU EXPERIENCE IT INSTEAD

Everyone—even the most privileged among us—has life conditions

they would like to change. As the early sixth-century Roman philosopher

Boethius put it, “One has abundant riches, but is shamed by his ignoble

birth. Another is conspicuous for his nobility, but through the

embarrassments of poverty would prefer to be obscure. A third, richly

endowed with both, laments the loneliness of an unwedded life.”[12]

Sometimes it’s possible to change your circumstances. If you hate your

job, you can usually look for a new one. If you are in a bad relationship,

you can try to improve it, or leave it. But sometimes it isn’t practical or

even possible. Maybe you hate the weather where you live, but you have

family there and a good job, so leaving wouldn’t make sense. Maybe you

have been diagnosed with a chronic illness for which there are no promising

treatment options. Perhaps your romantic partner has left you against your

wishes and cannot be persuaded otherwise. Maybe there is something you

don’t like about your body that isn’t possible to change. Maybe you are

even in prison.

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.

Changing how you experience your negative emotions can be much

easier than changing your physical reality, even if it seems unnatural. Your

emotions can seem out of your control at the best of times, and even more

so during a crisis—which is exactly when managing them would give you

the greatest benefit. That can be blamed in part on biology. 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, “What would a prudent reaction be at this

moment? Let’s consider the options.” This makes good evolutionary sense:

half a million years ago, taking time to manage your emotions would have

made you a tiger’s lunch.

In the modern world, however, stress and anxiety are usually chronic,

not episodic.[13] Odds are, you no longer need your amygdala to help you

outrun the tiger without asking your conscious brain’s permission. Instead,

you use it to handle the nonlethal problems that pester you all day long.

Your work is stressing you out, for example, or you aren’t getting along

with your spouse. Even if you don’t have tigers to outrun, you can’t relax in

your cave, because these ordinary things are bothering you.

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. People who misuse alcohol often say that a

few drinks turn off the day’s anxieties like a switch; problems (temporarily)

are less threatening.

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.

For example, let’s imagine you have a job that is really bringing you

down. Let’s say you are bored and stressed, and your boss isn’t competent.

You come home every day tired and frustrated, and you wind up drinking

too much and watching a lot of dumb television to distract your mind.

Tomorrow, try a new tactic. 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. You will also be able

to start seeing how you can manage your outside environment better,

perhaps making a timeline to update your résumé and asking a few people

for job market advice, and then you might actually start looking for

something new. (We’ll offer a few more lessons like this at the end of the

chapter.)

The Roman philosopher Boethius, it turns out, was a master of this, and

in circumstances much worse than yours or mine. His were more or less

like Viktor Frankl’s, in fact. He wrote the words quoted previously from a

prison cell while awaiting execution in 524 CE, after being accused of

conspiracy against the Ostrogothic King Theodoric—a crime of which he

was likely not guilty, but for which he was ultimately executed.[15] Boethius

could not change his unfair circumstances. However, he could and did

change his attitude toward them. “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] To take this to heart and act on it is one of the greatest

secrets to increased well-being, but it doesn’t have to be a secret. If

Boethius could be metacognitive, so can we.

IF YOU DON’T LIKE YOUR PAST, REWRITE IT

You can manage bad feelings, and decide how to react when dealing

with bad circumstances. But what about bad memories? We can’t change

those, right? Wrong: metacognition gives us this power.

“At home I dream that at Naples . . . I can be intoxicated with beauty,

and lose my sadness,” the American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson

wrote in his essay “Self-Reliance” in 1841.[17] “I pack my trunk, embrace

my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples.” Sounds

wonderful! But then he continues: “And there beside me is the stern fact,

the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.” You can’t escape your

past, because it travels with you into the future, inside your head. Your

memories are the first thing you unpack in Naples.

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

The next best thing to a time machine is rewriting the story of your

memories using metacognition, making the baggage of your past a little

lighter on your shoulders as you travel through the present and future.

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] Imagine a beach in Spain you would like to visit but

never have; the picture in your head might look suspiciously like that beach

in Florida from last year. This feat explains why we are so successful as a

species: past events give us a crystal ball, which we can use to decide what

to do and what to avoid doing.

Modern neuroscience shows that memory is more about reconstruction

than retrieval. Each time we conjure up the past, several parts of the brain

(including the angular gyrus and the hippocampus) piece together various

bits of stored information to assemble a memory.[19] This process is a

biological marvel but prone to change with time, as researchers have shown

in various ways over the past few decades. For example, shortly after the

explosion of the Challenger space shuttle in 1986, two psychologists asked

university students to recount in detail how they had heard the news of the

event.[20] 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 might have experienced something similar if, say, you

and your sister differ in your recollection of a particularly contentious

Thanksgiving.

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.

Your shifting memories aren’t necessarily inaccurate; rather, they are

assembled from partial sets of details, and the exact details you remember

change each time you dust a memory off. You and your sister might simply

remember different aspects of that Thanksgiving dinner that reinforce your

different current circumstances: she says the day was ruined by Aunt Marge

(and currently isn’t on speaking terms with Aunt Marge); you (who love

Marge today) say there was a minor disagreement at the table, but no harm

was done.

The particular details you retrieve about past events generally

correspond with your current emotional state. For example, researchers

have observed that when you are feeling afraid, you tend to construct

memories that focus on the sources of threats and remember the past as

more full of specific things that hurt you than you otherwise would.[22] In

contrast, if you are happy today, your memories will probably be broader

and more general. Neither set of memories is erroneous—they are just

reconstructed in different ways, based on current emotions.

The fact that your current conditions and feelings influence how you

reconstruct memories gives you a lot of power to change your

understanding of the past. And if you consciously reconstruct the past more

positively, it can help you make decisions about the future—to make useful

alterations but avoid changing your present arbitrarily in hopes of a better

life.

The next time you want to make a positive change in your life, don’t

limit your imagination to a change of scenery or the people around you.

Start with the backdrop of your life, the very thing that is probably making

you restless in the first place. Maybe you want to escape the city where you

spent the torturous months of coronavirus shutdowns—which perhaps made

you feel isolated and lonely, or harmed your relationships—by moving.

Before you get on Zillow, interrogate those painful memories; don’t let

them roam around by themselves. Instead, think of the sweet moments

you’ve had at home, the kindness you received during those uncertain early

pandemic days, and the lessons you learned about yourself. Maybe in the

end you will decide to leave for Naples. Whether you go or stay, your

consciously managed past will make a fine travel companion.

PRACTICING METACOGNITION

Metacognition requires practice, especially if you haven’t ever thought

about it before. There are four practical ways to get started. First, when you

experience intense emotion, simply observe your feelings.

The Buddha taught his followers that to manage emotions, one must

observe them as if they were happening to someone else.[23] In this way, one

can understand them consciously and let them pass away naturally instead

of allowing them to turn into something destructive. Try this yourself when,

for example, you have a strong disagreement with your partner or a friend

and are feeling angry. Sit quietly and think about the feelings you are

experiencing. Imagine them moving physically from your limbic system

into your prefrontal cortex. There, observe the anger as if it were happening

to someone else. Then say to yourself, “I am not this anger. It will not

manage me or make my decisions for me.” This will leave you calmer and

more empowered.

Second, as we touched on briefly before, journal your emotions. You

may have noticed that when you are upset, if you write about what you are

feeling, you immediately feel better. Journaling is in fact one of the best

ways to achieve metacognition, because it forces you to translate inchoate

feelings into specific thoughts, an action that requires your prefrontal

cortex.[24] This in turn creates emotional knowledge and regulation, which

provide a sense of control. Recent research shows this clearly. In one study,

college students who were assigned structured self-reflective journaling

were better able to understand and regulate their feelings about school.[25]

For example, if you are feeling frantic about all the things you need to

do, without metacognition there is no way to organize the problem in your

mind. Your limbic system is designed to send alarms, not make lists. On a

busy day, start with your coffee and calmly make a list of the things you

need to do, in order of importance. Your prefrontal cortex is now in charge

and you will feel much more in control. You will also have the presence of

mind to decide which things get done today, which you will leave until

tomorrow, and which you might even decide to do . . . never.

As another example, say you are in a relationship that is souring against

your wishes. Don’t use a confrontational (limbic) reaction right off the bat.

Instead, take a few days to record what is happening as accurately as

possible, as well as your reaction to it. Write down different ways you

might react constructively, based on different possible responses from the

other person. You will find that you are calmer and better able to cope with

the situation, even if it feels unfixable.

Third, keep a database of positive memories, not just negative ones.

Mood and memory exist in a feedback loop: bad memories lead to bad

feelings, which lead you to reconstruct bad memories. When you are in a

highly limbic state, your mind can be saying everything is terrible and

always will be, even though that is surely wrong. However, if you

purposely conjure up happier memories, you can interrupt this doom loop.

Researchers have shown that asking people to think of happy things from

their past can improve their mood.[26] You can reap similar benefits in a

systematic way by keeping a journal of happy memories and reviewing it

when you feel down or out of control.

Fourth, look for meaning and learning in the hard parts of life. Every

life contains authentic bad memories. We’re not suggesting that you try to

reconstruct a past that expunges them or makes them rosy. In some cases,

that would be impossible—they are just too painful. Furthermore, some

terrible memories can lead us to learning and progress or keep us from

repeating mistakes.

Try methodically to see how such painful memories help you learn and

grow. Scholars have shown that when people reflect on difficult experiences

with the explicit goal of finding meaning and improving themselves, they

tend to give better advice, make better decisions, and solve problems more

effectively.[27]

In your journal, reserve a section for painful experiences, writing them

down right afterward. Leave two lines below each entry. After one month,

return to the journal and write in the first blank line what you learned from

that bad experience in the intervening period. After six months, fill in the

second line with the positives that ultimately came from it. You will be

amazed at how this exercise changes your perspective on your past.

For example, say you are passed over for a promotion at work. You are

understandably disappointed and hurt, and you want to either vent about it

to friends or put it out of your mind. Before you do either of those things,

write down “Passed over for promotion” in your journal, with the date. In a

month, go back to it, and record something constructive that you learned,

such as “I mostly got over the disappointment after only about five days.”

Then, after six months, go back and write down something beneficial, such

as “I started looking for a new job, and found one I like better.”

NOW, CHOOSE THE EMOTIONS YOU WANT

When it comes to our emotions, most of us have more power than we

think. We don’t have to be managed by our feelings. We don’t have to hope

that tomorrow will be a happy day so we can enjoy our lives, or dread our

negative feelings because they will make our happiness impossible. How

our emotions affect us, and our reaction to them, can be our decision.

Our decision-making doesn’t have to stop there. Frequently, we have a

choice of emotions themselves—because there is more than one reasonable

way to feel about the situation at hand. This is not to say we can or should

feel happy when someone we love dies, of course, which would be

inappropriate. Rather, there are many times when there are two emotional

options that match the circumstances we face, and one is better than the

other for our happiness (and that of others). The next chapter reveals how to

see the better option and grab it.

Three

Choose a Better Emotion

Most likely, you are a regular user of caffeine in some form. Most

Americans are.[1] Caffeine is the mostly widely used drug in our society, by

far.

Did you ever stop to wonder how it works? When you ingest caffeine, it

quickly enters your brain, where it competes with a chemical called

adenosine. Adenosine is a neuromodulator, which sends a signal from one

part of your brain to another. A neuron shoots it out, and then another

neuron’s receptor, perfectly sized to the adenosine molecule, sucks it up to

get the information it contains about how you are supposed to feel.[2]

Adenosine’s job is to make you feel tired when it plugs into its

receptors. At the end of a long day, you produce a lot of adenosine so you

know bedtime is coming and it’s time to relax. If you didn’t sleep well

enough (or maybe even if you did), you’ll still have some in there in the

morning, making you feel groggy. That’s where caffeine comes in. This

molecule is shaped almost exactly like adenosine, so it fits into adenosine’s

receptors. Then, when adenosine shows up to make you sleepy or keep you

tired, it can’t plug in because caffeine is sitting in there already. In truth,

caffeine doesn’t pep you up—it simply prevents you from feeling drowsy.

With enough caffeine, there’s almost no adenosine plugged in at all, so you

lose all fatigue and feel jittery.

Most people use caffeine because they aren’t content with the way they

feel naturally, and want better outcomes in mood and work. It does so

through substitution of one molecule for another.

Caffeine is a good metaphor for the next principle of emotional self-

management: You often don’t have to accept the emotion you feel first.

Rather, you can substitute a better one that you want.

Your feelings at any moment are being produced to give you an effect

that your brain believes is appropriate. For example, somebody cuts you off

in traffic, and your brain interprets this as a good reason for you to get

angry. It lights up your amygdala and makes you ready to fight—or at least

insult the other driver.

Just maybe, however, you don’t want to act that way. You don’t want to

ruin your morning, or have your kids see you lose your temper. You know

that you’ll feel ashamed of yourself later.

So you want to downregulate that feeling and act in a different way—

which might be a little less natural, but will lead to a better outcome. In the

case of the rude driver, that isn’t to stop the other driver and give him or her

a kiss; rather, it might be to simply take it in stride instead of getting mad.

Now remember, getting rid of negative emotions is neither possible nor

desirable. You need anger, sadness, fear, and disgust, just like you need

adenosine so you can fall asleep at night and relax during the day. But

sometimes you want to substitute caffeine for some of your adenosine, and

sometimes you want to replace some of your negative emotions in the same

way—by temporarily occupying your emotional receptors with something

that also fits and is more constructive, leading you to act the way you want,

not the way you feel.

This chapter gives you four ways to do so. We should note here that

doing this isn’t quite as easy and simple as having a cup of coffee. At first it

doesn’t feel natural to choose an emotion. We have learned since childhood

that when you stub your toe, you say “Ouch!” not “Thanks.” Emotional

substitution is a skill that takes practice, not just an insight that changes

everything at once. With practice and dedication, it can become quite

automatic, and you will love the results.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

Think back to the last time you got a performance review at work or a

written evaluation in school. Maybe it was positive: lots of compliments

and pats on the back. But then there was that one mild criticism . . . a little

thorn among the roses. That’s what you focused on, right? You knew the

evaluation was good, but that little dig from your boss or teacher put it all in

doubt. You knew it was silly, but it bugged you for a few days.

You did this because Mother Nature gave you a little gift called

negativity bias: a tendency to focus on negative information far more than

positive information.[3] The reason is simple: compliments are nice, but

nothing happens when we ignore them. But we ignore criticism at our peril.

A couple thousand years ago, that could mean being cast out of the tribe.

Today it can mean losing your job or strife with a friend. So we naturally

focus on negative information.

This might be a good way for a caveman to stay alive, but it is generally

a distortion of reality today. You can be sitting in first class on an airplane

and feel annoyed that the coffee is a little too cold. Think of all the ways

that life is better today than it was when you were a child, and notice that

we still always seem to be complaining.

Further, people are terrible at discriminating between negative

information that matters and that which doesn’t. Emotionally, you get the

same feeling from a random person who insults you in traffic (which

doesn’t matter) as you do from a letter from the IRS (which can matter a

lot). This is because the “sensitivity” of your negativity bias is too high.

You need to be able to turn it down so you can see the difference between

negative signals and pay attention only to the very few that matter.

The single best way to grasp the reality of good things in life and turn

down the noise that makes real threats hard to distinguish from petty ones is

to occupy some of the negative emotion receptors with a different, positive

feeling. The most effective of these positive feelings is gratitude.

Many people see gratitude as something that happens to them because

of their circumstances, which can make it feel out of reach in bad times.

That’s the wrong way to approach it. Gratitude isn’t a feeling that

materializes in response to your circumstances. It is a life practice. And

even if you feel that you have little to be grateful for right now, you can—

and should—engage in it.

Researchers have shown that you can call gratitude into existence by

choosing to focus on the things for which you are grateful—which we all

have—instead of the negatives in your life. For example, writing in 2018,

four psychologists randomly split a sample of 153 human subjects into

groups that were assigned either to remember something they were grateful

for or to think about something unrelated.[4] The result was amazing: the

grateful-remembering group experienced more than five times as much

positive emotion as the control group.

Scientists have investigated why gratitude raises positive emotion so

reliably, and found several explanations. It stimulates the medial prefrontal

cortex, part of the brain’s reward circuit.[5] Gratitude can make us more

resilient, and enhance relationships by strengthening romantic ties,

bolstering friendships, and creating family bonds that endure during times

of crisis.[6] It also improves many health indicators, such as blood pressure

and diet.[7]

Gratitude makes us better people, too. Approximately two thousand

years ago, the Roman philosopher Cicero wrote that gratitude “is not only

the greatest, but is also the parent of all the other virtues.”[8] Modern

research shows that he was probably right. Gratitude can make us more

generous with others, more patient, and less materialistic.[9]

Think of how you treat others when you are grateful, and you’ll see this

immediately. For example, after you get a raise and promotion at work, you

walk into a coffee shop and are extra nice to the barista.

The best way to start practicing gratitude is by including it in the journal

you use to be more metacognitive. Your journal should list in particular the

things in the past for which you are grateful (for example, kindness and

love from others) so you don’t forget these things. A 2012 study of nearly

three thousand people found that when people agreed with the statements “I

have so much in life to be thankful for” and “I am grateful for a wide

variety of people,” they experienced positive emotions and fewer symptoms

of depression.[10] Look at these grateful memories regularly—every day or

at least every week—to remember and train your mind to do this

automatically in difficult moments.

One caution: Don’t pretend you feel grateful for the things you aren’t

actually grateful for. You don’t need to roll down the window and thank the

rude driver for being so nasty. You shouldn’t write “Painful case of

shingles” on your gratitude list; you are trying to be grateful in spite of that.

Forced gratitude can undermine your motivation to be grateful—think of

being forced to say thank you or write thank-you notes as a child, and about

whether you actually felt thankful in the moment.[11] Accept the things you

aren’t really grateful for; give thanks for the things you truly are.

Gratitude is a good general technique, but you can apply it in moments

of acute negativity as well for immediate relief, especially when facing a

situation you are dreading. Say, for instance, you have a family gathering

that is going to be hard to face. Spend time beforehand contemplating the

things for which you truly are grateful and that are totally unrelated to the

gathering. Focus on the friendships you hold most dear, having a job you

enjoy, or the fact that you are in good health. This will help put you in a

thankful—and happier—frame of mind, making the situation at hand a lot

easier to enjoy.

One way to make gratitude even more effective is prayer or meditation.

Some researchers have noticed that increasing the practice of prayer is

strongly associated with gratitude, even among people who aren’t devoutly

religious.[12] 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.”

Another technique for increasing gratitude: contemplate your death. No,

really. Researchers found in 2011 that when people vividly imagined their

demise, their sense of gratitude increased by 11 percent on average.[13]

Happiness researchers rarely see single interventions with this kind of

effect. So, if you’re having trouble mustering any gratitude and need it

badly, dedicate a few minutes to thinking about all the ways you might

perish. When you don’t actually die, you’ll feel rather grateful indeed. No

matter how bad that family gathering is, at least you’re alive to see it!

Here’s an exercise for increasing gratitude in your life.

1. On Sunday night, take thirty minutes and write down the five

things in your life for which you are authentically grateful. It’s all right

if they seem trivial or silly. Almost everyone else has ridiculous things

on their gratitude lists, too. Make sure one or two, though, involve

people you love.

2. Each evening during the week, take out your list and study it

for five minutes, one minute for each item. Do it also in the morning if

you have time.

3. Update your list each Sunday by adding one or two items.

At the end of five weeks, write down the changes you have seen in your

attitude and levels of negative affect. You will likely see what researchers

almost always find—a significant improvement. The reason is because your

negativity bias doesn’t have enough “receptors” to keep you down. Even

the true negatives will appear less dire, because you will be naturally

treating them more metacognitively and less limbically.

FIND A REASON TO LAUGH

Back in the 1960s and ’70s, almost everyone read the magazine

Reader’s Digest, which had a section of jokes called “Laughter, the Best

Medicine.” It featured a few pages of corny jokes, groaners that were

sometimes so bad, you laughed at how terrible they were. Yet it was true: so

many people read those jokes because they wanted to feel better. And in

truth, humor is excellent emotional caffeine.

Let’s start by understanding the science. Read the following sentence:

When I die, I want to go peacefully in my sleep, like my

grandfather . . . not screaming in terror, like his passengers.

If you laughed at that joke, it is because three things happened in your

brain in lightning-fast succession. First, you detected an incongruity: you

imagined a grandfather lying peacefully in bed, but then you realized he

was actually driving a bus (or flying a plane). Second, you resolved the

incongruity: Grandpa was asleep at the wheel. Third, the parahippocampal

gyrus region of your brain helped you realize the statement wasn’t serious,

so you felt amusement.[14] And all of that gave you a little bit of joy, which

blocked whatever bad feeling you might have had.

After that analysis, the medicine isn’t working anymore and you’re not

laughing. “Humor can be dissected, as a frog can,” according to the writer

E. B. White, “but the thing dies in the process and the innards are

discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.”[15] Jokes aren’t funny the

second time, or when you explain them, because the surprise is gone.

Humor is serious business for blocking negative affect, however, so it’s

worth understanding the science.

Consuming humor—enjoying jokes—brings joy and relieves suffering.

Your brain won’t buy it if you try to convince it that you are cheerful when

you are sad. But finding humor is just different enough from suffering’s

opposite that it slides right into the negativity receptor.

Researchers find that it works with amazing reliability. In a 2010 study,

one group of senior citizens received “humor therapy”—daily jokes,

laughter exercises, funny stories, and the like—for eight weeks.[16] A second

group did not receive this therapy. When the study started, both groups

reported similar happiness. At the end of the experiment, the people in the

first group reported feeling 42 percent happier than they had at the

beginning. They were 35 percent happier than the second group, and

experienced decreases in pain and loneliness.

Being funny, however, is the one dimension of a sense of humor that

does not appear to boost happiness, which is sometimes called the “sad-

clown paradox.” In a 2010 experiment, researchers asked people to write

captions for cartoons and come up with jokes in response to everyday

frustrating situations.[17] They found no significant relationship between

being funny (as judged by outside reviewers) and getting happier. Another

study found that professional comedians score above population norms on

scales measuring anhedonia (the inability to feel pleasure).[18]

Note that humor doesn’t just block your emotional adenosine—it blocks

others’ as well. Humor has an almost anesthetic quality to it, lowering the

focus on pain and allowing us to remember the joys in life together, even

during the worst of times. In fact, there are cases throughout history of

people using humor in terrible mass tragedies. For example, the Italian

writer Giovanni Boccaccio finished his book The Decameron in about the

year 1353, as the Black Death ravaged Europe, probably killing almost a

third of the population.[19] The book consisted of one hundred comedic

stories told by ten fictional young friends—seven women and three men—

quarantining together at a country estate to avoid the pestilence. It was

massively popular, relieving the fear of sickness and tedium of isolation for

people across Europe as the plague dragged on. It did not avoid the themes

of sickness and death, but did not emphasize them, either. The point was

that life can be pretty hilarious even under rotten conditions—but finding it

so depends on our attitude.

And so it is today. Life has sadness, tragedy, and frustration in

abundance. Find the funny parts of it and everyone will be a lot better off.

Here are three actionable steps you can take today.

First, reject grimness. It can feel as if the world presents us with

overwhelming challenges. Some feel that lightheartedness is inappropriate

when we are concerned about crises and injustice. It is a mistake to think

this way, insofar as grimness is not alluring to others, and thus doesn’t help

attract people to your efforts to make the world better. Of course, there are

instances in which humor is misplaced (remember, timing is everything),

but fewer than you think. Some of the best eulogies at funerals are the most

humorous.

Researchers have found that a particularly humorless ideology is

fundamentalism in one’s beliefs: “I am right and you are evil.”[20] Therefore,

it isn’t surprising that the current ideological climate in the United States

(and many other countries) is also so humorless, or that political extremists

are so ready to use their offense at humor as a weapon. To be happier and

make others happier, no matter what your politics, don’t participate in the

war on jokes.

Second, don’t worry about being funny. Some people can’t tell jokes to

save their lives. Either they can never remember the punch line, or they start

laughing so hard themselves that no one has any idea what the punch line is.

That’s fine; for happiness, it’s better to consume humor than to supply it.

It’s also a lot easier. Funny people tend to have particular innate

neurological characteristics, and unusually high intelligence.[21] Meanwhile,

people who enjoy funny things simply prioritize humor, cultivate the taste

for it, and give themselves permission to laugh. To get the happiness

benefits of humor, let others tell the jokes; listen and laugh.

Third, stay positive. The type of humor you consume and share matters.

Humor, when it doesn’t belittle others, or when it makes you laugh at your

circumstances, is associated with self-esteem, optimism, and life

satisfaction, and with decreases in depression, anxiety, and stress.[22] Humor

that attacks others or prompts you to belittle yourself follows the exact

opposite pattern: while it can feel satisfying for a moment, it doesn’t block

negative feelings. (It’s like decaf coffee!)

CHOOSE HOPE

One of the worst emotional maladies that can befall any of us is

pessimism. We all know the Eeyore types, who always assume the worst

will befall them. This goes beyond just being a Poet, who detects actual

threats; pessimists invent threats. It’s often not fun to be around them, and

they tend to isolate themselves. To add insult to injury, pessimism isn’t

generally even a helpful view of the world. On the contrary, researchers find

that it tends to cause avoidance and passive behavior in the face of

challenges.[23] So if you fall prey to pessimism, you become less proactive

and you probably aren’t even right about your judgment of the problem.[24]

What’s the opposite emotion here we need to beef up to block our

pessimism receptors? You might say, “That’s obvious: optimism.” But that’s

not quite right.

During the Vietnam War, a US Navy vice admiral named James

Stockdale, who was held for more than seven years in a North Vietnamese

prison, noticed a surprising trend among his fellow inmates. Some of them

survived the appalling conditions; others didn’t. Those who didn’t tended to

be the most optimistic of the group. As Stockdale later told the business

author Jim Collins, “They were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out

by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. . . .

And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and

then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.”[25]

There was a less dire version of this pattern you might have noticed

during the coronavirus pandemic. Those who struggled the most were the

optimists always predicting a return to normality, only to be disappointed as

the pandemic dragged on. Some of the people who did the best were

downright pessimistic about the outside world, but they paid less attention

to external circumstances and focused more on what they could do to

persevere.

There’s a word for believing you can make things better without

distorting reality: not optimism, but hope. People tend to use hope and

optimism as synonyms, but that isn’t accurate. In one 2004 study, two

psychologists used survey data to parse the two concepts.[26] They

determined that “hope focuses more directly on the personal attainment of

specific goals, whereas optimism focuses more broadly on the expected

quality of future outcomes in general.” In other words, optimism is the

belief that things will turn out all right; hope makes no such assumption but

is a conviction that one can act to make things better in some way.

Hope and optimism can go together, but they don’t have to. You can be

a hopeless optimist who feels personally helpless but assumes that

everything will turn out all right. Or you can be a hopeful pessimist who

makes negative predictions about the future but has confidence that you can

improve things in your life and others’.

Here’s an example that might help. Let’s say you have a big health

challenge on your hands—not life-threatening, but something you would

much prefer to fix, if possible. Your doctor says most likely you are going

to have to live with the challenge, and you believe her. However, there are a

couple of things you can try—perhaps some exercises or a new drug—and

you go all in to do so. While you trust the prognosis (which is not

optimistic), you are doing what is within your power to make it better

(which is hopeful).

Both optimism and hope can make you feel better, but hope is much

more powerful. One study showed that although both drive down the

likelihood of illness, hope has a lot more power than optimism in doing so.

[27]

Hope involves personal agency, meaning it gives you a sense of power

and motivation. In one study, researchers defining hope as “having the will

and finding the way” found that high-hope employees are 28 percent more

likely to be successful at work and 44 percent more likely to enjoy good

health and well-being.[28] A multiyear study of students from two

universities in the United Kingdom found that hope, measured in response

to self-rated measures such as “I energetically pursue my goals,” predicted

academic achievement better than intelligence, personality, or even prior

achievement.[29]

Hope is more than a “nice to have” for well-being; lacking it can be

disastrous. In a 2001 study of older Americans who took a survey between

1992 and 1996, 29 percent of those whom researchers classified as

“hopeless” based on their survey answers had died by 1999, versus 11

percent of those who were hopeful—even after correcting for age and self-

rated health status.[30]

Some might argue that having hope is mostly a matter of luck—you are

born with it. This might be partially true for optimism: one study finds it is

36 percent genetic.[31] Research, on the other hand, has yet to find a genetic

link to hope. This is because, as many philosophical and religious traditions

teach, it is an active choice. Indeed, it is a theological virtue in Christianity,

implying voluntary action, not just happy prediction. To build a better world

for others, you should be hopeful.

Becoming a more hopeful person might seem like it depends on your

circumstances, however. “What if they are hopeless?” you might ask. Well,

your circumstances are never hopeless. Furthermore, hope can be practiced

and learned, by following three steps.

First, imagine a better future, and detail what makes it so. When you

feel a bit hopeless, start changing your outlook. Say, for example, you have

a loved one who is not taking hold of his future, is neglecting his education,

and is perhaps making destructive personal choices that are leading to bad

life outcomes and an unpromising future. You could easily conclude that the

situation is hopeless, but you can do more for your loved one’s happiness—

and your own—if you instead imagine what a better, realistic lifestyle

would look like.

Rather than basking in the glow of an amorphous “better” situation and

leaving it at that, make a list of the specific elements that will have

improved. For example, imagine your loved one going back to school and

developing healthier friendships. Imagine him meeting a good romantic

partner, and giving up substance use.

Second, envision yourself taking action. If you leave things at the first

step and simply convince yourself that better times lie ahead, you will have

engaged in optimism, but not yet hope. Envisioning a better future will not,

on its own, make it so, but it can help the world when it changes our

personal behavior from complaint to action. Thus, the second step in this

exercise is to imagine yourself helping in some plausible way to bring about

a better future, albeit at the micro level.

Continuing with the preceding example, envision yourself establishing

more regular contact with the person, in a friendly, non-scolding way that

shows you like and care about him as a person and are not just judging him

morally. Imagine asking him to tell you about his hopes for a better future,

and your volunteering to help in any way you can. Imagine telling him he

can stay at your place when he doesn’t have anywhere to go; imagine

driving him to school or to a job interview. Avoid illusions of being the

invincible savior; instead, imagine doing small, tangible acts.

Now, armed with hope, you can move on to the most important step of

all: action. Take your grand vision of improvement and humble ambition to

be part of it in a specific way and execute accordingly. Follow through on

your ideas to help at the person-to-person level.

TURN EMPATHY INTO COMPASSION

Sometimes your negative emotions are not the ones interfering with

your life the most. Rather, it is the emotions of someone close to you. A

family member, a spouse, or maybe a friend is suffering, and this becomes

the focus of your relationship, dragging you down. You don’t want to be

callous, but at some point, you need some emotional caffeine to block their

emotional adenosine in your brain. As you will see later in this book,

negativity in a family can be passed like a virus if you let it. You might

think the best emotion to choose is empathy, but that’s not quite right. On

the contrary, empathy can make things worse for you.

When empath first entered the English lexicon, it was anything but a

compliment. The term was coined in a 1956 science-fiction story about

beings who could feel others’ emotions and used them to exploit workers.[32]

The word has since taken on more positive connotations, and when people

call themselves empaths today, they usually mean that they are kind and

caring enough to feel the pain of others. In contemporary culture, empathy

seems like an unalloyed virtue, the kind you’d strive to embody.

As virtues go, however, empathy is overrated. Used excessively and on

its own, it can bring harm to empathizers and empathizees alike.

Empathy is not feeling sorry for someone in physical or emotional pain

—that’s sympathy.[33] Rather, it is mentally putting yourself in the suffering

person’s shoes to feel their pain. It’s the difference between “Get well soon”

and “I can imagine how much discomfort you must be feeling right now.”

Some researchers even hypothesize that empaths have hyperresponsive

mirror neurons, which are brain cells that imitate those of others when their

behavior is observed.[34] So, for example, you want to cry when you see

someone else crying.

Evidence suggests that empathy really can lessen other people’s

burdens. Participants in a series of experiments documented in 2017 were

found to experience significant physical pain relief when hearing someone

else express empathy, but not when hearing comments that were

unempathetic or neutral.[35] Similarly, patients cope better with bad medical

news if their doctors are empathetic, showing they personally understand

and feel what the patient is going through.[36]

This relief comes at a cost to the empathetic person. In 2014,

researchers showed that training people in empathy tended to raise their

negative feelings in response to others’ distress.[37] This makes sense: if you

take on others’ pain, you will have more pain in your own life.

But empathy can also wind up hurting other people. In his book Against

Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion, the University of Toronto

psychologist Paul Bloom argues that empathy “can lead to irrational and

unfair political decisions.”[38] For example, politicians might give unfair

advantage to people in their own racial or religious group, and thus behave

unfairly to others. Bloom even says empathy can “make us worse at being

friends, parents, husbands, and wives,” because sometimes an act of love

involves doing something that causes pain rather than relieving it, such as

confronting an awful truth.

You can no doubt think of cases in your own life when feeling too

empathetic prevented you or someone else from giving the “tough love”

someone may have needed. Going back to the example in the previous

section, if instead of helping the loved one you think is making poor life

choices, you were simply empathetic, it might relieve his suffering briefly,

but it wouldn’t help him to get on the right track.

Making empathy a full-fledged virtue and a protective emotional

caffeine requires adding a few complementary behaviors that convert it into

compassion. One comprehensive study of compassion defines it as

recognizing suffering, understanding it, and feeling empathy for the sufferer

—but also tolerating the uncomfortable feelings they and the suffering

person are experiencing and, crucially, acting to alleviate the suffering.[39]

Compassion helps both the sufferer and the helper. In the 2014 study

that showed that empathy training worsened mood, some participants were

given training in compassion instead.[40] Compared with empathy training,

compassion training blocked their negative feelings and thus raised their

overall mood after they witnessed the pain of others. Compassion also

benefits the sufferer; for example, doctors who are more comfortable

around patients in pain may be more successful administering painful

treatment, such as acupuncture.[41] Learning to look analytically at others’

discomfort and providing help can transform another person’s burden into

an opportunity for both of you to feel better.

Compassion naturally comes easier for some people than it does for

others. Research has shown that compassion is to some degree genetic, and

that we may be inherently drawn to people with this trait.[42] However,

plenty of evidence also shows that compassion can be learned.[43] The key is

to use your conscious faculties to push beyond your feelings. Do the work

to become strong in the face of pain and you will benefit yourself and

others. There is no label like empath for someone who has become

especially compassionate, but you’ll know it when you achieve it, and

others will, too.

To become a more compassionate (and thus happier) person, start by

working on your toughness. To be tougher in the face of another’s pain

doesn’t mean feeling it less. Rather, you should learn to feel the pain

without being impaired to act. If you ever meet a Marine who has gone

through boot camp, they will tell you they faced rigors beyond anything

they had ever experienced before in life. They wanted to quit every single

day. For combat Marines, boot camp is followed over the next couple of

years by many rounds of combat training, but each round seems to get

easier and easier. This is because they are learning to function under

extreme circumstances. Pain, never far away for a Marine, doesn’t much

faze him or her anymore.

Compassionate people are like Marines after training: just as likely to

feel pain as anyone else, but able to bear it and function. Empathetic doctors

relieve pain with their empathy; compassionate doctors can also calmly

operate on the patient. Empathetic parents suffer with their adult kids when

they are struggling at college; compassionate parents can resist the urge to

call the dean or drive over to the university and treat their young adults like

children.

Beyond being tough, compassionate people are action oriented. A lot of

the time, when people are in pain, they resist an effective cure because it

would temporarily be even more painful. A person might walk around for

years with a trick knee because they can’t bear the thought of an operation

and recovery (and research shows that people usually overestimate the pain

of surgery).[44] Similarly, people stay in toxic relationships because leaving

seems too terrible to deal with.

And these examples make one other important point: we need to choose

compassion over empathy with ourselves, not just others. A lot of

empathetic self-care involves feeling your own pain, but stops before doing

something difficult in response to it. Being self-compassionate means doing

the hard thing that you actually need to do, notwithstanding your feelings,

like getting knee surgery or confronting a relationship issue head-on. You

might say that empathy is limbic, whereas compassion is metacognitive.

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.

MAKING A BETTER WORLD FOR OTHERS

The emotional-caffeine strategy of self-management in this chapter has

a huge virtue besides just crowding out some of the excess negative affect

we may experience. We are replacing it instead with emotions we genuinely

want: gratitude, humor, hope, and compassion. We want them because they

aren’t just emotions, they are virtues.

As you cultivate these virtues, you’ll notice something else: you are

more and more focused on other people in a productive and generous way,

and less and less focused on yourself. And this is the next principle of

emotional self-management.

Four

Focus Less on Yourself

In 2020, psychologists Adam Waytz of Northwestern University and

Wilhelm Hofmann of the University of Cologne in Germany set out to

answer a question: Do I get happier when I focus on my own desires, or

when I focus on doing something for others, instead?[1]

We generally think about the trade-off between self-care and caring for

others as one between feeling good and doing what is morally superior. If

you take the afternoon off and go shopping, you’ll enjoy it. If instead you

volunteer at a local charity, you’ll miss that fun but be a better person.

Obviously, this trade-off has limits; you need to take care of yourself to help

others, and helping others can be fun for you. In general, however, this is

how we see the “me versus others” choice.

The researchers questioned whether there really was a trade-off at all.

They wondered if, just maybe, focusing on others created more happiness

for you than self-care did. To investigate this idea, they divided 263

participants into three groups, each with a different set of instructions.

1. Moral Deeds Group: Today, we would like you to do at least

one moral deed for others. By “moral deed for others,” we mean doing

something that will benefit another person or a group of others. This

could be donating to charity, picking up trash (to help the community),

giving money to a homeless person, helping someone with their work,

giving someone a compliment, giving assistance to a family member,

or showing kindness to a stranger. Any act that benefits another person

—either directly or indirectly—would be considered a moral deed.

2. Moral Thoughts Group: Today, we would like you to think at

least one moral thought for others. By “moral thought for others,” we

mean thinking about another person or group of people in a positive

way, thinking good thoughts on their behalf, thinking lucky thoughts

for them, praying for them, hoping they succeed, or thinking about

how much you care for another person or group of people. Any

thought that is positive toward another person would be considered a

moral thought.

3. Treat Yourself Group: Today, we would like you to do at least

one positive thing for yourself. By “positive thing for yourself,” we

mean doing something that will benefit you. This could be buying

yourself a gift, getting yourself a massage, taking yourself out to a

movie, spending time with a friend who will make you happy, giving

yourself a break to relax, or enjoying a delicious meal. Any act that

benefits you—either directly or indirectly—would be considered a

positive thing.

The three groups followed their instructions, and recorded their well-

being across eleven dimensions each evening for ten days. At the end, the

researchers compiled the results. Not shockingly, in some ways all the

strategies were beneficial; for example, all three felt more satisfaction. But

in most ways, the results weren’t even close. The Moral Deeds Group

reported higher scores on a range of well-being measures than the Moral

Thoughts Group, and both reported higher scores than the Treat Yourself

Group. Those caring for others actively felt greater purpose in life and sense

of control, while the others did not. They were also the only ones who felt

less anger and social isolation.

The end results were clear, and consistent with a huge body of data

showing that focusing less on yourself and your desires will make you

happier. This is not to argue you should stop taking care of yourself or stop

paying attention to your own needs. As they say on the airlines, you must

“put on your own oxygen mask first” when it comes to happiness, so you

can help others become happier. That’s different from thinking about

yourself instead of others and what is going on outside.

In fact, adopting more of an outward focus on life—observing the world

and caring for other people without making so much of life about yourself

—is one of the best ways to increase your own well-being, and is the third

principle of emotional self-management. This means being good to others

as selflessly as possible—as the preceding experiment suggests, of course—

but more subtly, it means deflecting your own constant attention from

yourself and your desires—by looking in the mirror less, disregarding your

reflection on social media, paying less attention to what others think about

you, and fighting your tendency to envy people for what they have but you

don’t.

This part of emotional self-management is not intended to scold or

make any of us feel like we are self-centered egomaniacs. Focusing on

ourselves is the most normal thing in the world. Yet this doesn’t help us get

happier. While it isn’t always easy, working against this natural tendency

gives us relief from the sitcom on loop in our heads that is our daily me-

focused lives. With knowledge and practice, an outward focus on life brings

major happiness rewards.

YOU ARE ACTUALLY TWO PEOPLE

You may have noticed that you look most normal to yourself when you

look in a mirror. A photo always looks less natural, almost as if it were

another person. And in fact, philosophers say that you are, in a very real

way, two different people—one who sees, and one who is seen.

Understanding this can help us a great deal in focusing less inwardly and

more on the outside world.

The American philosopher William James explored this idea of two

selves in depth. He believed you must be an observer of things around you

to survive and thrive, but you must also observe yourself and be observed

by others to have any consistent sense of self-concept and self-image.[2]

Without observing outwardly, you would get hit by a car or starve. Without

being observed, you would have no memory, history, or sense of why you

do what you do. When you are driving to work, you are observing traffic

and other people to stay safe and get where you are going. But once you are

at work, you pay more attention to how others see you, which helps you

understand if you’re doing a good job.

When you are the observer, it’s called being the “I-self” (the seer of

things around you). When you are observed, or looking and thinking about

yourself, that’s called the “me-self” (the one seen). Neither one is a

permanent state of mind. The trick for well-being is balancing your I-self

and your me-self. And that means increasing the former and decreasing the

latter, because most people spend too much time being observed and not

enough time observing. We think constantly about ourselves and how others

see us; we look in every mirror; we check our mentions on social media; we

obsess over our identities.

This brings trouble. As we mentioned in the previous section, focusing

more on the world outside is linked to greater happiness, while focusing on

yourself and how others see you can lead to unstable moods.[3] Your

happiness goes up and down like a yo-yo depending on whether you

perceive yourself positively or negatively in a given moment. This

instability is hard to bear; no wonder self-absorption is associated with

anxiety and depression.[4]

Seeing yourself as an object (looking inward) rather than the subject

(looking outward) can also lower your performance in ordinary tasks.

Researchers have found in learning experiments that people are less likely

to try new things when they are focused on themselves.[5] This makes sense:

When you pay too much attention to yourself, you ignore a lot about the

outside world. You feel less free when you are worrying about “How am I

doing?” and “What do others think about me?” Little kids sometimes

inspire us with their unselfconsciousness, just being themselves, because

they often stay for a long time in the I-self state, just observing, acting, and

enjoying.

The idea that you should spend more time thinking about the world than

about yourself predates modern science and philosophy. For example, it is a

core focus of Zen Buddhism, which is fundamentally an attitude of pure

outward observation. “Life is an art,” the Zen master D. T. Suzuki wrote in

1934, “and like perfect art it should be self-forgetting.”[6] Robert Waldinger,

a Harvard psychiatry professor and Zen priest, explains it this way: “When

I’m aware of the self I call ‘Bob,’ it’s me in relation to the world. When that

falls away (in meditation, or when I’m standing in awe of a waterfall), the

sense of a self that is separate from everything else subsides and it’s just

sounds and sensations.”[7]

In some traditions, the I-self is not just a ticket to happiness but a

connection to the divine. Hindus seek to reveal their atman, which is

characterized by an innate state of awareness in which one witnesses the

world but does not get embroiled in it. Atman is considered a direct link to

Brahman, the ultimate divine reality. Jesus’s teaching that “anyone who

wishes to follow me must deny himself” is usually interpreted as focusing

on God and other people, but doing so also requires a greater emphasis on

the I-self.

You will never eradicate your me-self, of course, but you can certainly

increase your happiness by adopting conscious practices that lower the

amount of time you spend in an objectified state. Three conscious habits

can help.

First, avoid your own reflection. Mirrors are inherently attractive, as are

all mirrorlike phenomena, such as social media mentions. We are

magnetically drawn to them. But mirrors are not your friend. They

encourage even the healthiest people to objectify themselves; for people

with self-image-related maladies, they can be sheer misery. In 2001,

researchers studying people with body dysmorphic disorder (those who

think obsessively about perceived flaws in their bodies) found that the

longest time the participants spent looking in the mirror (and thus focusing

on the source of their distress) was 3.4 times longer than the longest mirror-

gazing session of those who didn’t have the disorder.[8]

Take steps to make the version of yourself that the world sees less likely

to pop up in front of you. You might consider literally removing all but one

or two mirrors from your home and making a rule to not look at yourself

more than once in the morning. One fitness model, who had become

miserably obsessed with his body and was desperate to return to a healthier,

more normal life, went a full year avoiding mirrors and even went so far as

to shower in the dark to stop seeing and judging his own physique.[9]

Virtual mirrors are even easier to get rid of than literal ones. Turn off

your social media notifications. Adopt an absolute ban on googling

yourself. Turn off self-view on Zoom. Don’t take any selfies. This is hard at

first, because all these practices of self-observation give such a reliable little

hit of the satisfying neuromodulator dopamine. But it gets easier with

practice, especially when you experience the relaxation that comes from not

looking at yourself.

Second, stop judging things around you so much. Judging might seem

like pure observation, but it really isn’t. It is turning an observation of the

outside world inward and making it about you. For example, if you say,

“This weather is awful,” this is more about your feelings than it is about the

weather. Further, you have just assigned a negative mood to something

outside your control.

Making judgments about the world is normal and necessary; we need to

do it in order to make cost-benefit decisions. However, many judgments are

unhelpful and gratuitous. Do you really need to decide that the song you

just heard is stupid? Try instead to observe more around you without regard

to your opinions. 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.

Third, spend more time marveling at the world around you. In his

research, the University of California, Berkeley, psychologist Dacher

Keltner focuses on the experience of awe, which he defines as “the feeling

of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your

understanding of the world.”[10] Among its many benefits, Keltner has

found, awe diminishes the sense of self. For example, in one study, he and

his colleagues asked people to consider either an experience in nature that

was beautiful or a time when they felt pride.[11] Those who thought about

nature were twice as likely as those who thought about pride to say that

they felt small or insignificant, and nearly a third more likely to say that

they felt the presence of something greater than themselves.

Spend more time enjoying things that amaze you. Happiness specialist

Gretchen Rubin visits the Metropolitan Museum of Art almost daily, for

example. Incorporating awe into your daily life might mean making sure

you see the sunset as often as you can or studying astronomy—or whatever

it is that blows your mind.

One last exercise you might try if you have a free day: use it to wander.

In one famous Zen koan (a story that requires philosophical interpretation),

a junior monk sees an older monk walking and asks him where he is going.

[12] “I am on pilgrimage,” the senior monk says. “Where is pilgrimage taking

you?” the junior monk asks. “I don’t know,” the elder answers. “Not

knowing is the most intimate.”

The senior monk was simply observing where he was walking, without

intention or judgment. Some of the most profound and intimate experiences

in life come when you can observe your journey without expectation of

some destination or external payoff. Try dedicating just one day to being

like the senior monk. Start the morning by saying, “I do not know what this

day will bring, but I will accept it.” Go through the day focusing on things

outside yourself, resisting judgment, and avoiding anything self-referential.

If you are feeling really adventurous, you could even get in your car and go

on a day trip with no set destination.

STOP CARING WHAT THEY THINK

There is a well-known Bible verse that says, “Judge not, that ye not be

judged.”[13] To be focused in a healthy way on others and the outside world

grants you the “Judge not” part. Our next lesson gives you the second part

of that verse: to not be judged—or at least to not pay attention to the

judgment of others, by caring less what they think about you.

It is important to note that caring about and paying attention to others is

very different from worrying about what others think about you. The first is

helpful and good; the second is often egocentric and destructive. In fact, to

manage emotions, almost all of us need to work to care less what others

think about us. That’s even harder than getting rid of all your mirrors,

though. Just think of the last time some random person criticized you—

someone you would certainly not invite into your home for a conversation,

but whom you invited into your head as you stewed about the criticism.

Maybe it was a sarcastic barb on social media or a belittling remark at

work. You kicked yourself for even caring—but you did care nonetheless.

In fact, for most people, a source of stress is what others think of them.

Many of them are deeply wounded by criticism, go to extraordinary lengths

to gain the admiration of strangers, and lie awake nights wondering about

others’ opinions of them.

Why is this? Once again, it’s Mother Nature making our lives difficult.

We are wired to care about what others think of us, and we obsess over it.

As the Roman Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius observed almost two

thousand years ago, “We all love ourselves more than other people, but care

more about their opinion than our own,” whether they are friends, strangers,

or enemies.[14] For happiness, then, thinking of others’ opinions of us is

even worse than obsessing over ourselves directly.

Paying attention to the opinions of others is understandable and, to a

certain extent, rational. You trust your own opinions; they are saturated with

and shaped by those of others who are similar to you; therefore, you trust

their opinions as well, whether you want to or not.[15] Thus, if one of your

coworkers says some TV show is really great, your opinion of it will

probably rise, at least a little bit, and you might decide to try it.

You especially care about others’ opinion of you, and evolution explains

why: For virtually all of human history, humans’ survival depended on

membership in close-knit clans and tribes. Before the modern structures of

civilization, such as police and supermarkets, being cast out from your

group meant certain death from cold, starvation, or predators. This can

easily explain why your sense of well-being includes others’ approval, as

well as why your brain has evolved to activate the same region for physical

pain when you face social rejection—the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, or

dACC.[16] (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]

Unfortunately, the instinct to want the approval of others is woefully

maladapted to modern life. Where once you would have justifiably felt the

terror of being expelled into the forest alone, today you might suffer acute

anxiety that strangers online will “cancel” you for an ill-considered remark,

or passersby will snap a photo of a poor fashion choice and mock it on

Instagram for all to see.

This tendency may be natural, but it can drive you around the bend if

you let it. If you were a perfectly logical being, you would understand that

your fears about what other people think are overblown and rarely worth

fretting over. But none of us are perfectly logical, and most of us have been

indulging this habit for as long as we can remember.

In the worst cases, anxiety about the approval of others can blow up into

a debilitating fear, a psychological condition called allodoxaphobia.[18]

Don’t worry—it’s rare. But even short of that, worrying about the opinions

of others can lower your basic competence in ordinary tasks, such as

making decisions. When you are thinking about what to do in a particular

situation—say, whether to speak up in a group—a network in your brain

that psychologists call the behavioral inhibition system (BIS) is naturally

activated, which allows you to assess the situation and decide how to act

(with a particular focus on the costs of acting inappropriately).[19] When you

have enough situational awareness, the BIS is deactivated and the

behavioral activation system (BAS), which focuses on rewards, kicks in.

However, research shows that concern about the opinions of others can

keep the BIS active, impairing your ability to take action.[20] If you tend to

leave an interaction kicking yourself over what you should have said but

didn’t, it may indicate that you are being unduly influenced by concerns

over what others think.

One reason you may fear others’ opinions is because negative

assessments can lead to shame, which is the feeling of being deemed

worthless, incompetent, dishonorable, or immoral—and thus, given the

weight we place on others’ opinions, we begin feeling this way about

ourselves. Fearing shame makes sense, because research clearly shows that

feeling it is both a symptom of and a trigger for depression and anxiety.[21]

In the Tao Te Ching, the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu wrote,

“Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner.”[22] He no

doubt intended it as a dire warning, but this is more of a promise and an

opportunity. The prison of others’ approval is actually one built by you,

maintained by you, and guarded by you. You might add a complementary

verse to Lao Tzu’s original: “Disregard what others think and the prison

door will swing open.” If you are stuck in the prison of shame and

judgment, take heart: you hold the key to your own freedom.[23]

Remember, the goal here is to focus on others but not on their opinion

of you. One way to do this is to remind yourself that no one cares. The

ironic thing about feeling bad about yourself because of what people might

think of you is that others have many fewer opinions about you—positive

or negative—than you might imagine. Studies show that we all consistently

overestimate how much people think about us and our failings, leading us to

undue inhibition and worse quality of life.[24] Perhaps your followers or

neighbors would have a lower opinion of you if they were thinking about

you—but they probably aren’t. Next time you feel self-conscious, notice

that you are thinking about yourself. You can safely assume that everyone

around you is doing more or less the same.

Second, rebel against your shame. Because fear of shame is frequently

what lurks behind an excessive interest in others’ opinions, you should

confront your shame directly. Sometimes a bit of shame is healthy and

warranted, such as when we say something hurtful to another person out of

spite or impatience. Often it is frankly ridiculous, such as being ashamed

for, say, accidentally leaving your fly unzipped, or having a bad hair day.

We are definitely not recommending that you walk around with your fly

down on purpose. But ask yourself: What am I hiding that I’m a little

embarrassed about? Resolve not to hide it anymore, and thus dominate the

useless shame holding you back. We promise that once you metacognitively

own the source of your embarrassment and resolve not to be held back by it,

you will feel empowered and much happier.

DON’T WATER THE ENVY WEED

Another way we focus on ourselves is by indulging the deadly sin of

envy. When we envy, we obsess over what we have or don’t have. Once

again, this may seem outward-focused, but it is really all about what you

wish you had. This tendency spoils our relationships, makes us worse to

others, and makes life impossible to enjoy.

In the thirteenth canto of “Purgatorio” in Dante’s Divine Comedy, the

fourteenth-century Italian poet describes the ultimate punishment of people

who had fallen prey to envy during their lives. He shows them perched

precariously on the edge of a cliff. Because envy started with what they

saw, their eyes are wired shut. To avoid falling, they must support

themselves upon one another, something they never did in life.[25] This is a

pretty grim punishment.

Perhaps you are less concerned than Dante with punishment in the

hereafter. There is plenty of evidence that envy, the resentful longing for

what someone else possesses, can give you a little bit of hell in the here and

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

soul. How it makes us think not just about ourselves, but specifically about

what we don’t have that others do. How it brings out the ugly, spiteful

phantasms inside us that take pleasure in the suffering of others for no other

reason than that their good fortune makes ours feel insufficient in

comparison. As the essayist Joseph Epstein has written, “Of the seven

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

killer.

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. When we see that

we fall behind others, the pain we feel often spurs us to build ourselves up

—or to tear others down. All of this could have been life-and-death in

caveman times, but it is outdated today. You are unlikely to die alone

because your social media posts are less popular than those of others. But

the pain can still be just as acute.

How people act in the face of this pain has led some scholars to

distinguish between benign envy and malicious envy.[27] The former is

miserable, but is met with a desire for self-improvement and to emulate the

envied person. In contrast, malicious envy leads to wholly destructive

actions, such as hostile thoughts and behavior intended to harm the other

person. Benign envy occurs when you believe that admiration for the other

person is deserved; malicious envy kicks in when you believe it isn’t.[28]

This is why you might envy a famous war hero but wish him no ill, while

enjoying the news that a reality star just got arrested.

Envy—especially when malicious—is terrible for you. To begin with,

the pain is real. Neuroscientists find that envying other people stimulates

your brain’s dACC, which, as we already know, is where you process pain.

[29] It can also wreck your future. Scholars in 2018 studied eighteen

thousand randomly selected individuals and found that their experience of

envy was a powerful predictor of worse mental health and lower well-being

in the future.[30] Ordinarily, people become psychologically healthier as they

age; envy can stunt this trend.

Different people envy different things. For example, some research

suggests that what people envy tends to change with age.[31] Young people

may be more envious than older folks of educational and social success,

good looks, and romantic fortune. Older people generally shrug at these

things, but tend to envy people with money. This probably makes sense;

early on, you naturally want what you think will give you the best shot at

making a good living and starting a family; later on, you seek financial

security.

To feel envy, you need to have exposure to people who appear more

fortunate than you. That is simple enough in ordinary interactions, but the

conditions of envy explode if we expose people to a wide array of strangers

curating their lives to look as glamorous, successful, and happy as possible.

Obviously, this is a reference to social media. In fact, academics have even

used the term Facebook envy to capture the uniquely fertile circumstances

that social media creates for this destructive emotion.[32] And 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]

So what is the remedy for lowering envy to manageable levels in your

life? The famous fifteenth-century merchant Cosimo de’ Medici compared

envy to a virulent, naturally occurring weed.[34] The job is not to try to

eradicate it, which would be futile; rather, he taught, just don’t water it.

Here are three ways to do that.

First, focus on the ordinary parts of others’ lives. The main way we

water that terrible weed is with our attention. We focus intently on the

qualities we want but lack. For example, you might envy an entertainer’s

fame and wealth, and imagine how those qualities would make your life so

much easier and more fun. But think a little deeper. Do you really believe

that entertainer’s life is so great? Are her money and fame bringing a

healthy marriage? Do they eliminate her sadness and anger? Probably not;

perhaps the contrary.

Psychologists have shown that you can use this observation to blunt

your envy. In 2017, researchers asked a group to think of demographically

similar people whom they considered to have exceptionally good

circumstances in their lives. They found that focusing only on these

circumstances led to a painful contrast with participants’ own lives, and

thus to envy.[35] Yet when they were instructed to think about the everyday

ups and downs that these people surely also experienced, envy was

diminished.

Second, turn off the envy machine. Social media increases envy because

it does three things: it shows you the lives of people more fortunate than

you; it makes it easier than ever for anyone to flaunt their good fortune to

the masses; and it puts you in the same virtual community as people who

are not in your real-life community, making you compare yourself with

them.[36] Celebrities’ and influencers’ posts are a particularly potent—and

unnecessary—source of envy. 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.

Third, reveal your unenviable self. This is similar to rebelling against

your shame by living outward instead of inward. While you are working to

curtail your envy of others, stop trying to be envied yourself. Wanting to

display your strengths and hide your weaknesses from strangers is natural.

This might feel good, but it is a mistake. Obscuring the truth to yourself and

others is a path to anxiety and unhappiness. And as researchers showed in a

2019 study, when people are honest not just about what they did right but

also about how they failed along the way, observers experience less

malicious envy.[37] But be careful: Your failures have to be authentic. So-

called humblebragging, in which a boast is disguised as humility, can be

perceived a mile off and makes you less likable to others.[38]

GET READY FOR THE NEXT STAGE IN BUILDING THE LIFE YOU WANT

The previous three chapters were all about turning away from the

attitude that the world has to change for life to improve, to one where you

are working on changing yourself and your emotions.

Once again, this does not mean eradicating emotions, even negative

ones. Negative feelings in response to tough life circumstances are not fun;

they never are. They are hard—for some people, a lot harder than for

others. They are also necessary and manageable, and with dedication and

practice you can use metacognition to manage them. You can learn to

practice emotional substitution, and you can gain enormous relief by

focusing less on yourself.

This all takes practice, and it isn’t easy. This is “Master’s Level”

emotional management. You won’t be perfect and you will have good and

bad days, because these things are hard. But it absolutely can be done, and

you can do it. And as you make progress, you will get happier, as will those

around you. Even better, emotional self-management sets you free from the

distractions we all use to numb our discomfort and equips you to focus on

what truly matters.

And what truly matters to build your life is what we turn to next.

Building What Matters

Emotional self-management, the subject of the previous three chapters,

makes you much happier as a person, freeing you from being managed by

your feelings. It is kind of like a comprehensive program to improve your

physical fitness, which makes you feel better and healthier. But getting in

great physical shape does more than that; it also makes it possible for you to

do a lot of new things to enjoy life even more, like becoming more active

and social. Similarly, emotional self-management gets you ready to make

some big, positive moves to build a happier life.

As we learned in chapter 1, 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.

Before we learn the skills of emotional self-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. The reason is that our impulses, amplified by the consumer

economy, entertainment, and social media, push us to spend our time

focused not on what matters but rather on trivialities and distractions:

money and stuff, power or social status, pleasure and comfort, and fame or

the attention of others. There’s nothing new in these distractions, of course.

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.

These idols all stand in the way of enjoyment, satisfaction, and purpose.

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 meaningful. The four idols make getting

happier harder.

So why do we pursue them? The same reason we always do self-

destructive things when we are unhappy but unable to change our

circumstances: distraction. Think of the last time you were sitting in an

airport waiting for a flight that was delayed for hours. Frustrated but with

no way to fix the situation, you probably started fiddling on your phone to

distract yourself and pass the time.

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? Do some “retail therapy” to get your mind off it for a

few minutes. Is work getting you down? Scroll social media or inane

YouTube videos for an hour to forget. Feeling lonely? A little celebrity

gossip will distract you. Conveniently, we are surrounded by millions of

commercial options to indulge those distractions. (Unhappy people make

great consumers.)

These distractions are a temporary anesthetic, not a cure for our

problems. And while they distract us from uncomfortable feelings, they also

distract us from making progress. Even worse, they can become addictions

that exacerbate the effect of the emotions controlling us.

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.

That raises the next big question: What exactly should we focus on

instead of the idols? If we want to build happier lives, and we now have the

time and energy to do it, what are the pillars on which to build them?

There are thousands of scholarly articles on this question, and many

more written by self-improvement gurus. You could compile a list of ten

thousand little practices to raise your happiness incrementally. You can find

thousands of dubious happiness “hacks” on the internet to adopt (for a

monthly subscription fee, of course).

Fortunately, if we look at all the best social science research together,

just 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, and thus they deserve the lion’s share of our attention as we

invest in ourselves and our loved ones. This is where to spend the time,

attention, and energy released by emotional self-management.

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.

These are the pillars on which a good life is built. This isn’t to say

nothing else in life is important. Obviously, you need to take care of your

health, you need to have fun, you need to sleep, you need to be smart about

your finances, and on and on. But family, friends, work, and faith are the

Big Four on which almost everything else rests.

Of course, these areas of life are full of challenges—some of them very

hard. These are the very challenges we so often distracted ourselves from.

But now, with our emotional skills and growing resolve, these challenges in

family life, friendship, work, and faith are our opportunities to learn and

grow in love and happiness. So that is what we turn to in the next four

chapters.

A Note from Oprah

Much of what I know about getting happier comes from experience—my own and that

of so many others. Arthur, on the other hand, comes to happiness through research. It’s a

distinction that applies to us in general: when it comes to explaining something or making a

point, I always have a story, he always has a study (or a quote from an ancient philosopher).

We’re different that way.

And then there’s Stedman, my life partner and companion for the past thirty years. The

two of us once co-taught a class on leadership at Northwestern University’s Kellogg

Graduate School of Management, and our students were surprised by how different we

were. He’s a planner, a strategist. He does nothing without first setting a vision for the

outcome, whether he’s playing golf or speaking to businessmen in China. I am the opposite,

operating in the moment, guided by intuition and instinct to the next right move. He never

worries about what other people think. I have spent much of my adult life working to

nullify my people-pleasing ways.

And then there’s my bestie, Gayle King. In personality-test terms, I’m a Judge, Gayle

is a Cheerleader. I stay calm, she gets excited. I like to drive in silence, she likes the radio

on (and lordy, does she love to sing along). We’ll leave an event together with me saying,

“Phew, I can’t wait to get home,” and Gayle saying, “I could have stayed all night!”

It turns out that Arthur and I and Stedman and I and Gayle and I are complementary:

different personalities that mesh together well. And happily for all of us, the research says

that’s what makes for the strongest and longest-lasting relationships.

Different kinds of relationships are the subject of the next section of this book. The

focus starts at close range—you and the way you deal with your family—then progressively

zooms out to include your friends, your work and the people you work with, and finally

your relationship to “the majesties of the universe,” through whatever form of spirituality is

right for you.

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. So in the next several

chapters you’ll be thinking about whom and what you interact with and how you can make

those interactions better. Whom and what do you surround yourself with? What can you do

in the face of conflict? How can you show up more intentionally and serve more

meaningfully?

These questions lead to another paradox—maybe, in the context of happiness, the

paradox—the one I call detached attachment. I have learned to live my life so that I’m

attached to the work I do and the things I create and the people who matter to me—but not

in a way that involves expectations. It’s a lesson I learned the hard way, after the movie

Beloved, a movie I worked ten years to bring to life, based on a novel I revered, came out.

When it bombed at the box office, I sank with it.

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.

Five

Build Your Imperfect Family

I am happiest when I am home with my family,” reports Angela, age

forty. Married for fourteen years and the mother of three kids ranging from

four to twelve, she considers her family the most important part of her life.

She works part-time, but her career definitely takes a back seat to family

life.

What about when she is unhappiest? When asked this, she thinks for a

moment, and then confesses, with a half smile, “I guess that would be when

I am home with my family.”

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. Most people in the United States and all over

the world—in fourteen out of seventeen developed countries surveyed by

the Pew Research Center in 2021—consider their families to be the biggest

source of meaning in their lives.[1] On the other hand, there are few things

more upsetting than family conflict, which can send even the steadiest of

souls into a tailspin. 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.) With the stakes around it so high, building this first

pillar of a happier life is one of the best and most reliable ways to improve

well-being.

Most people say they want a “happy family,” but what does that mean?

By “family,” we generally mean the people you live with and are related to,

by blood, adoption, or marriage: kids, parents, siblings, and spouses. So far,

so good. The harder part is figuring out what it means for a whole family to

be arguably “happy,” or if it is even possible. If you take your cues from

television (generally a bad idea), you will think your goal as a family is to

be like those on Leave It to Beaver or The Brady Bunch. But those families

don’t exist in real life.

Maybe a happy family depends on the kids. After all, “You’re only as

happy as your unhappiest child,” goes the old saying. One of the worst

feelings of despair for parents is seeing your child suffering and not being

able to help. So perhaps a happy family is one without unhappy kids. Good

luck with that. Is it one where the parents have a perfect marriage, never

suffer unemployment or struggle with illness? Never seen it.

In truth, truly “happy” families exist only in the minds of the writers of

wholesome family television shows. They don’t exist in the wild. In real

life, families are made up of people mashed together. This can result in the

most mystical kind of love—the love you didn’t choose but that was given

to you. It inevitably also means plenty of conflict. Even in the best of

situations, tension between family members is normal, and crises are par for

the course. In one pair of researchers’ words, family bonds are frayed by

“the give-and-take between autonomy and dependence and the tension

between concern and disappointment.”[3] That’s academic-ese for “Family

life can be a huge mess.”

There are five common challenges that make family life most

complicated, which we will cover in this chapter. Each one bears similarity

to the issues we took on in our own heads in the first half of the book, and

not surprisingly, each has a solution using the same basic tools. Here’s the

important thing to remember: 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

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its

own way.”

This is the famous opening line from Leo Tolstoy’s novel Anna

Karenina.[4] The story starts in a moment of chaos in the Oblonsky family,

where the father has just been discovered having an affair. With the parents

distracted and distraught, the children “ran wild all over the house,” and

every member of the family felt as if there were no sense living together

again.

Even if the Oblonskys’ exact conflict never afflicted your family, many

other conflicts probably have—and they may have led you to intense

unhappiness. Perhaps you saw it as evidence that you are doing everything

wrong. In truth, family unhappiness due to conflict is a signal that

something important is right where it should be. You are upset because your

family matters to you. If it weren’t true, you would feel the same way about

conflict in your own home as you do about conflict in the family down the

block: mildly concerned and sympathetic, perhaps, but certainly not

miserable.

Furthermore, you know very well that trying to avoid unhappiness is

never the right way to make life better. Think of conflict like the bill for a

delicious meal at a restaurant: the only way for it to be zero is not to order

the meal. Conflict is the cost of abundant love. The objective is not to make

it go away—it is to manage it metacognitively, replace it when possible

with positive emotions, and blunt it as necessary.

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. For example,

parents tend to see the benefit of family bonds primarily in terms of shared

love; children generally view the benefit in terms of exchanges of

assistance. According to research, fathers report higher levels of

involvement in the relationship than their kids perceive.[5] Similarly,

children tend to think that they are doing more to help than their parents

think they are.[6] All of this creates resentment, which is only natural when

people you love fail to meet your expectations; it is exacerbated when the

other party doesn’t even seem to notice.

Other areas of unmet expectations are common as well. Children can

seem unambitious to parents who struggled to make ends meet early on.

The kids might not try hard enough in school; as young adults they might

forgo marriage or children, to their parents’ disappointment or disapproval.

Similarly, parents might withdraw financial support in a way that seems

selfish to grown kids, or appear more interested in their own lives than in

those of their children and grandchildren. Siblings can fail to support each

other in any number of ways.

The most extreme form of unmet expectations is a values breach, in

which one family member rejects something about the others’ core beliefs.

An example of this is a child who rejects the parents’ religion, or who

declares the parents’ beliefs immoral. We hear stories all the time of young

adults who come home from college and announce to their parents that they

are completely wrong about everything.

Some conflicts result in a rupture to the relationship. Researchers

writing in 2015 found that about 11 percent of mothers ages sixty-five to

seventy-five with at least two grown children were totally estranged from at

least one of them.[7] They found that a values breach was at the root of many

of these estrangements, while a violation of behavioral norms (for instance,

not practicing their faith) usually was not. (Take a moment and think about

what this says: your family generally cares less about how you live and

more about what you say about what they believe.)

Acknowledging family conflict is good, because it improves

communication and gives you opportunities to solve problems. Conversely,

denying family conflict is unhelpful, because family conflicts generally

don’t die of old age. On the contrary, research shows that without working

on conflicts, parent-child and sibling relationships remain strained as

everyone involved ages—a phenomenon partly explained by a theory

known as the developmental schism hypothesis.”[8] So accept the fact that

you are like almost every other family, and take the opportunity to make

things better. 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. Evidence shows that it’s best to have a

clear family policy of speaking for yourself and listening to others.[9] 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] If this is too awkward, then set regular meetings in

groups of two for the most sensitive topics. 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 and respond before you start assuming

that you know what their response will be.

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

Estrangement within families is a tragedy—perhaps inevitable in cases of

abuse, but avoidable in so many clashes of pride. You have to decide

yourself whether a schism is warranted, but as the research suggests, family

members (especially parents) are likelier to accept lifestyle choices that

they disagree with than accept differing values, which they might perceive

as a personal rejection.[11]

Perhaps this sounds morally inconsistent or even hypocritical, but it

isn’t. Many people hold values that they do not share with their loved ones.

They can still coexist permanently with these differences of opinion without

feeling hurt or angry, precisely because they don’t expect anyone else to

change their mind. And because they don’t insist on agreement, there is no

reason to feel aggrieved.

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

their family as a one-way valve of help and advice—usually, parents giving

and children receiving—the resentment tends, ironically, to go both ways;

conversations, visits, and calls become tiresome, repetitive interviews

instead of conversations. Our belief is that this stems from a stunted

development in the relationship. For example, if you are a young adult,

perhaps Mom and Dad still treat you like a youngster; meanwhile, you

rarely or never ask about their lives or take a true human interest in them.

Rather than expecting your family members to be bottomless fonts of

help and wisdom—or to stop giving you unsolicited advice all the time—

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]

Challenge 2

INSUFFICIENT COMPLEMENTARITY

In some family relationships, you sort of expect a fair bit of conflict—

say, between adolescents and their parents. But in others, conflict feels like

a real threat, because we are told by our culture it is bad. The best example

of this is conflict between spouses or romantic partners. Discord in this area

almost never feels like a good thing and is seen as evidence that something

is wrong.

And how do you avoid conflict with your spouse or partner? By being

compatible. If there’s one piece of conventional wisdom about romantic

life, it’s that you need a high level of compatibility. The idea is that there is

less discomfort and conflict when your partner is a lot like you. If you find

someone compatible, the attraction will be higher and the relationship more

successful, or so the thinking goes.

This is wrong. Just consider the evidence from people who are dating.

Dating apps, which almost everybody uses, have made compatibility easier

and easier to achieve. Before you ever see someone in person you can sort

her or him on any number of dimensions, to raise the odds of a good “fit.”

Less pain, more gain. But here’s a weird thing: Most “daters”—people who

are not in a committed relationship but would like to be, or people who date

casually—are struggling.[13]  In a 2020 survey,  67 percent said  their dating
life was not going well.[14] Three-quarters said that finding someone to date
was difficult.
The fact is that the more we achieve compatibility, the harder love gets
to find and maintain. From 1989 to 2016, the proportion of people in their
twenties  who  were  married  fell  from  27  percent  to  15  percent.[15]  And  in
case you think that’s just a commentary on traditional marriage, the same
survey  shows  that  the  percentage  of  18-to-29-year-olds  who  had  not  had
any sex in a year nearly tripled from 2008 to 2018, from 8 to 23 percent.[16]
Looking  for  someone  who  has  a  lot  in  common  with  you  is  called
homophily, and it is natural. As egotistical creatures, we tend to rate those
who  are  similar  to  us  as  more  appealing  (socially  and  romantically)  than
those who aren’t.[17] Consider the case of political views. According to the
online-dating site OkCupid, 85 percent of millennials responding to a 2021
survey said that how a potential date votes is “extremely or very important”
to them.[18]  And  among college students, 71  percent  of Democrats and 31
percent  of  Republicans  said  that  they  would  not  go  out  on  a  date  with
someone who voted for the opposing presidential candidate.[19]
The effects of homophily are even stronger when it comes to education.
Researchers have found that educational attainment  is  the  most  important
dating  criterion  for  millennials,  exceeding  earning  potential,  physical
attributes, and political and religious affiliations.[20] They also found that 43
percent of daters with a master’s degree judge potential partners based on
the college they attended.
Some similarity in basic values is no doubt beneficial to a partnership,
but  too  much  sameness  brings  huge  costs.  Romantic  love  requires
complementarity—that is, differences. A sociologist named Robert Francis
Winch  advanced  this  idea  in  the  1950s  by  interviewing  couples  and
assessing the personality traits of those who were successful and those who
weren’t.[21]  He  found  that  the  happiest  couples  tended  to  round  out  each
other’s personality—an extrovert and an introvert, for example.
Research  has  found  that  strangers  assigned  to  perform  a  task  in  pairs
feel warmer toward each other when their personalities are complementary
than  when  they’re  similar.[22]  In  one  study,  people  described  their  ideal
romantic  partners  as  similar  to  themselves,  but  their  actual  partners’
personality  traits  were  uncorrelated  with  their  own.[23]  We  may  think  we

want partners like ourselves, but we wind up pursuing long-term

relationships with people who are different from us.

The attractive force of difference may have biological roots. Scientists

have long known, for example, that children inherit a wider variety of

immune defenses when their parents differ greatly in a group of genes

called the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). None of us can look at

a potential mate and decode her MHC at first sight, but there is evidence

that we sense components of it through smell—though we don’t realize it,

because our olfactory neurons function below the level of consciousness—

and that we’re more attracted to people whose genes “smell” different from

our own.[24] In 1995, Swiss zoologists asked women to sniff T-shirts worn

by men they didn’t know but who had worn the shirts for two straight days.

[25] The women preferred the smelly shirts worn by the men whose MHC

genes were most different from their own. Later research on different

populations found the same result.[26]

Despite all this evidence that you really shouldn’t be searching for a

version of yourself when you date, the most common ways that Americans

find partners these days—via websites and apps—are smorgasbords of

sameness.[27] Algorithms allow people to find dates like themselves with

brutal efficiency.[28] It might make for fewer disputes, but in searching for

your doppelgänger, you might be overlooking the people who complement

you, psychologically and even physically.

This search for compatibility has spilled over into how long-established

couples see themselves. 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. For example, if you

are dating, look for someone who is not your double on the introvert-

extrovert dimension. You will learn a lot from each other (as you will see in

the next chapter) if you seek to show each other the joys of going to parties

one night and being alone the next. This expands the pool of potential mates

and makes life more fun. If you are long married, make a list of the ways

your partner is different from you. For example, if you are a worrier and

your spouse isn’t, it may have driven you crazy that she or he “doesn’t care

enough” about all the problems in life. Instead, reclassify your spouse as

your personal agent in the art of lightening up. (You can be their personal

threat spotter.)

Second, focus more on what really matters. Too many couples get hung

up on differences that are frankly ridiculous, like political issues. If you

need to, make a list together of the ten things in your life you both agree are

most important. If you have kids, they will probably be number one. Your

extended families, faith, and work will all be near the top. Politics and other

bones of contention will be way down at the bottom, if they make the list at

all. Now resolve to focus your time together on the important stuff.

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

machines. One of the most robust trends in meeting potential mates over the

past three decades has been the move away from dates set up by friends.

More than half of people ages 54 to 64 have had a blind date (a date set up

by others, where the daters are unacquainted) in their life, according to

DatingAdvice.com, versus only 20 percent of adults ages 18 to 24.[29] On

the surface, this makes some sense: Why waste a whole dinner out trying to

meet a person on the basis of someone else’s recommendation when a

closer match is just a few clicks away?

If you have read this far, you know the reason: traditional blind dates

are generally arranged by people who know you and have thought about

whether your personality fits with your date’s. The less exclusively you rely

on an internet-dating profile, the freer you can be from philosophical

prejudices, and the more you might rely on more primitive mechanisms—

like your nose. This strategy only works, of course, when your friends know

eligible matches with whom to set you up. If you ask your friends to help

and they consistently come up dry, it may be evidence that you need to

expand your social circle.

Challenge 3

THE NEGATIVITY VIRUS

A healthy family is not conflict averse. Conflict is different, however,

from chronic negativity, which can spoil family life.

The ambient culture in a family, or in any close-knit group, determines

the ability of the members to solve problems. Think of it like the room

temperature. 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. This often occurs because of emotional contagion, which

psychologists have studied extensively.[30] There’s not a particular problem

to solve, just a “this sucks” attitude that moves between family members.

Escaping from contagious negative emotions can be difficult, but more

to the point, when we truly love others who are suffering—especially our

family—we don’t want to avoid their sadness, frustration, fear, or anxiety.

We want to help, and that’s good. Just as we shouldn’t push away our own

negative feelings if we want to grow and solve our problems, we can help

those we love by accepting their emotions. But we don’t have to take on

their unhappiness in the process.

Emotional contagion isn’t all negative, of course. You can probably

think of people in your life with whom you always seem to be smiling, and

others who make you feel warm and generous. Researchers have even

studied positive emotional contagion, finding that living within a mile of a

friend or family member who becomes happier makes you 25 percent

likelier to become happier too.[31] But unhappiness is more contagious and

spreads faster.[32] A negative mood in a meeting can infect the whole room

in seconds.

Emotions jump between people through a number of mechanisms.[33]

The most obvious is conversation, in which you transmit and take on the

emotions of others through facial expressions, vocal tone, and posture. You

probably have found that when you interact with certain people, you laugh

more than normal even when things aren’t funny; with others, you complain

a lot about things that aren’t a problem.

Negative emotional viruses can also be carried home from school or

work due, paradoxically, to trust. If you have (or had) little kids, you know

that sometimes they are fine all day at school, but when they see you to pick

them up, they burst into tears and tell you nothing but horror after horror.

This is because they trust you and save the hard stuff all day for you. It feels

like punishment but it is actually love. (Grown-ups do this, too, by the way,

smiling all day at work and then complaining all evening at home.)

You can “catch” others’ emotions physiologically, at least in part. In one

experiment, people who inhaled a disgusting smell and those who merely

observed a video clip of a person with a disgusted expression had activation

in the same parts of the brain.[34] As we saw earlier, similar results have

been found in the experience of pain—your brain can sense it simply by

seeing someone else who is hurting.[35] This is especially true for people

who live together.[36]

The idea of emotional contagion is far from new. More than eighteen

hundred years ago, while emperor of Rome, the Stoic philosopher Marcus

Aurelius wrote about emotional contagion during the dreaded Antonine

Plague.[37] The virus killed as many as two thousand people a day.[38] Still,

Marcus wrote, “the corruption of the mind is a pest far worse than any such

miasma and vitiation of the air which we breathe around us. The latter is a

pestilence for living creatures and affects their life, the former for human

beings and affects their humanity.”[39] Many people can relate to this after

the lockdowns during the COVID pandemic, when their families were all

cooped up together. The worst part was often when family members started

spreading a terrible attitude, which everybody caught. Similarly, you might

prefer to have a cold go around your family on vacation than a foul mood

that spoils all the fun.

For a lot of people, the way to avoid negative emotional contagion is to

avoid an unhappy person, like you would any communicable disease. But in

the cases where love transcends the trouble—when the unhappy person is a

spouse, a parent, a child, a sibling—and you choose to stay in the same

house, research yields four lessons on how you can help while not allowing

it to take over the culture.

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. This might seem to contradict the research saying

that you should attend more to others. This is different—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. This will give you the happiness reserves you need to lift up

someone else.

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. Personalization of negativity and

conflict is one of the most powerful ways that unhappiness spreads.

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 with surprise. Helping others to be

happy is not straightforward. Saying “Cheer up!” for example—what

psychologists call reframing—is usually counterproductive.[41] (Just imagine

someone saying it to you when you are in a dark mood.) It is much better to

get the unhappy person to engage in an activity that you know she likes.

Research has shown that actively engaging in an enjoyable activity

improves mood more than doing nothing, suppressing the bad mood, or

envisioning good times.[42]

There’s a catch, though: the researchers have also found that asking

unhappy people to imagine happy activities (a step that is necessary for

planning them in advance) made them less likely to participate in them.

This is because the mood they are being encouraged to imagine seems

difficult to attain, making the happy activity seem difficult as well. Even if

you ordinarily enjoy riding your bike, it can seem like a chore when you are

sad or depressed. Yet if a family member shows up for a spontaneous ride,

you might just say yes—and be more likely to enjoy it.

Finally, prevent the spread. So far, the advice here has been geared

toward someone who wants to help an unhappy family member. If you are

the unhappy one, remember that your loved ones want to help. Doing so

might make them happier. More to the point, people who love you don’t

want you to suffer. Isolating yourself or pretending to be happy just to make

other people more comfortable won’t benefit anyone.

Instead, 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.” Or maybe it involves strategic avoidance during particular parts of

the day if you tend to feel down at those times. 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.

Challenge 4

FORGIVENESS

Have you ever heard of the South Indian monkey trap?[43] It consists of a

hollowed-out coconut with some rice inside, chained to a stake. The

coconut has a hole in the top just large enough for a monkey to insert its

hand but not big enough to remove a fistful of rice. While villagers watch

from a distance, a hungry monkey reaches in and becomes trapped, unable

or unwilling to give up its handful in exchange for its freedom. The

villagers can then walk right up and take the monkey away.

Before you say anything unkind about the “dumb monkey,” ask yourself

whether you are doing more or less the same thing when it comes to

conflict in your family life. Do you wish the ambient culture were warmer

but you are held back by unresolved anger? If so, you are stuck in an

emotional monkey trap.

You’re not alone; we all face this situation from time to time in our

families, and not just in the obvious cases where we cling to bad feelings by

flatly refusing to forgive. Sometimes we sabotage the freedom we crave

even when we say we’ve forgiven others, whether because we still harbor

resentment deep down or because we’re holding on to offenses to use later

against the people who have wronged us. To achieve greater happiness and

freedom, we all need to abandon these sorts of partial forgiveness.

In 2018, scholars identified four successful forgiveness strategies that

family members use to heal a relationship after a transgression or conflict

has occurred: discussion (“Let’s talk this through so I can let go of the

hurt”), explicit forgiveness (“I forgive you”), nonverbal forgiveness (such

as showing affection after a fight), and minimization (which involves

classifying the transgression as unimportant and simply choosing to

disregard it).[44] Researchers have found that all four of these strategies can

be effective, and the one chosen typically depends on the severity of the

grievance.[45] For example, discussion is most often used for the worst

offenses, such as infidelity in a marriage; minimization and nonverbal

forgiveness are most often used for the least problematic issues, such as

showing up late for dinner. Explicit forgiveness is probably best for

conflicts somewhere in the middle.

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, which happens when partners

decide to suppress or ignore an issue without actually forgiving (not to be

confused with minimization, which is different).[46] Conditional forgiveness

can provide what researchers call emotional protection—that is, a feeling of

safety—to the damaged partner, but can also keep a wound open. 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 and pseudo-forgiveness can look attractive to an aggrieved

family member for a number of reasons. Conditional forgiveness offers the

victim power over the transgressor, a way to get a desired behavior by

holding out the carrot of true forgiveness. Pseudo-forgiveness solves

nothing, and can create a grudge that is exploited in moments of irritation.

Conditional or pseudo-forgiveness are monkey traps—a handful of

emotional rice chosen over freedom from anger and bitterness.

In order to avoid the emotional monkey trap, you’ll need to deliberately

choose not to fall into it. Releasing the rice takes patience and self-control.

First, when you’re choosing forgiveness, remember that resolving a conflict

is not charity—it primarily benefits you. The monkey-trap metaphor makes

this clear, and so does the wisdom of the ages. The fifth-century Buddhist

sage Buddhaghosa writes that by indulging anger and refusing to forgive,

“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]

Second, widen your conflict-resolution repertoire, especially when what

you have tried before isn’t working. Perhaps you are a natural minimizer,

quick to forgive family members when you can easily dismiss their wrongs

against you. The person with whom you have a conflict might believe the

severity of the situation is too great to be resolved this way. If you’re the

one who’s been wronged, escalate to explicit forgiveness. If the problem is

mutual, try discussion, and talk it out.

And third, don’t dismiss minimization too quickly. In many cases,

abandoning a conflict rather than trying to solve it is the perfect solution.

Ask yourself whether your argument is really important enough to, say, lose

contact with your loved one, and act accordingly.

Challenge 5

DISHONESTY

Do you have something you wouldn’t dare share with your family?

There are a lot of good and logical reasons not to say what you think,

especially when others disagree strongly. Offending people feels terrible,

and it can lead to unpleasant consequences. Withholding the truth or

nodding along might seem practical, despite the fact that you are screaming

dissent on the inside.

Just maybe, however, the true act of love is to stop avoiding problems

and simply look outward and say what you see—to be courageous, and

work toward a family that can take it.

In the 1990s, the writer and psychotherapist Brad Blanton argued just

that in his book Radical Honesty. When the truth is hard to accept, telling it

can have costs, including frayed relationships at home.[49] But Blanton

suggested that complete honesty—no white lies, no exceptions—is worth

the consequences because it can reduce stress, deepen connections with

others, and reduce emotional reactivity.

If you are of the “let’s not go there” school of family relations, you

might be skeptical of this argument. The research favors honesty

nonetheless. Families where people bottle up their feelings and beliefs are

not at their best, because they can’t bring their full selves to the party. To

avoid unhappiness through conflict, they wind up avoiding the happiness

that comes from greater intimacy and understanding.

Why do we withhold the truth from—or even lie to—loved ones? As

much as we would like to say we are protecting others, it is usually

motivated by a focus on ourselves. We want to bolster their opinion of us

(“School is going fine”), to avoid conflict (“I agree with your political

views”), or to protect others (“You look great, Dad”).[50] And then there’s

sheer laziness. When Mom asks, “How did you like dinner?” you might not

have the energy to explain that it was too salty.

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. Even little white lies can do this in

family life. When we tell family members things we think they want to

hear, we treat them as if we were strangers avoiding conflict. Imagine

learning that your spouse found it easier to simply humor you. It would

bother you a lot, most likely. For getting happier, closeness beats

momentary harmony.

The point of honesty is having enough love for others to be precisely

who you are, with complete transparency, even if it is difficult for both of

you. Of course, that is easier to say than to do, especially if you have the

kind of family with a long history of bottling things up. Fortunately,

research from psychologists can help to get you started.

First, before being honest, solicit and accept honesty from others. Some

people are quite willing to tell the truth to everyone, no matter who gets

offended, but become prickly when presented with truths that they find

difficult to accept. The tendency to dish out criticism while being unable to

take it is one of the classic traits of narcissists, and to put it less

academically, it’s the style of the thin-skinned jerk.[51] Such behavior is not

an expression of love.

Committing yourself to honesty starts with a commitment to be honest

with yourself, and an effort to seek out and accept complete honesty from

others, especially loved ones. Ask people for the truth as they see it, starting

with those closest to you, and make a commitment not to be offended when

they give it. Note that their opinions are not facts, meaning that you have to

use your judgment on letting the truth you hear affect your actions.

Furthermore, sometimes what you hear will be intended to offend you. You

can almost always choose not to take offense.

Second, offer truth to heal, never to harm. What generally holds us back

in our ability to persuade one another is that we use our opinions as a

weapon instead of as a gift. The same principle applies in even greater force

when it comes to the truth. If you keep the truth to yourself when it’s

convenient and use it to hurt others when you’re feeling hurt—as we often

do in emotional arguments with family members—then your honesty is not

an expression of love. 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.

Third, make the truth appealing. If you do need to offer an occasional

less-than-positive appraisal, think of a way to reframe it as an opportunity

for growth. Rather than telling someone, “You’re wrong,” say, “Here’s a

way you can think about this issue differently.” Your honest feedback will

not always be appreciated, of course, but it can soften the blow.

Maybe your family is such that a policy of real honesty sounds insane to

you. Start slowly, and tell your family members it is what you want so you

all can understand each other better. Little by little, it will get easier. You all

will be less self-protective and more generous. It’s kind of like exercise: it

will take a while, but then it will become a habit, and then it will feel like a

necessity. As you build up this muscle, you can expand honesty outward

toward friends and strangers. Always remember, though, to do so while

healing and appealing, so that your honesty continues to be an act of love.

NEVER GIVE UP

Family life can be such a unique joy that no effort to build a happier life

can neglect it. But even the best-adjusted families are challenging,

especially surrounding conflict, compatibility, negativity, forgiveness, and

honesty. To sum up, here are the main lessons to make each challenge into a

source of growth.

1. Don’t avoid conflict, which is your family’s opportunity to

learn and grow if you understand where it originates and manage it

appropriately.

2. You naturally think compatibility is key to relationship success,

and difference brings conflict. In truth, you need enough compatibility

to function, but not all that much. What you really need is

complementarity to complete you as a person.

3. The culture of a family can get sick from the virus of

negativity. This is a basic emotional-management issue, but applied to

a group instead of to you as an individual.

4. 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.

5. Explicit forgiveness and almost all difficult communication

require a policy of honesty. When families withhold the truth, they

cannot be close.

One last point: If your relationship with your family is especially

difficult, working to improve it might sometimes feel like a lost cause. It’s

easy to throw up your hands. Almost every day, we hear from people all

over the world who feel stuck in family problems that seem like they have

no solution. Maybe you have said, “I just want to turn my back on those

people and get on with my life.”

Giving up is almost always a mistake, because “those people” are, in a

mystical way, you. Your spouse is a completion of you as a person. Your

kids provide a rare glimpse into your own past. Your parents are a vision of

your future. Your siblings are a representation of how others see you.

Giving that up means losing insight into yourself, which is a lost

opportunity to gain self-knowledge and make progress as a person. Never

give up on the relationships that you did not choose, if at all possible.

But what about the relationships that you have chosen? These are your

friendships, and that’s the next part of our lives to build.

Six

Friendship That Is Deeply Real

From childhood’s hour I have not been as others were,” begins Edgar

Allan Poe in his haunting 1829 poem “Alone.”[1] It details his inability to

connect emotionally with other people, to share joys and sorrows. “All I

lov’d—I lov’d alone.”

Poe was not an especially solitary figure; he grew up in a fairly ordinary

family, attended school, and served in the military. Yet through it all, he

never made any deep human connections, beyond perhaps his cousin

Virginia, whom he married when she was thirteen (he was twenty-seven),

but who died of tuberculosis a few years later.

According to his obituary, Poe “had few or no friends.”[2] Most people

were simply not worth his time. It’s not that no one wanted his company;

it’s that he didn’t much want theirs. Again, his obituary: “He had made up

his mind upon the numberless complexities of the social world, and the

whole system with him was an imposture.” His loneliness was self-

imposed.

Still, Poe suffered terribly from his lack of friends, self-medicating with

alcohol and gambling to numb his pain. Before he died at age forty under

circumstances probably involving alcohol poisoning, he confessed his

problem. “It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life

and reputation and reason,” he said. Rather, it was “a sense of insupportable

loneliness.”[3]

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. This is the clear conclusion from decades of research.[4] Friendship

accounts for almost 60 percent of the difference in happiness between

individuals, no matter how introverted or extroverted they are.[5] A life with

close friends can be happy even when many other things are going wrong.

A life without close friends is like a house in the winter (in Massachusetts)

without heat.

Unfortunately, the latter case is increasingly common in our society.

Social scientists ask survey questions like “When was the last time you had

a private conversation in which you shared personal feelings or problems?”

Over the past three decades, the percentage of Americans who would

answer “never” to this question has nearly doubled.[6] The percentage of

Americans who say they have fewer than three close friends has doubled

since 1990.[7]

The reasons for this sound an awful lot like Poe syndrome, but on a

mass scale. We are willfully neglecting friendships, and even pushing them

away. Our fixation on screens and social media makes it easier to be alone

than ever, and many young people even confess that making friends in

person now feels awkward or frightening. Our poisonous culture war has

broken up perfectly good friendships as well: polling data have shown that

about one in six Americans have stopped talking to a friend or family

member since 2016 because of politics.[8]

And then, of course, there’s COVID. If your life didn’t go back to its

2019-era “normal,” you are not alone. In a poll conducted in March 2022,

59 percent of respondents said they still had not fully returned to their pre-

pandemic activities.[9] More serious for happiness is that many people now

prioritize socializing for fun less than they used to in the “before times.” In

a poll long after the pandemic lockdowns had ended, 21 percent of

respondents said that socializing had become more important to them since

the coronavirus outbreak, but 35 percent said it had become less important.

[10] Many feel anxious about socializing, with the number one reason being

“not knowing what to say or how to interact.”[11] Many of us have simply

forgotten how to be friends.

The good news is that it’s never too late to relearn friendship skills and

restart old relationships. With the right information, nearly all challenges

can be met. In this chapter we cover the five challenges that people most

commonly face—and how your management skills can turn them into

precious opportunities.

Challenge 1

YOUR PERSONALITY

By all accounts, Edgar Allan Poe was an introvert. Perhaps you are, too,

and you consider that to be an inhibiting factor in the ability to make more

friends and get closer to people. It doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, what

might have seemed like a high personality barrier to your developing more

friendships might be your source of strength, if you use it right.

An easy measure of friendship health is the number of friends you have.

You will read here or there that you need three friends, or five, or some

other specific number to be happy. This is arbitrary, and it doesn’t take

account of your specific personality. Here is the rule of thumb: 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. The exact number depends on you, and especially

whether you are an introvert or an extrovert. Neither is better or worse than

the other if managed properly, but each personality can experience its own

difficulties.

Psychologists see extroversion/introversion as one of the Big Five

personality dimensions, along with agreeableness, openness,

conscientiousness, and neuroticism.[12] The Big Five theory has been a

staple of psychology since the 1980s, but the introvert-extrovert binary was

first popularized in 1921 by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, who posited

that the two groups have different primary life goals.[13] The former, he

thought, seek to establish autonomy and independence; the latter seek union

with others. Those stereotypes have persisted to this day.

The German-born psychologist Hans Eysenck further developed Jung’s

theory in the 1960s, arguing that our genetics determine our relative

extroversion.[14] He believed that cortical arousal—that is, the brain’s level

of alertness—was more difficult to achieve for extroverts than introverts, so

the former seek stimulation in the company of others, ideally the fresh

company of new people.[15] Subsequent research has shown mixed results

on Eysenck’s specific theory, but has found clear cognitive differences

between the groups.[16]

In general, extroverts are happier than introverts. In 2001, a group of

Oxford scholars broke a sample of survey respondents into four groups:

happy extroverts, unhappy extroverts, happy introverts, and unhappy

introverts.[17] The happy extroverts outnumbered the happy introverts by

about two to one. One common explanation for the happiness differential

between introverts and extroverts follows from stereotypes like Jung’s and

Eysenck’s: humans are inherently social animals, so contact brings

happiness; extroverts seek out contact, so they are happier.

Extroverts also have a natural edge in enthusiasm—“a passionate state

of mind,” according to one famous psychoanalyst in the 1960s—which is

one of the elements of personality most closely associated with happiness.

[18] Enthusiasm about life’s events leads to higher enjoyment and a better

mood. It also lowers the tendency to withdraw socially.

The fact that introverts prefer solitude and often struggle with

sociability doesn’t mean that they don’t need friends. It just means that new

friendships can be harder for them to establish. On the other hand,

extroverts face a different challenge: going deep. They tend to flit among

lots of people whom they know just a little, and can find an emptiness in

their lives when a crisis happens and they don’t have anyone to turn to who

knows and loves them deeply.

Whether you are an introvert or an extrovert, your personality doesn’t

have to stand in the way of real friendships, as long as you manage

yourself. A good way to do so is by taking a lesson from your opposite. For

example, one source of happiness for almost everyone is hope about the

future, a sense of life purpose, and self-esteem. Extroverts love to talk to

others about the future, their dreams, their life’s purpose. As psychologists

have long shown, we tend to act according to the commitments we have

articulated to others, so the extrovert habit of telling everyone you meet

about your goals makes you more likely to reach them and therefore get

happier.[19] 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.

Meanwhile, extroverts should learn from introverts how to establish and

maintain a few deep friendships. This isn’t so easy for extroverts, because

of their love of crowds, audiences, fresh contact, and excitement. Research

shows that extroverts tend to have a lot of low-depth friendships with other

extroverts.[20] Extroverts should set a goal each year to deepen one

friendship. The way to do this is by organizing your social life specifically

around one-on-one conversations about profound things, instead of insisting

on congregating in groups. 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.

Challenge 2

EXCESSIVE USEFULNESS

Are your friends useful to you? “I hope so,” you might say. But that’s a

mistake for happiness.

Make a list of the first ten of your friends who pop into your head.

Some you would text with any silly thought; others you call only a couple

of times a year. Some are people you look up to; others you like, but do not

especially admire. You fit into these categories for others as well—maybe

you are helpful to one person and a confidant to another. You get different

things out of different relationships, which is all well and good.

There is one type of friend almost everyone has: the friend from whom

you need or want something. You don’t necessarily use this person—the

benefit might be mutual—but the friendship’s core benefit is more than

camaraderie. He or she is useful.

These are what some social scientists call “expedient friendships”—

with people we might call “deal friends”—and they are probably the most

common type most of us have.[21] The average adult has roughly sixteen

people they would classify as friends, according to one 2019 poll of two

thousand Americans.[22] Of these, about three are “friends for life,” and five

are people they really like. The other eight are not people they would hang

out with one-on-one. We can logically infer that these friendships are not an

end in themselves but are instrumental to some other goal, such as

furthering your career or easing a social dynamic.

Expedient friendships might be a pleasant—and certainly useful—part

of life, but they don’t usually bring lasting joy and comfort. If you find that

your social life is leaving you feeling a little empty and unfulfilled, it might

just be that you have too many deal friends and not enough real friends.

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] As

we just discussed, it doesn’t have be ten, and in fact, people tend to down-

select their friends to a smaller group as they get older.[24] It has to be more

than none, however, and the list should extend beyond your spouse or

partner.

All the more reason, then, to take honest stock of your friendships. A

convenient way to do this comes from none other than the ancient Greek

philosopher Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics.[25] He argued that

friendships can be classified along a kind of ladder. At the bottom rung—

where people are least connected emotionally, so the commitment is

weakest—are the deal friends based on utility to each other in work or

social life. These are colleagues, partners to a transaction, or simply those

who can do each other favors. Higher up are friendships based on pleasure

—something you like and admire about the other person, such as their

intelligence or sense of humor. At the highest level are friendships of virtue,

or what Aristotle called “perfect friendship.” These friendships are an end

in themselves, and not instrumental to anything else. Aristotle would say

they are “complete”—pursued for their own sake and fully realized in the

present.

These levels are not mutually exclusive; you can carpool to work with a

friend who has the unfailing honesty you strive to emulate. The point is to

classify friendships by their principal function.

You might not be able to put it into words, but you probably know how

these “perfect” friendships feel. They often feature a shared love for

something outside either of you, whether that thing be transcendental (like

religion) or just fun (like baseball), but they don’t depend on work, or

money, or ambition. These are the intimate friendships that bring us deep

satisfaction.

In contrast to these real friendships, deal friendships—those at the

lowest level on Aristotle’s ladder—are less satisfying. They feel incomplete

because they don’t involve the whole self. If the relationship is necessary to

the performance of a job, it might require us to maintain a professional

demeanor. We can’t afford to risk these connections through confrontation,

difficult conversations, or intimacy.

Unfortunately, societal incentives push many of us toward deal friends

and away from real friends. The average American worker spends forty

hours on the job during the workweek. In leadership, the numbers are much

higher.[26] 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.

So what are you going to do? Start by going back to your list of ten

friends. Next to each name, write “real” or “deal.” Some of these will be

judgment calls, no doubt. That’s fine—just do your best. Then, next to the

“real friends,” ask yourself how many people know you really well—who

would notice when you are slightly off and say, “Are you feeling OK

today?” How many of these people are you comfortable discussing personal

details with? If you struggle to name even two or three, that’s a dead

giveaway. Even if you can, be honest: When was the last time you actually

had that kind of conversation? If it has been more than a month, you might

be kidding yourself about how close you really are.

How many people are left on your list? If there are none besides your

spouse or partner, we have identified a problem to solve.

The key to real friendship is a relationship that isn’t a stepping stone to

something else but rather is a blessing to pursue for its own sake. One way

to do this is to make friends not just outside your workplace, but outside all

of your professional and educational networks. Strike up a friendship with

someone who truly can do nothing for you besides care about you and give

you good company.

The quality to look for is uselessness (not worthlessness—we all have

had those friends, too!). That requires showing up in places that are

unrelated to your worldly ambitions. Whether it is a house of worship, a

bowling league, or a charitable cause unrelated to your work, these are the

places where you meet people who might be capable of sharing your loves,

but without advancing your career. When you meet someone you like, don’t

overthink it; invite them over.

In our go-go world, where professional success is valorized above all

else and “workism” has become like a religious cult to many, it can be easy

to surround ourselves with deal friends.[27] In so doing, we can lose sight of

the most basic of human needs: to know others deeply and to be deeply

known by them. People of many faiths place this deep knowing at the heart

of their relationship with the divine, and it is central to achieving change in

psychotherapy.[28]

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.”

Perfect friendships, as beautiful as they are, can be very hard to

maintain. Deal friends generally show up again and again in your life over

the course of earning a living; you don’t have to make a special effort to

maintain them. Real friends are another matter. It is all too easy when your

life is busy with family and work to let them fall by the wayside. Someone

who was a perfect friend during college might inadvertently become

someone you talk to only once or twice a year after you graduate, not

because it’s what you intend, but because time just passes. By the time you

are in middle age, it is quite common to have very few if any of these

perfect friends simply due to life pressures and the passage of time.

As with anything else of value, it is important not to leave these

relationships to take care of themselves, because they generally won’t. With

your list of real friends—and people you would like to be on that list—

make a concrete plan for staying in touch and seeing one another. Some

people will set up a regular time each week to phone or video-chat. Others

have a policy of taking each other’s calls even while at work or at home (if

possible). And it is very wise to find a way to see each other in person for a

day or a week every year.

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.”

Challenge 3

ATTACHMENT TO OPINIONS

Of the many ideas from Eastern religion and philosophy that have

permeated Western thinking, the second “noble truth” of Buddhism

arguably shines the greatest light on our happiness, or lack thereof.

Samudaya, as this truth is also known, teaches that attachment is the root of

human suffering. To find peace in life, we must be willing to detach

ourselves and thus become free of sticky cravings.

This requires that we honestly examine our attachments. What are

yours? Money, power, pleasure, prestige—the distractions we sought to be

free of with greater emotional self-management? Dig deeper: just maybe,

they are your opinions. The Buddha himself named this attachment and its

terrible effects more than twenty-four hundred years ago, when he is

believed to have said, “Those who grasp at perceptions and views go about

butting their heads in the world.”[29] More recently, the Vietnamese Buddhist

sage Thích Nhất Hạnh wrote in his book Being Peace, “Humankind suffers

very much from attachment to views.”[30]

This attachment can be absolutely disastrous for friendships. There is

nothing wrong with holding beliefs strongly, of course. The problem is

when a disagreement about those beliefs gets in the way of friendship—the

idea that you can’t be close to someone because they hold views different

from your own. For example, maybe you have very strong political views,

and you convince yourself (or let yourself become convinced by others) that

your friends who don’t hold them are immoral or defective. Or maybe your

friends are religiously opposed to something about the way you live, and

you conclude that this means they are “denying your humanity.” (We’re not

talking about abuse here—just differences of beliefs.) This is Poe syndrome

to a T: you kill a friendship because another person doesn’t deserve your

company. It is completely self-defeating, because it leads to your own

loneliness and isolation.

The solution is, calling back to an earlier chapter, to substitute a chosen

virtue for the emotion that is causing harm, one that cultivates love and

focuses you on others. This is a virtue in shorter and shorter supply these

days: humility. Specifically, a kind that social scientists call epistemic

humility, or the recognition that someone else’s viewpoint might be useful

or interesting, or at least doesn’t mean you can’t love the person.

Obviously, this is hard—if it weren’t, one in six Americans wouldn’t

have cut off contact with friends and family over politics. But the happiness

reward is enormous. 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.

As is almost always the case with social science, the data on humility

and happiness reinforce what philosophers have long taught. Around the

turn of the fifth century, Saint Augustine gave a student three pieces of life

advice: “The first part is humility; the second, humility; the third, humility:

and this I would continue to repeat as often as you might ask direction.”[32]

The humility to admit when we are wrong and to change our beliefs can

lead us to make more friends and get happier. But with our defenses arrayed

against this virtue, we need a battle plan to alter our way of thinking and

acting. Here are three strategies you might want to add to your arsenal.

First, 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. Thus, left to your limbic

tendencies, you will fight to the death for even your worst ideas. This

tendency is itself based on an error. In a 2015 study, researchers compared

scientists’ reactions to being informed that their findings “don’t

replicate”—that is, they are probably not correct—a common problem in

academia.[33] It would be no surprise if scientists, like most people, got

defensive when contradicted in this way, or even doubled down on their

original results. But the researchers found that this sort of behavior was

more harmful to the scientists’ reputation than simply admitting they were

wrong. The message for the rest of us is this: if you might not be right, just

be open to others’ views.

Second, welcome contradiction. One of the best ways to combat a

destructive tendency is to adopt an “opposite signal” strategy. For example,

when you are sad, often the last thing you want to do is see others, but this

is precisely what you should do. When your ideas are threatened and you

feel defensive, actively reject your instinct to defend yourself and become

more open instead. When someone says, “You are wrong,” respond with

“Tell me more.” Make friends who think differently than you and challenge

your assumptions—and whose assumptions you challenge. Think of this as

building your “team of rivals,” the phrase the historian Doris Kearns

Goodwin used to describe Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet, which, unlike

Kennedy’s, challenged him relentlessly.[34] If this sounds like torture, it is all

the more urgent that you try it.

Third, start small. Let’s suppose that you want the benefits of

entertaining a friend’s point of view. Getting started is hard, especially if the

viewpoint is something huge, like your religious beliefs or your political

ideology. It’s better to start with smaller ideas such as your fashion choices,

or even your sports allegiances. Reconsider the things you have long taken

for granted, and assess them as dispassionately as you can. Then, with these

low stakes, open up to others’ views.

The point is not to deal in trivialities. Research on goal setting clearly

shows that starting small teaches you how to change and break habits.[35]

Then you can scale this self-knowledge up to the bigger areas of your life in

which, even if you don’t change your views, you can appreciate others’.

If you master these techniques, there might be critics who say you are a

flip-flopper, or wishy-washy. To deal with this, take a lesson from the great

economist Paul Samuelson, the first American ever to win the Nobel Prize

in economics. In 1948, Samuelson published what might be the most

celebrated economics textbook of all time.[36] As the years went by and he

updated the book, he changed his estimate of the inflation level that was

tolerable for the health of the macroeconomy: First, he said 5 percent was

acceptable; then, in later editions, 3 percent and 2 percent, prompting the

Associated Press to run an article titled “Author Should Make Up His

Mind.” In a television interview after Samuelson was awarded the Nobel

Prize in 1970, he gave his answer to the charge: “When events change, I

change my mind. What do you do?”

We bet Samuelson had a lot of close friends.

Challenge 4

MAGICAL THINKING

We often fail to include our romantic partner on our list of friends. They

feel kind of like a different species, don’t they? Maybe you have had the

experience in your life of falling in love with someone but finding down the

road that you didn’t actually like that person very much. You probably had

to unwind a complicated relationship at that point, and maybe it was pretty

messy. And you probably puzzled over how could you feel such intense

passion for someone you found you didn’t even really like as a person.

Passionate love—the early feeling of falling in love—is one of the most

powerful and mysterious experiences any of us will face in life. If you feel

like your emotions have been hijacked, especially at the beginning, it’s

because they have been. Your brain looks strikingly like that of someone

addicted to drugs, with unusually high activity in brain regions for both

pleasure and pain, such as the ventral tegmental area, nucleus accumbens,

caudate, insula, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, and the dorsolateral

prefrontal cortex.[37] Meanwhile, your brain has become a chemistry

experiment: Physical attraction to another person is indicated by spikes in

the sex hormones testosterone and estrogen. Your anticipation of being with

your partner and euphoria come from high dopamine and norepinephrine

levels.[38] Your uncomfortable infatuation involves a deficit of serotonin.[39]

Your attachment and jealousy involve boosts in oxytocin.[40]

Passionate love is you-centric. The neurochemical cocktail in your brain

is making you think about your feelings all day long, and about your partner

as he or she relates to you. So it’s no surprise that while exciting, it doesn’t

bring a lot of happiness.

Passionate love also doesn’t last, which people often find disappointing

and alarming. When passion recedes, people mistakenly interpret this as

love itself receding. Nothing could be further from the truth. The early flush

of romantic love must turn into something that is stable and lasting, which

is one of the greatest secrets to getting happier. The Harvard Study of Adult

Development, which is the longest-running study on individuals over the

course of their whole lives, shows that the most important predictor of late-

life happiness is stable relationships—especially a long romantic

partnership.[41] The healthiest and happiest people at age eighty tend to have

been most satisfied in their relationships at age fifty.

The key to successful romance isn’t trying to keep passion front and

center; it’s letting it evolve. This does not mean just sticking together

legally: research shows that being married accounts for only 2 percent of

subjective well-being later in life.[42] The important thing for well-being is

relationship satisfaction, and that depends on what social scientists call

“companionate love”—stable affection, mutual understanding, and

commitment.[43] Companionate love is a special category of friendship.

You might think companionate love sounds a little, well, dull. This is

because our popular culture and media tend to portray love and romance

unrealistically, leaning disproportionately on magical thinking like love at

first sight and living happily ever after.[44] Research on Disney’s animated

movies, for example, shows that the majority of them rely on exactly these

themes.[45] These films may, in turn, influence children’s and young adults’

views on romance. A 2002 study on 285 unmarried undergraduate students

(both women and men) found a strong correlation between the time they

spent watching television programs related to love and romance and how

much they expressed idealistic expectations about marriage.[46] A 2016

study found that tween girls who had recently watched a movie depicting a

love story were more likely to “endorse idealistic romantic beliefs” than

those who had watched a non-romantic movie.[47]

Despite its popularity in stories and movies, love at first sight has little

to do with reality. Researchers have found that what people describe as

“love at first sight” has no connection to the real hallmarks of true love,

including intimacy and commitment.[48] Rather, it is either a phrase people

use about the past to romanticize their meeting (notwithstanding the way it

actually happened) or one that they use to describe exceptionally strong

physical attraction.

Idealistic but unrealistic beliefs can do a lot of damage to your

relationship. Take the idea of romantic destiny, or “soul mates”—the belief

that two people are deliberately brought together by unseen forces.

Research on hundreds of college students has shown that such expectations

are correlated with dysfunctional patterns in relationships, such as the

assumption that partners will understand and predict each other’s wishes

and desires with little effort or communication because they’re a cosmically

perfect match.[49] In other words, a belief in destiny leads to a belief in mind

reading.

Companionate love is the right goal—to be the closest of friends, who

are also still in love. Passionate love in the early stages is exciting precisely

because the other person is a bit of a stranger. Thus, deep friendship is

impossible. The goal is to keep attraction alive while getting to know each

other intimately.

This intimate friendship means sharing full personhood with each other

—to go from “me” to “we.” 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. The goal is not to avoid fights; it is to grow closer with a

collaborative conflict style (where you work together to find solutions).

Based on the research, 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. They gently joke with each other

and have fun together. Goof around together, like you do with any close

friend.

Second, make the companionate love more about the two of you, and

less about each individual. You shouldn’t be afraid of arguing, but you have

to do it right. Researchers studying couples’ arguments have found that

those who use “we words” when they fight are apt to have less

cardiovascular arousal, fewer negative emotions, and higher marital

satisfaction than those who use “me/you words.”[50] You might have to work

on this, especially if you have built up bad habits over many years. Instead

of saying “You don’t try to understand my feelings,” try “I think we should

try to understand each other’s feelings.” Make we your default pronoun

when talking with others. If you like staying out late but your partner hates

it, say “We prefer not to stay out so late” when you turn down a ten p.m.

dinner for your partner’s sake.

Third, put your money on your team. Many couples act

individualistically when it comes to their money—keeping separate bank

accounts, for example. They usually think they are avoiding conflict, and

perhaps they are, but they are also avoiding an opportunity to think and act

as a team of friends. Indeed, scholars have demonstrated that couples who

pool all their money tend to be happier and more likely to stay together.[51]

This might be harder for partners with different spending habits, but

research has shown that people tend to spend more prudently when they

pool their resources.[52]

Fourth, treat your arguments like exercise. Something every inveterate

gym-goer will tell you is that if you want to make fitness a long-term habit,

you can’t view working out as punishment. It will be painful, sure, but you

shouldn’t be unhappy about doing it regularly, because it makes you

stronger. For collaborative couples, conflict can be seen in the same way:

it’s not fun in the moment, but it is an opportunity to solve inevitable

problems collaboratively, which strengthens the relationship.[53] One way to

do this is to schedule time to work through an issue, rather than treating it

like an emotional emergency. Look at a disagreement as something we need

to find time to fix, instead of as me being attacked by you, which is a

disturbing emergency.[54]

Finally, make your companionate love exclusive. Romantic love makes

most people happiest when it’s one-to-one, emotionally and sexually. This

isn’t popular with some people today, but this life advice is based on

evidence, not morality. In 2004, a large survey of American adults found

that “the happiness-maximizing number of sexual partners in the previous

year is calculated to be 1.”[55]

One last point: While companionate romantic love is best when it is

exclusive, friendship per se should not be. In 2007, researchers found that

married adults who said they had at least two close friends—meaning at

least one besides their spouse—had higher levels of life satisfaction and

self-esteem and lower levels of depression than spouses who did not have

close friends outside their marriage.[56] In other words, long-term

companionate love might be necessary, but it isn’t sufficient for happiness.

Challenge 5

THE VIRTUAL WORLD

In 1995, Rena Rudavsky and her family were selected to participate in a

novel psychology experiment. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University

would install a computer in their dining room and connect it to the internet.

At the time, only 9 percent of Americans used the internet (in 2020, nearly

91 percent did).[57] Rena, then a middle schooler, recalled sitting in front of

the computer day after day, participating in chat rooms and surfing the

internet. When she finished, another family member would take a turn.

Strangely, this experiment didn’t spark much discussion in her

household. “We did little conversing in the dining room when the computer

was on,” Rena told us. Furthermore, “none of us shared our private internet

experiences with others in our family.”

Rena’s experience was typical, as the researchers showed when they

published the now-famous “HomeNet” study in 1998.[58] “Greater use of the

internet was associated with declines in participants’ communication with

family members in the household” and “declines in the size of their social

circle,” the researchers wrote. More ominously, it led to “increases in [the

participants’] depression and loneliness.” Rena says her experience bore out

these findings.

HomeNet could be (and has been) interpreted as an indictment of the

internet, or screens, or modern communications technology in general. In

truth, it illustrates a much simpler truth about love and happiness:

technology that crowds out our real-life interaction with others will lower

our well-being and thus must be managed with great care in our lives. In

order to reap their full benefits, we should use digital tools in ways that

enhance our in-person relationships with family and friends.

The coronavirus pandemic prompted a lot of new research on social

connection. Anytime the circumstances of social life suddenly change,

researchers rush in with our clipboards in hand, asking annoying questions.

One of the most common areas of inquiry over the past few years was how

the sudden mass shift to digital communication—away from face-to-face—

affected overall social connectedness. In one study, researchers surveyed

nearly three thousand adults during the pandemic’s early months and found

that email, social media, online gaming, and texting were inadequate

substitutes for in-person interactions.[59] Voice and video calls were

somewhat better (although later research also questioned the value of those

technologies).[60]

The way solitary diversions such as scrolling or surfing reduce social

connection is clear: you do them instead of interacting. Virtual

communications such as texting are by design interactive and should

theoretically be less harmful; the problem is that with these technologies,

we lose dimensionality. Text messages can’t convey emotion well, because

we can’t hear or see our interlocutors; the same goes for DMs on social

media. (More often, social media is used not to communicate with one

individual but to broadcast to a larger audience.) These technologies are to

in-person interactions what a black-and-white, pixelated version of the

Mona Lisa is to the real thing: identifiable, but incapable of producing the

same emotional effects.

With low-dimensionality communications, we tend to hop from person

to person and thus swap depth for breadth. That’s why face-to-face

conversations tend to be more expansive than those conducted over text.

Research has shown that deeper conversations bring more well-being than

short communications.[61] Meanwhile, in a recent longitudinal study, teens

who texted more often than their peers tended to experience more

depression, more anxiety, more aggression, and poorer relationships with

their parents.[62]

It might seem strange that, even outside the circumstances imposed by

the pandemic, we would voluntarily adopt technologies that hurt our

happiness. There are two major explanations: convenience and presumed

courtesy. Vegetating in front of a screen (which nine in ten American

teenagers say they do to “pass time”) is simply easier than talking with a

friend, and virtual communications such as texting are faster and easier than

a visit or a phone call.[63] Think of these technologies as grab-and-go food at

a convenience store: it’s not great, but it sure is easy—and after you eat

enough microwave burritos, you forget what the real thing tastes like.

Rena’s formative childhood experiment made her think deeply about the

internet’s effects and has had a lifelong impact on her use of technology.

She had a Facebook account in college but deleted it after graduating, and

she’s never gone back. She avoids other social media networks, and her

children have no internet presence. Her work today—which includes, by the

way, serving as a research assistant for this book—has a virtual element, but

she prefers to go to the office when possible.

By today’s standards, her life might sound old-fashioned. Her daughter

knocks on neighbors’ doors to visit. The family sits on their stoop after

dinner, chatting among themselves and with passersby. She writes and

sends letters. When she does use technology, it’s as a complement to her

friendships, not a substitute for them; she maintains a parent text group, for

example, but only to set up in-person activities.

For most of us, especially people who grew up with it, the internet is an

unquestioned part of the ecosystem of life, seeping into every crack and

crevice independent of any conscious decision on our part. We’re not going

back to life before this kind of technology, of course. We can and should,

however, use it mindfully in service of love and friendship. Here are two

ways to do so.

First, choose interaction over vegetation. There is nothing revolutionary

about this rule—forty-five years ago, kids were told by their parents to go

outside with their friends instead of watching television. The difference

now, besides the fact that the television didn’t fit in my pocket, is empirical

evidence: today, we know that, in excess, solitary and screen-based

diversion lowers happiness and can lead to mood disorders such as

depression and anxiety.[64]

To knock you out of suboptimal habits, make use of device options that

inform you of the time you are spending on social media and the internet,

and limit yourself to an hour a day or less. Another popular approach,

which has not yet been tested in academic research, is turning your devices

from color to grayscale.[65]

Second, create a communication hierarchy. It’s unreasonable to expect

anyone to stop texting, but you can turn to it less if you have an “order of

operations” in place for talking with your friends and loved ones. When

possible, make an effort to meet in person—especially with your intimates.

A 2021 study revealed that the more face-to-face communication people

had with others, the more understood they felt and the more satisfied they

were with their relationship.[66] When meeting up is impossible, use face-to-

face technology or the phone. Text or use similar technology for only

impersonal or urgent matters.

THE BLISSFUL WORK OF FRIENDSHIP

Friendship is incorrectly seen by many people as something that just

occurs naturally, without conscious effort or work. This is false; like

everything else important, friendship requires attention and work. It must be

built on purpose. The big challenges we have covered in this chapter can

become opportunities by remembering five lessons.

1. Don’t let an introverted personality or a fear of rejection block

your ability to make friends, and don’t let extroversion prevent you

from going deep.

2. Friendship is ruined when we look for people who are useful to

us for reasons other than friendship itself. Build links that are based on

love and enjoyment of another’s company, not what she or he can do

for you professionally or socially.

3. Too many deep friendships today are spoiled by differences of

opinion. Love for others can be enhanced, not harmed, by differences,

if we elect to show humility instead of pride—and the happiness

benefits are enormous.

4. The goal for long-term romance is a special kind of friendship,

not undying passion. Companionate love is based on trust and mutual

affection, and is what old people who still love each other talk about.

5. Real friendship requires real contact. Technology can

complement your deepest relationships, but it is a terrible substitute.

Look for more ways to be together in person with the people you love

the most.

The first two pillars on which to build a happier life—family and

friendship—require a lot of time and commitment. For many people,

however, a lot more time is spent doing something else: working. If you

work forty hours a week and commute on top of that, this might be the

single most time-consuming activity in your life. With this kind of

investment, even if it is less important to you than your family and friend

relationships, happiness will be hard to increase if work is a source of

misery.

But “not being a source of misery” is hardly the kind of goal we should

shoot for—we can and should do much better. Work should bring happiness

benefits beyond just giving us the resources we need to survive and support

our families. And that is our next topic: making earning our daily bread a

source of joy.

Seven

Work That Is Love Made Visible

The third pillar for building a happier life is meaningful work.

Hundreds of studies have shown that job satisfaction and life satisfaction

are positively related, and causal: liking your job causes you to be happier

all around.[1] Engaging in work with your whole heart is one of the best

ways to enjoy your days, get satisfaction from your accomplishments, and

see meaning in your efforts. Work, at its best, is “love made visible,” in the

elegant words of the Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran.[2]

That’s the good news. It’s also the bad news. When your work is

drudgery, it is bereft of love, and can make life a task. There’s no joy in

dragging yourself out of bed in the morning to go to a job you hate—where

you feel helpless, bored, or unappreciated. Some jobs really are objectively

miserable. And striving simply to squeeze by financially is stressful under

the best of circumstances. But for most people, when they learn that getting

happier starts within, they can make work less stressful, more joyful, and a

source of personal growth.

It would be convenient if we could tell you exactly what the right job is

to do that, and how to get it. But work that raises your happiness does not

mean finding a specific job with a lot of prestige or income (although we all

have to make enough money to get by). You can love or hate being a

lawyer, an electrician, a homemaker, or a full-time volunteer. Researchers

who have looked for clear relationships between job satisfaction and the

actual type of job one holds have overwhelmingly struck out. In a 2018

survey, the “happiest jobs” had nothing in common: teaching assistant,

quality-assurance analyst, net developer, and marketing specialist.[3] The

unhappiest jobs are similarly grab-baggy, and fairly unrelated to education

and income: accountant, security guard, cashier, and supervisor.

Consider the following two cases that illustrate that happiness depends

on you, not your specific job.

Stephanie’s dream since college was to lead the top company in her

industry as CEO. She worked and strove, and in her midforties, she made it

to the corner office. And when she made it, she succeeded spectacularly in

the job. She took her company to new heights financially and was popular

internally. She got positive press for her leadership, and she made good

money.

“I got the brass ring,” she said, “and I’m proud of that.” But there were

sacrifices. “I missed a lot of my kids’ childhood,” she admitted. “And it

hurt my marriage a lot to be gone so much of the time.” She also conceded

that while she knew a huge number of people and had hundreds of friends,

none of them were real friends—mostly just clients and colleagues.

After more than a decade of bone-crushing work and top performance,

Stephanie was exhausted. Her board and employees would have gladly seen

her stay many more years—after all, things were going great for the

company—but being honest with herself, she had to conclude that her life

simply wasn’t passing the cost-benefit test for happiness. There were nice

times, but they were smothered in stress. And she felt profoundly alone.

Even the legacy Stephanie thought she was building was an illusion.

She went back to visit her company a few months after resigning, walking

into an opulent headquarters erected during her tenure, and it was as if she

had been erased. There was no bad blood, just . . . forward motion. The new

CEO was traveling the same routes she had, meeting the same clients, doing

the same deals. Her old colleagues were cordial and friendly, but almost no

one was especially interested in what she was up to now. “Why would they

be?” she asked rhetorically. Today, she is retired from executive work at

fifty-nine, congratulated by all for her “success,” but still looking for

something to help make her feel fully alive.

Now consider Alex. His dreams were more modest than Stephanie’s. He

was raised in a middle-class family with middle-class expectations: he

would get decent grades, go to a state university, and start a career that

offered security—a plausible and rational formula to live a good life. For

some reason, that formula never fit Alex, though. He was a solid B student

in high school but was never sparked by any of his classes. He went right to

college, where he studied accounting, but for him, that was sheer drudgery.

After college, Alex landed a job in the accounting office of a

manufacturing company in his hometown. He worked there for a year and

then moved to another job that paid slightly more. Over the next two

decades he traded up every few years, and by his midforties was making a

decent (but not spectacular) living. The bright spot in his life was his family

and friends. He was happily married, had three kids, and had close friends

from high school whom he saw most weekends. He also loved cars and

enjoyed keeping his in immaculate condition.

Alex says that during this period, he figured that everyone disliked work

and did it only out of sheer necessity. Every day at the office was a grueling

marathon for him. The paperwork bored him, and he couldn’t stand looking

out his office window at the parking lot. He was grateful for a steady job

that allowed him to help support his family, but he spent every day

watching the clock move in slow motion toward five p.m., when he could

go home.

One day, at age forty-five, Alex was complaining after dinner to his

wife for the millionth time about his job. Half listening, she asked him, “Is

there anything that you do every day that you actually enjoy?” He thought

about it, and could come up with only two amusingly mundane activities: “I

like driving to work, and I like talking to people on my breaks.”

“So why don’t you quit and become an Uber driver?” she joked. Boom.

What was meant as a joke was like Alex’s road-to-Damascus moment. He

did it, and has been driving for a living for the past five years.

“I actually work more hours and make slightly less money than I did,”

he said. “But I look forward to work. I meet new and interesting people and

get to drive all day.” He said he comes home in a good mood and never

worries about work problems. All that makes him a better husband and

father. “I am twice as happy as I used to be,” he reported.

These are both true stories, not made-up examples. Only the names and

a few details have been changed to protect the anonymity of the subjects.

Don’t misunderstand: There is nothing in these two stories to suggest

that either Stephanie or Alex got a bad deal in life or made irrational

choices. Nor is it the case that making it to CEO or driving for a living

inherently brings more happiness or unhappiness than the other. Maybe

running a company would be a blast for you, and driving others around

would be awful—or vice versa. The fanciest job can be a disappointment or

a triumph, and an “ordinary” job with moderate pay can be delightful or

terrible. The decision to stay home to raise your kids, if you can afford it,

can be wonderful—or not. Retirement can raise your happiness or lower it.

To build a career that makes you happier means understanding yourself.

It means being the boss of your own life, even if you aren’t technically the

boss at work. Doing so means managing four big challenges—which Alex

overcame, leading to much greater happiness, but Stephanie didn’t.

Challenge 1

CAREER GOALS

You might be a person who absolutely loves her or his work, has a

completely healthy work-life balance, and can’t think of anything that could

make this part of life better. Wait . . . you’re not?

In truth, most people are more or less OK with their jobs, but don’t see

them as an enormous source of satisfaction. They don’t know how to make

things a lot better, though, and thus leave this part of life “good enough.” In

2022, for example, just 16 percent of employees were “very satisfied” with

their work.[4] Thirty-seven percent were “somewhat satisfied.” Everyone

else said they were “somewhat dissatisfied” or “very dissatisfied,” or said,

“I am just glad to have a job.” How would you answer?

The way to make this better, like Alex did, is to start by clarifying your

goals. If your answer to the preceding question was “I am just glad to have

a job,” you might be motivated by trying to avoid unemployment, the threat

of which is one of the biggest sources of unhappiness people can face.

American adults who reported that they were “very” or “fairly” likely to

lose their job in 2018 were more than three times as likely to say they were

“not too happy” with their life as people who felt they were “not likely” to

be let go.[5] In 2014, economists found that a one-percentage-point increase

in unemployment lowers national well-being by more than five times as

much as a one-point increase in the inflation rate.[6]

If you aren’t in real danger of unemployment, you can set your sights

higher. As social scientists would note, while pay and benefits are

necessary, they aren’t sufficient. Pay and benefits are like eating and

sleeping are for your health. You absolutely need them, and if you mess

around with them too much, bad things will happen, but if you make these

things your only focus, you will wind up unhealthy and unhappy.

Your pay and benefits are what are called extrinsic rewards. These come

from the outside. If you are someone who has a high-power, high-prestige

job, that would also fall into this category. Meanwhile, your job also has

intrinsic rewards, which come from inside you—the inherent fulfillment

and enjoyment you get when you do your work. You need extrinsic rewards

to get by, but you need intrinsic rewards to get happier.

In a classic 1973 study on extrinsic and intrinsic rewards, researchers at

Stanford and the University of Michigan allowed a group of kids to choose

their preferred play activities—for example, drawing with markers—which

they happily did for fun (intrinsic rewards).[7] The kids were later rewarded

for that activity with a certificate featuring a gold seal and a ribbon

(extrinsic rewards). The researchers found that after they had been given the

certificate, the children became only about half as likely to want to draw as

when they weren’t offered one. Over the following decades, many studies

have shown the same pattern for a wide variety of activities, across many

demographic groups.[8]

We humans have a funny tendency to value what we are doing in terms

of what people are giving us to do it. If someone pays us, it must be onerous

—otherwise they wouldn’t need to. That’s why the satisfaction in the

experiments falls when the scientists introduce compensation. This is

obviously not to say that we should all work for free; rather, it is simply to

point out that for happiness, our goals shouldn’t be just to maximize

extrinsic rewards. We should also consciously keep intrinsic goals front and

center.

So how do we set goals to achieve intrinsic rewards at work while we

make a living? One answer might be to try and find a job that follows the

advice of commencement speakers, who always seem to say, “Find a job

you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” This sounds like the

right intrinsic reward is to have a job that is a total blast every day.

We’ve never seen that job in real life. Furthermore, you might be a little

suspicious of that advice, given that it always seems to come from

unbelievably successful people, who, if you look into their backgrounds,

absolutely killed themselves early in their careers, often paying an

enormous personal price in their relationships to get to the top. They

certainly didn’t take their own advice.

Obviously, you shouldn’t sign up for something you hate, but the right

intrinsic reward isn’t “super fun every day.” Looking for that will put you

on another El Dorado quest for something that doesn’t exist, and lead to

frustration. Rather than relentlessly pursuing a “perfect match” career, a

better approach is to remain flexible on the exact job, while searching for

two big things.

The first is earned success. You can think of it as the opposite of learned

helplessness, a term coined by the psychologist Martin Seligman to denote

the resignation that people experience when they repeatedly endure

unpleasant situations beyond their control.[9] Earned success instead gives

you a sense of accomplishment and professional efficacy (the idea that you

are effective in your job, which pushes up commitment to your occupation,

which is also a good measure of job satisfaction).[10]

The best way to enjoy earned success is to find ways to get better at

your job, whether that leads to promotions and higher pay or not.

Obviously, having work where extrinsic rewards follow is great. Employers

who give clear guidance and feedback, reward merit, and encourage their

employees to develop new skills are the best employers. Even if you aren’t

in a job with that kind of extrinsic reward, set excellence goals for yourself,

such as “I will make each of my customers feel special today.”

And this leads to the second, related intrinsic goal, which is service to

others—the sense that your job is making the world a better place. That

doesn’t mean you need to volunteer or work for a charity to be happy

(research has shown that nonprofit work is not more inherently satisfying

than working for a for-profit or for the government).[11] On the contrary, you

can find service in almost any job.

One young man made this point perfectly, in an op-ed he wrote to

explain why, despite holding an MBA, he had chosen to become a waiter in

a restaurant in Barcelona.[12] As he put it, his customers “are all important

and equal. They are the same at the table and must be the same in the eyes

of the waiter. . . . It’s great to be able to serve the politician on the front

page of the newspaper just as well as the kid browsing the news while

waiting for his girlfriend.” This young man needed extrinsic rewards to

make a living, but he didn’t choose to maximize them to the exclusion of

his intrinsic rewards.

Earned success and service to others are easier in some jobs than in

others. If, for example, you are in a profession you think is hurting others,

service will be hard to achieve. That’s why a good rule of thumb is to look

for a fundamental match between an employer’s values and your own.

When people believe in the mission of their employer, they have a lot of

intrinsic motivation for their work.[13] This is especially true when the

values have special moral, philosophical, or spiritual significance, and it

holds even when a job is exhausting and hard. For example, a 2012 study

on nurses found that the happiest ones believed their work was “a divine

profession and a tool by which they could gain spiritual pleasure and

satisfaction.”[14]

We know perfectly well that these goals aren’t always easy, and even in

the best cases, they can be very elusive on certain days. Even if you find the

employer you believe in, that rewards your merit, and where you are

serving people all day, you will come home from work some days

unfulfilled and frustrated. Think of it like being in a sailboat. You know the

wind will blow you off course pretty regularly, but if you have the right

coordinates, you will always be able to reorient yourself.

Challenge 2

CAREER PATH

Relying on extrinsic rewards lowers satisfaction. It can even lock you

into the wrong career trajectory for decades to come. This is because it

makes you pursue a career path that is wrong for you.

Whether you make a lot of money or just a little, the world tells you that

there is really just one responsible type of career path: you select a career,

you find a job, and you change jobs only when something better in your

field comes along. Let’s say you come out of high school and take a job as a

receptionist at a law firm. You don’t just walk away when it’s boring or

stressful; you stay with it until someone hires you away with a better job.

It’s the same system whether you are a college professor or a talk show

host. You stay with one job until something fancier that pays better comes

along. This is what psychologists call the “linear” career model.[15]

It makes a lot of sense for some people, but it is a huge problem for

others. Maybe you have a lot of different interests that you would like to

pursue, and you think going back to school for a new career would be

interesting and fun. Or you highly value a lifestyle where you’re good at

what you do, but you do not want to work long hours, even if that means

not advancing in your career. A linear path doesn’t allow for these

preferences. Maybe you are a highly educated woman with a great job, but

you want to stay home when your kids are born. The linear career says,

“Sorry, you can’t do that.”

Fortunately, there are three other career models. “Steady-state” careers

are those that are associated with one job over decades, where one doesn’t

advance much but increases in expertise. This is common for people who

value job security a lot but don’t want to bust their hump every day to get

ahead. This was much more common in the past than it is today. However,

it might be right for you if you really love stability and want a job that,

while it doesn’t make you rich, is financially secure and allows you to

spend your life on things you care a lot about outside work.

Another model is the “transitory” career, which jumps around all over

the place. From the outside it looks chaotic: You were waiting tables in

Denver, and now you are working for a moving company in Tucson. In a

few years you might be driving a long-haul truck out of Seattle. This isn’t

chaos, however; it is the profile of someone who loves trying new things,

and who moves around based on non-job criteria, such as lifestyle, location,

or social life.

“Spiral” careers are the last category. This is like a series of smaller

careers. People in this model might make a pretty dramatic career shift

every decade or so, but there is a method to the madness. They are using

their skills and knowledge in one field and applying it to another, while

getting a variety of experiences for their own fulfillment. So, for example,

you might work out of college for a decade doing something connected to

what you studied. Then, you might decrease your pay by using your skills

in another field. Or you might start your own business. Or maybe you take

ten years away from the workforce to raise your children, and return to

something completely different.

So, you might be asking, which is the right path for you? In your heart,

you probably know already. One of the models we just described made you

feel excited and maybe a little scared. Another deadened you inside. And in

general, this is the way to know how to proceed along the professional path

of your life. Always follow the signals that you yourself are producing

internally—and that may be uncomfortable. When you are thinking about a

professional opportunity, take some quiet time over a few days or weeks to

imagine the job or career in detail. Then, discern how it makes you feel.

Does this opportunity excite you, frighten you, or deaden you?

Say, for example, you are offered a job in the management of your

company. You enjoy your current job and like your colleagues, and worry

that a big promotion will make you enjoy your work less and hurt your

work-life balance. But it is a great opportunity, and significantly more

money. Almost everyone is encouraging you to take it. If it excites you a lot

and frightens you a little, this is a signal to move forward. If it simply

frightens you, you need a lot more information. If it deadens you when you

imagine doing the new job, the answer is clear: turn it down.

Challenge 3

ADDICTION

If you have figured out the right objectives and found your professional

path, congratulations—but you aren’t yet in the clear in building this part of

your life. In fact, there are a number of hazards you need to be aware of that

specifically afflict hardworking people of high ambition. The first is the

tendency toward workaholism, which people engage in to distract

themselves from pain in their lives. This leaves the root problems

unaddressed, and even makes them worse by harming family relationships.

Consider the case of Winston Churchill, the statesman, soldier, and

writer. He was one of the first world leaders to sound the alarm about the

Nazi menace in the 1930s, and then he captivated the global imagination as

a leader against the Axis powers in World War II. While prime minister of

the United Kingdom during the war, he kept a crushing schedule, often

spending eighteen hours a day at work. On top of this, he wrote book after

book while in office. By the end of his life, he had finished forty-three,

filling seventy-two volumes.[16]

You probably admire Churchill, and for good reason, but you shouldn’t

envy him. He suffered from crippling depression, which he called his

“black dog” and which visited him again and again. He once told his doctor,

“I don’t like to stand by the side of a ship and look down into the water. A

second’s action would end everything.”[17]

It seems almost unbelievable that Churchill could be so productive

while in such a dark place. Some say his depression was bipolar, and

windows of mania allowed him to work as much as he did. A few of his

biographers explain it differently: Churchill’s workaholism wasn’t in spite

of his suffering, but in part because of it.[18] He distracted himself from his

problems with work. Lest you think this far-fetched, researchers today find

that workaholism is a common addiction in response to emotional distress.

And like so many addictions, it worsens the situation it’s meant to alleviate.

In 2018, researchers analyzed a decade’s worth of data and found that

24 percent of people with an anxiety disorder and nearly 22 percent of

people with a mood disorder (such as major depression or bipolar disorder)

self-medicate using alcohol or drugs.[19] Self-medicators were far more

likely to develop substance dependence. For example, epidemiological data

revealed that people who self-medicated for anxiety using alcohol were

more than six times as likely to develop persistent alcohol dependence as

those who didn’t self-medicate.[20]

There is compelling evidence that some people treat their emotional

problems with work as well. This can lead to its own kind of addiction.

Many studies have shown a strong association between workaholism and

the symptoms of psychiatric disorders, such as anxiety and depression, and

it has been common to assume that compulsive work leads to these

maladies.[21] But some psychologists have recently argued reverse causation

—that people may treat their depression and anxiety with workaholic

behavior.[22] As the authors of one widely reported 2016 study wrote,

“Workaholism (in some instances) develops as an attempt to reduce

uncomfortable feelings of anxiety and depression.”[23]

This might explain why so many people increased their work hours

during the COVID pandemic.[24] For many months during the initial

shutdowns, people faced boredom, loneliness, and anxiety; by late May

2020, the US Centers for Disease Control data showed that nearly a quarter

of American adults had reported symptoms of depression.[25] (In 2019, that

figure was 6.5 percent.) Perhaps a portion of workers self-treated by

doubling down on their jobs in order to feel busy and productive.

People who struggle with workaholism can easily deny that it’s a

problem, and thus miss the underlying issues they are self-treating. How

can work be bad? As the Stanford psychiatrist Anna Lembke, the author of

Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence, put it, “Even

previously healthy and adaptive behaviors—behaviors that I think we

broadly as a culture would think of as healthy, advantageous behaviors—

now have become drugified such that they are made more potent, more

accessible, more novel, more ubiquitous.”[26] If you are sneaking into the

bathroom at home to check your work email on your iPhone, she’s talking

about you.

What’s more, when it comes to work, people reward you for addictive

behavior. No one says, “Wow, an entire bottle of gin in one night? You are

an outstanding drinker.” But work sixteen hours a day and you’ll probably

get a promotion.

Despite the extolled virtues of maximum work, the costs will almost

certainly outrun the benefits, as they usually do in self-medicating

addictions. The burnout, depression, job stress, and work-life conflict will

get worse, not better.[27] And as Lembke also noted, workaholism can lead

to secondary addictions, such as to drugs, alcohol, or pornography, which

people use to self-medicate for the problems caused by the primary

addiction, often with catastrophic personal consequences.

There are solutions to work addiction, according to Harvard professor

Ashley Whillans.[28] She recommends three practices, starting with a “time

audit.” For a few days, keep a careful log of your major activities—work,

leisure, running errands—as well as how long you spent on each one and

how you felt. Note the activities that bring you the most positive mood and

meaning. This will give you two pieces of information: how much you are

working (to make denial impossible), and what you like to do when you

aren’t working (to make recovery more attractive).

Next, Professor Whillans recommends scheduling your downtime.

Workaholics tend to marginalize nonwork activities as “nice to have,” and

thus crowd them out with work. This is how the fourteenth hour of work,

which is rarely productive, displaces an hour you might have spent with

your children. Block off time in your day for nonwork activities, just as you

do for meetings.

Finally, program your leisure. Don’t leave those downtime slots too

loose. Unstructured time is an invitation to turn back to work, or to passive

activities that aren’t great for well-being, such as scrolling social media or

watching television. You probably have a to-do list that is organized in

priority order. Do the same with your leisure, planning active pastimes you

value. If you enjoy calling your friend, don’t leave it for when you happen

to have time—schedule it and stick to the plan. Treat your walks, prayer

time, and gym sessions as if they were meetings with the president.

Dealing with a work addiction can make a real difference in our lives. It

opens up time for family and friends. It allows nonwork pastimes that are

not useful, just fun. It enables us to take better care of ourselves, for

example, by exercising. All of these things have been shown to raise

happiness or lower unhappiness.

Addressing workaholism still leaves the underlying issue that working

so hard was meant to treat. Perhaps you, too, are visited by Churchill’s

black dog. Or maybe your dog is a different color: a troubled marriage; a

chronic sense of inadequacy; maybe even ADHD or obsessive-compulsive

disorder, which have been linked to overwork.[29] Ceasing to use work to

distract yourself from that is an opportunity to face your troubles, perhaps

with help, and thus solve the problem that got you hooked on excessive

work in the first place.

Facing the dog might seem scarier than simply turning to the old

dogcatchers: your boss, your colleagues, your career. Unlike Churchill, you

might just find a way to get rid of that mutt for good.

Challenge 4

IDENTITY

If you are on a linear, steady-state, transitory, or spiral career path, the

odds are that you care a lot about your work. When people ask you what

you do, you enthusiastically tell them about your profession. In many ways,

your job is a huge part of your identity. This tends to be particularly true for

people interested in self-improvement.

There’s nothing wrong with identifying strongly with your profession

and being proud of your work. Professional excellence is a great virtue, and

we have sought mightily to be excellent in what we do for a living, too. But

there’s a danger lurking here. It is all too easy to lose your true self to a

representation of yourself that is your job title or duties. You aren’t Mary,

mother of three, or John, devoted husband; first and foremost you are Mary,

regional manager, or John, senior teacher. This is what is called self-

objectification.

Objectification of other people is obviously problematic. Research

shows that when people are reduced by others to, for example, physical

attributes through objectifying stares or harassment, it can lower self-

confidence and ability in tasks.[30] The philosopher Immanuel Kant referred

to this as becoming “an Object of appetite for another,” at which point “all

motives of moral relationship cease to function.”[31]

Physical objectification is just one type. Objectification at work is

another, and an especially dangerous one. In 2021, researchers measured

workplace objectification. They found that it led to burnout, unhappiness

with one’s job, and depression.[32] This can happen if a boss treats her

employees like nothing more than disposable labor, or even if employees

see their boss as nothing more than a provider of money.

So it’s pretty easy to see why we shouldn’t objectify others. Less

obvious but equally damaging is when the objectifier and the person being

objectified are one and the same—when you objectify yourself. Humans are

capable of objectifying themselves in many ways—by assessing their self-

worth in terms of their physical appearance, economic position, or political

views, for example—but all of them boil down to one damaging core act:

reducing your own humanity to a single characteristic, thus encouraging

others to do so as well. In the case of work, that might mean deciding on

your own self-worth based on your pay or prestige.

Just as social media encourages us to self-objectify physically, our work

culture pushes us to self-objectify professionally. Americans tend to admire

people who are busy and ambitious, so letting work take over virtually

every moment of your life is easy. We know many people who talk of

almost nothing besides their work, who are saying, essentially, “I am my

job.” This may feel more humanizing and empowering than saying, “I am

my boss’s tool,” but that reasoning has a fatal flaw: In theory, you can ditch

your boss and get a new job. You can’t ditch you. Remember: You are your

own CEO.

Self-objectification at work is a tyranny. We become a terrible boss to

ourselves, with little mercy or love. Days off provoke guilt and a sense of

laziness, which is a way we condemn and belittle ourselves. To the question

“Am I successful enough yet?” the answer is always “No—work harder!”

And then, when the end inevitably comes, when professional decline sets in

or we have a setback to our careers, we are left bereft and desiccated.

Are you a self-objectifier in your job or career? If you answered

affirmatively, recognize that you will never be satisfied as long as you

objectify yourself. Your career or job should be an extension of you, not

vice versa. Two practices can help as you reassess your priorities.

First, put some space between your job and your life. Maybe you have

been in an unhealthy relationship or two in your life but only recognized

this when you had a break from it, whether voluntary or involuntary.

Indeed, this human tendency probably contributes to the fact that most trial

separations lead to divorce, especially when they last more than a year.[33]

Space provides perspective.

Use this principle in your professional life. To begin with, the main goal

of your vacation should be to get a break from work and spend time with

people you love. As obvious as this may sound, that means taking your

vacation, and not working during it at all. Your employer should thank you

for doing so, because people are better workers when they are refreshed.

Related to this is the ancient idea of Sabbath-keeping, or taking regular

time away from work each week. In religious traditions, rest isn’t just nice

to have; it is central to understanding God and ourselves. “For in six days

the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested

on the seventh day,” the book of Exodus instructs. “Therefore the Lord

blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” If God rests from work, maybe

you should, too.

Such a practice doesn’t have to be religious, and it can be done in a lot

of ways besides simply avoiding all work on Saturday or Sunday.[34] For

example, you can take a small Sabbath each evening by avoiding work and

dedicating all your activity to relationships and leisure. (That means no

checking your work email.)

Make some friends who don’t see you as a professional object. Many

professional self-objectifiers seek out others who admire them solely for

their work accomplishments. This is quite natural, but it can easily become

a barrier to the formation of real friendships, which we all need. By self-

objectifying in your friendships, you can make it easier for your friends to

objectify you.

This is why having friends outside your professional circles is so

important. Striking up friendships with people who don’t have any

connection to your professional life encourages you to develop nonwork

interests and virtues, and thus be a fuller person. The way to do this goes

hand in hand with recommendation number one: Don’t just spend time

away from work; spend it with people who have no connection to your

work. (If your job is taking care of your family, this principle still applies.

You need to have relationships with people who see you as more than a

provider and caretaker.)

Maybe challenging your self-objectification makes you feel uneasy. The

reason is simple: we all want to stand out in some way, and working harder

than others and being better at our jobs seems a straightforward way to do

so. This is a normal human drive, but it can nonetheless lead to destructive

ends.[35] Many successful people confess that they would rather be special

than happy.[36]

The great irony is that by trying to be special, we end up reducing

ourselves to a single quality and turning ourselves into cogs in a machine of

our own making. In the famous Greek myth, Narcissus fell in love not with

himself, but with the image of himself. And so it is when we professionally

self-objectify: we learn to love the image of our successful selves, not

ourselves as we truly are in life.

Don’t make this mistake. You are not your job, and we are not ours.

Take your eyes off the distorted reflection, and have the courage to

experience your full life and true self.

LOVE MADE VISIBLE

When it comes to building the life you want, you need to get the work

part of your life right. Think about it: probably a third of your life will be

spent working—whether that is formal employment, taking care of your

family, or some other arrangement.

As you examine your vocation and contemplate changes, keep in mind

the four challenges in this chapter, and the lessons that help you turn them

into great opportunities to grow in happiness.

1. 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. Seek these and you will

build a work life that consistently brings joy to you and others.

2. There is not just one path to career success and happiness.

Figure out if you are linear, steady state, transitory, or spiral. Then

pursue that path by paying attention to your internal signals.

3. Work addiction is no joke for many millions of Americans and

others all around the world. Look honestly at your own patterns and

assess the health of your habits.

4. You are not your job. Self-objectification will lead to

unhappiness. Make sure you get space from your work, and have

people in your life who see you as a person, not as just a professional.

Once again, we simply cannot tell anyone what specific job will bring

the greatest happiness. It depends on you. What all happy jobs have in

common is that for you, the work is something better than just a means to a

physical end. That is why we titled this chapter “Work That Is Love Made

Visible.”

This can be a tall order. There are days when your work doesn’t feel like

love made visible, invisible, or anything else. The trick isn’t arriving at

some far-off state of perfection, it is working toward getting better. To get

happier, you strive toward the goal of making your work meaningful.

For people of a spiritual or religious inclination, the trick can be to join

your physical labor to the metaphysical. This was the fundamental

philosophy of the Spanish Catholic saint Josemaría Escrivá. As he argued,

through our work we passionately love the world:

[God] waits for us every day, in the laboratory, in the operating

theatre, in the army barracks, in the university chair, in the factory, in

the workshop, in the fields, in the home and in all the immense

panorama of work. Understand this well: there is something holy,

something divine hidden in the most ordinary situations, and it is up to

each one of you to discover it.[37]

Perhaps you read these words and marvel that anyone could find

sacredness in the mundanity of a job like yours—or any part of ordinary

life. It can be done, and you can do it, whether you are traditionally

religious or not. But that requires an understanding of the next pillar for

building the life you want: finding your path to the transcendent.

Eight

Find Your Amazing Grace

Amazing Grace” is the most popular Christian hymn ever written, and has been recorded

more than seven thousand times.[1] You certainly know the tune, and probably even the words of

the first verse by heart.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me

I once was lost, but now I’m found

Was blind but now I see.

What you may not know is the story behind this famous hymn, written around 1772 by a

British man by the name of John Newton. Newton was forty-seven when he wrote it, after

having led a life—as he later characterized it—of dissipation and sin, bereft of religious

conviction and moral principles.[2] He made his living transporting enslaved people, after having

himself fled forced enlistment in the British Royal Navy.

One night when Newton was aboard a ship returning to London, a storm broke out that swept

many of his mates out to sea and nearly did the same to him. Later, pondering the reason for his

survival, he concluded it was the hand of God, that there was a plan for his life, and his job was

to discover it. His habits and beliefs changed as he turned his focus to divine love. He married,

and he ultimately became a clergyman and an ardent abolitionist against slavery. Today he is

considered one of the people most responsible for the legal end of that institution in Britain.

Newton’s faith was, he believed, what made him truly free for the first time in his life. He

certainly isn’t the first person to assert this. However, his famous hymn makes two striking

claims. First, he didn’t find his faith; he was found. And his happiness didn’t come from

blocking out the truths of life. On the contrary, his happiness came only when he was able to

finally see the truth.

Here’s the bold claim made in that famous hymn: a search for transcendent truth—in

Newton’s case, in the Christian religion; more broadly, in something beyond the here and now—

illuminates life. It allows you to actually see reality. And this leads to a new kind of joy

unavailable from any other source.

How absurd, some might respond. To see reality, we should focus on the unseen and

unproven? Reason requires faith? This is like saying that fire requires water, or light requires

darkness.

In fact, the science is crystal clear. Transcendental beliefs and experiences aid dramatically in

our efforts to get happier. Why? Left to our devices, we always focus on the details of our

individual lives. This is only natural. Our attention is occupied by our job, our home, our money,

our social media accounts, our lunch, and on and on. Most of this is not unimportant, but if we

focus only on ourselves and our narrow interests, it gets, well, tedious. We lose a perspective on

life.

Following a metaphysical path allows us to get a more accurate perspective on life by

zooming out on our quotidian worries and everyday cares. It makes us happier by taking the

focus off ourselves and putting it instead on the majesties of the universe. It also makes us kinder

and more generous toward others—less obsessed with getting and keeping things for ourselves

and more in tune with the needs of a world in which we are but one part. Most important, the

path of transcendence is an adventure, a spiritual expedition that can add a kind of excitement to

our lives beyond anything else we have ever experienced.

But the world—and our emotions—holds us back. People are shamed by the claim that the

interior life is unscientific, that the lack of proof of things unseen is evidence that transcendental

beliefs are nothing more than a form of superstition. They wither under a culture that denigrates

faith and spirituality at every turn. And they find their own doubts overwhelming—they just

don’t feel it often enough, and conclude that it is silly.

In truth, as you will see in this chapter, spiritual experiences have a deep scientific basis to

them, and transcendental experiences provide us with important information about life we

cannot get in any other way. Getting these experiences, however, takes effort and commitment.

The challenges we all generally face in doing so—and the solutions—make up this chapter.

Writing about Faith Is Tricky

For the two of us, spirituality and faith are central to our lives. We have no intention in this

chapter of trying to convert you to any specific beliefs, including our own, but we should begin

by disclosing what we believe so you can read this chapter with this information in mind.

Arthur: My faith is the most important part of my life. I was raised as a Protestant, but

converted to Catholicism as a teenager, after having a mystical experience at the Shrine of Our

Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. (My parents weren’t thrilled, but figured that as adolescent

rebellion goes, that was probably better than drugs.) My practice has steadily grown over my

adulthood, especially as I have specialized in studying happiness. Today, I attend Mass daily and

pray the rosary—an ancient Catholic meditative prayer—each evening with my wife, Ester.

Despite my deep Christian beliefs and practices, I am a serious student of other traditions in

both the West and the East, and am close with leaders of many faiths. I have worked with Hindu,

Buddhist, Muslim, and Jewish scholars who have brought me closer to God, taught me many

truths, improved my faith practices, and enriched my soul. I have also taken a great deal into my

beliefs from secular philosophies such as Stoicism.

Oprah: I have been guided by a divine hand my whole life. I call that hand God. I practice

and honor the Christian faith but remain open to the mystery of all connections, to the oneness

we all share coming from the source of all existence. In the words of the theologian and

philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, I believe we’re spiritual beings having this human

experience, and we’re all somehow linked to each other in nature, in what I think of as Life.

On my Super Soul television show and podcasts, I’ve interviewed hundreds of spiritual

teachers and thought leaders from every religion and no religion, and they all emphasize that the

spiritual path is the ultimate journey. What I’ve observed over thousands of conversations is that

Life is always speaking to us, trying to urge us toward the best version of ourselves. For me,

having a spiritual practice has provided an accelerated route to building the life I want.

We both have tremendous love and appreciation for people of all faiths—and no faith—who

are sincerely trying to lift others up and make the world better for all people. Again, our

objective in this chapter is not to convince you of the rightness of our specific beliefs and

practices. Rather, it is to show you how pursuing insight into the transcendent and metaphysical

aspects of your life can enrich your existence immeasurably, and help others as well.

YOUR SPIRITUAL BRAIN

Why do religious and spiritual people practice? Ask them and they will rarely say, “So I can

be happier.” Rather, they will most likely tell you, like John Newton, that it allows them to make

sense of their lives in a confusing world. They have found that insight is not available through

their ordinary routines, or through worldly distractions such as entertainment and consumption.

Many seek a source of experiences that are “bigger” than what daily life can provide, such as a

sense of awe, a feeling of oneness with others or the divine, and a loss of the boundaries of space

and time.

This is not all fun and games. People report intense discomfort when adopting a

transcendental practice because it shines a bright light on themselves. Beginning meditators have

often never been alone with their thoughts. Converts to many religions must confront their sins.

Studying the philosophers and applying their insights to life involves fear and sacrifice. To

follow almost any spiritual practice is to say, “I am going to admit I don’t know everything and

do this hard thing that the world says is weird and silly.”

The result tends to be life-changing, starting with our physiology. The psychologist Lisa

Miller, author of the book The Awakened Brain, has done extensive work with her colleagues on

the neurological mechanisms of transcendent experiences. She has found, for example, that

compared with remembering a stressful experience, remembering a spiritual experience reduces

activity in the medial thalamus and caudate—the brain regions associated with sensory and

emotional processing—thus, perhaps, helping people escape the virtual prison of overthinking

and rumination.[3] By studying behavior in patients with brain lesions, other scholars have linked

self-reported spirituality to activity in the periaqueductal gray, the brain-stem region associated

with (among other things) the moderation of fear and pain, and feelings of love.[4]

Memories of especially strong spiritual encounters—such as, for example, union with God—

have been observed using electroencephalogram technology. In one experiment on Carmelite

Catholic nuns, neuroscientists in 2008 compared the sisters’ brain activity when they were

instructed to recall the most mystical experience of their lives versus when they were asked to

remember their most intense state of union with another person.[5] The mystical condition

(compared with the control condition) induced a significant increase in theta waves in the brain,

a pattern also associated with dreaming.[6] In follow-up interviews, the nuns spoke of feeling

God’s presence during the original experiences, as well as unconditional and infinite love.

Religious belief is strongly correlated with searching for—and finding—purpose in life.

Psychologists writing in 2017 measured 442 people’s stated level of religious commitment, and

found it strongly correlated with their sense of meaning.[7] Perhaps not surprisingly, given the

strong association between having a sense of meaning and happiness, religion and spirituality

have been shown to protect against depression recurrence and anxious reactions to mistakes.[8]

Researchers have shown the same pattern for physical ailments. Patients undergoing

treatment of serious illness reported better quality of life if spiritual-care professionals (such as

chaplains) were involved in their care along with doctors and nurses, compared with those

whose spiritual needs were left out of their care plans.[9]

Religion and spirituality pursued in community with others can also lower people’s sense of

isolation. This might be obvious insofar as people tend to practice religion in communities and

there is a lot of evidence that it strengthens social bonds.[10] But spirituality itself appears to

potentially lower loneliness as well. Scholars in 2019 asked 319 people to evaluate statements

such as “I have a personally meaningful relationship with God.” They found a strong negative

correlation between spiritual affirmations and loneliness, leading to higher levels of mental

health.[11]

Here’s the bottom line: spiritual, religious, and other metaphysical experiences are not an

imaginary phenomenon. They affect your brain, and give you access to insights and knowledge

you can’t get in other ways.

But doing so is filled with challenges. The three most common are our difficulty focusing,

finding our path, and holding the right motives. These are the challenges we take on in this

chapter.

Challenge 1

YOUR MONKEY MIND

One of the biggest problems with a life is that, well, we miss too much of it. Not literally, of

course, but think about it: How much of your time are you really present? We are not completely

conscious of the present moment most of the time in ordinary life. Much of our attention is on

the past and future—at the expense of being mindfully in the here and now. If you don’t believe

it, just observe your thoughts at any moment, jumping around like a crazy monkey. One minute

you are ruminating on what somebody told you last week; the next you are thinking about what

you plan to do on the weekend. In the meantime, you are missing your life right now.

Now, close your eyes in meditation or prayer. You become truly present in this moment of

your life—you are mindful. In other words, the transcendent gives you more of your life to

experience.

Yet we don’t do it very much. Humans have a remarkable ability to resist living in the

present moment. Indeed, the quintessential humanness of the mind is the ability to rerun past

events and pre-run future scenarios. This is a great blessing, of course, as it allows us to learn

maximally from our experiences and effectively practice for the future. It is also a curse. The

Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thích Nhất Hạnh explained this in his book The Miracle of

Mindfulness: “While washing the dishes, one should only be washing the dishes, which means

that while washing the dishes one should be completely aware of the fact that one is washing the

dishes.”[12] If we are thinking about the past or future, “we are not alive during the time we are

washing the dishes.”

You don’t have to be a follower of Buddhism to know that mindfulness is all the rage. Across

dozens of apps and websites, you can learn the latest techniques. Besides putting you in the here

and now, research finds that it may be a remedy for many personal problems. It has been shown

to lessen depression, lower anxiety, improve memory, and decrease back pain.[13] It can even

raise test scores.[14]

If mindfulness is so great, then why aren’t all of us practicing it every day? Why are we still

spending so much time romanticizing or regretting the past and anticipating the future? The

answer is that mindfulness is not natural, and it’s actually quite hard. Many psychologists believe

that as a species, humans are not evolved to enjoy the here and now. Rather, we are wired to

think about the past and especially the future, to consider new scenarios and try out new ideas.

The psychologist Martin Seligman goes so far as to call our species Homo prospectus, meaning

we naturally reside in the future.[15]

Avoiding mindfulness can also be an effective way to distract yourself from pain.

Researchers have shown that people’s minds are significantly more likely to wander when

they’re in a negative mood than when they’re in a positive mood.[16] Some sources of

unhappiness that lead to distraction and mind-wandering are fear, anxiety, neuroticism, and, of

course, boredom.[17] Having a negative self-perception—feeling ashamed of yourself, for

example—is also likely to lead to distraction from the here and now. Scholars have shown that

people who suffered from a lot of shame tended to mind-wander considerably more than those

who did not.[18]

If you struggle with mindfulness, two underlying problems might be to blame: you don’t

know how to be at home in your head, or you do know and have concluded that home is no fun.

If the former is what’s stopping you, then by all means, dig into the extensive and growing

technology and literature on mindfulness. You might try formal meditation or simply paying

attention more to your current surroundings.

If your problem is the latter, you need to face the source of fear and discomfort head-on.

Avoiding yourself won’t work in the long run; in fact, a lot of research shows that mind-

wandering to avoid emotions makes things worse, not better.[19] You might choose to take on the

source of your unhappiness in the here and now with professional assistance, just as you might

seek help from a counselor about a marital problem. But even just acknowledging your

uncomfortable emotions—your fear, shame, guilt, sadness, or anger—can be the beginning of

the solution, insofar as it encourages you to confront your resistance to experiencing these

feelings. It might be less unpleasant than you think.

Note that mindfulness is not the same thing as navel-gazing. To be here now does not mean

obsessing over yourself and your problems and disregarding others. Scholars have shown that

excessive self-concern can increase defensiveness and negativity.[20] Mindfulness should work

instead toward a sense of yourself as part of the wider world, and an observation of your

emotions without judgment. As you work to focus on the present, remind yourself of two things:

you are just one of eight billion human beings; and your emotions will come and go as a normal

part of being alive. The tools of metacognition discussed earlier in this book should be a big help

to you as you work to become more mindful.

There will still be times when you will be distracted—you’re only human, after all. And at

times, you might even want to do so purposively. For example, you might choose to read a

magazine while waiting at the dentist to avoid thinking about your impending root canal. The

key here is that you are making an occasional choice, meaning that you are in fact managing

your emotions, rather than allowing them to manage you. In this case, distraction is one tool in

your emotional arsenal to be used sparingly—but mindfulness should always be your default.

Challenge 2

GETTING STARTED

The most important part of starting (or supercharging) a transcendental journey is, well,

starting. People go their whole lives wishing they had faith, but not doing the work.

Enlightenment doesn’t just come, like a change in the weather. It requires serious attention. And

like anything else—going to college, getting in better physical shape—the hardest part is just

starting, which is a choice.

Here are a few ideas to help.

First, keep it simple. Good professional fitness trainers who specialize in clients who haven’t

exercised in many years (or perhaps ever) never start with a complicated battery of tests and a

step-by-step protocol of exercises. For the first few weeks, the client is encouraged to do

something easy and active for one hour a day. Usually, that means going for a walk. (More on

that in a moment.) Similarly, when people ask how to get started on a spiritual path, the best

answer is not beginning with a thirty-day silent retreat in the Himalayas, sitting in the lotus

position—the equivalent of trying to deadlift your body weight on your first visit to the gym.

Rather, it is something easy and simple—like slipping into a religious service and sitting in the

back, observing without judgment or expectation.

Second, read more. A transcendental practice requires learning. Start reading widely from

the wisdom literatures, including your own tradition, if you have one. In a similar spirit as our

last piece of advice, don’t start with the densest texts. Rather than trying to get through the

Buddha’s discourses in the original Pali or Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae, try a more

popular title on Buddhism or Christianity at your library or bookstore.[21]

Third, let go. You are committed to managing your own life. You are willing to do the work

to get happier, which is great. But this tendency might come at a cost. Specifically, you might

tend to want to control things. A need to control everything can be an impediment in your

spiritual journey, which often requires an intuitive attitude—to allow yourself, in a childlike way,

to have experiences you don’t understand, as opposed to strangling them with facts and

knowledge. There is irony in mentioning this in a book about the science of happiness, of course.

But scholars have shown that people who have a more intuitive reasoning style—who answer

questions based on “feel”—reported stronger religious beliefs than those who were more

analytical.[22] This finding was independent of differences in education, income, political views,

and intelligence. In other words, don’t rule something out just because you can’t explain it.

Maybe you have read this far and are throwing up your hands, saying, “I don’t get it. I’m just

not a spiritual person.” OK, fine. Then just do one thing: go outside and connect with the

outdoors. This is one of the most time-tested ways to have a transcendental experience.

Unfortunately, it is increasingly rare. After all, the percentage of Americans working

outdoors fell from 90 percent at the beginning of the nineteenth century to less than 20 percent at

the close of the twentieth century.[23] We show the same pattern in our pursuit of leisure:

Americans went on one billion fewer outings in nature in 2018 compared with 2008.[24] Today,

85 percent of adults say they spent more time outside when they were kids than children do

today.[25] The trend away from nature over the past few centuries, and especially the past few

decades, has straightforward explanations. To begin with, the world’s population has urbanized,

so nature is less at hand. According to US census data, 6.1 percent of the American population

resided in urban areas in 1800; in 2000, 79 percent did.[26] Second, no matter where you live,

technology is displacing the outdoors in your attention. A 2017 study noted that screen time is

rising rapidly for all age groups—adults averaged 10 hours and 39 minutes a day in 2016—even

as hunting, fishing, camping, and children’s outdoor play have declined substantially.[27]

Perhaps you are an urbanite with an indoor job, tied to your devices all day and night—and

besides walking from your house to the car or train, you haven’t spent serious time in nature in

months or even years. If so, you are probably suffering some noticeable malaise, such as stress,

anxiety, or even depression. In one study from 2015, researchers assigned people to walk in

either nature or an urban setting for fifty minutes.[28] The nature walkers had lower anxiety, better

mood, and better working memory. They were also much less likely to agree with statements

such as “I often reflect on episodes of my life that I should no longer concern myself with.”

A focus on the metaphysical makes you a lot less concerned with the opinions of others. It’s

no surprise that exposure to nature does the same thing. In 2008, researchers found that people

who walked in a city for fifteen minutes were 39 percent more likely to agree with the statement

“Right now, I am concerned about the way I present myself” than people who spent the same

amount of time walking in nature.[29]

If you still need convincing, maybe a few words from the American writer Henry David

Thoreau—who believed in the transcendental power of nature—will help. “I was walking in a

meadow, the source of a small brook, when the sun at last, just before setting, after a cold, gray

day, reached a clear stratum in the horizon,” he wrote in 1862.[30] In this ordinary experience, he

found the sublime, as if he were walking to the Holy Land—“till one day the sun shall shine

more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light

up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as on a

bankside in autumn.”

Thoreau believed that nature has powers beyond our understanding—that contact with the

earth transforms us. Modern science says he was probably right.[31] Researchers have found that

exposure to natural light (but not artificial light) synchronizes your internal circadian clock to the

rising and setting of the sun.[32] (Ditch your devices and even artificial lights for a few days and

sleeping naturally might be easier than ever.) Similarly, some small experiments have found that

when people are in physical contact with the earth in ways as simple as walking barefoot

outdoors—known as “earthing” or “grounding” the human body—their self-reported health and

mood can improve. If you want to feel better, take your shoes off and spend the day outside; it

might help.[33]

Here’s the bottom line: There are any number of ways to get started on a transcendental

journey. It doesn’t have to be complicated or esoteric; in fact, it should start modestly and

simply. Pray a little, read a little, let go, go for a walk outside without devices. The important

thing is to start.

Challenge 3

THE RIGHT FOCUS

The biggest mistake people make when seeking a spiritual path is pursuing it for their

personal ends. The earlier chapters on family and friendship pointed out a paradox: we tend to

get love most when we give it freely. Faith and spirituality feature a similar paradox. Namely,

you get the personal benefit primarily when that benefit is not the goal.

A Tibetan Buddhist monk once made this point when he gently chided many American

practitioners of Buddhism.[34] “So many American Buddhists practice in order to relieve their

personal problems,” he said. “They do not understand that the true point is to seek the truth and

relieve others of their suffering.” To be more specific, in Buddhism, the goal of the practitioner

is to be a bodhisattva—to achieve a Buddha nature and thus break out of the endless cycle of

suffering in birth and death, yet choose not to do so, so as to remain in this cycle of life to help

others achieve greater enlightenment as well.

The Japanese Zen Buddhists teach their faith using koans, or riddles to meditate on. One of

the most famous is “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” It seems like a nonsensical

question until you realize the answer: “An illusion.” One hand in a clapping movement can make

you imagine a clapping sound, but it does not make a real sound until a second hand is added.

This illustrates the Buddhist idea of emptiness—that each of us is empty of meaning until we are

in communion with others. To enjoy love, you must love others and be loved by them. That is

why a bodhisattva meditates—not to relieve his own stress and anxiety, but to focus on the stress

and anxiety of others.

This is the mystical truth behind almost all faiths and traditions. Serve the tenets of the

divine, seek the ultimate truth, and thus work to make others happier rather than yourself. Only

then will you be more successful in your own quest.

This paradox is summed up by C. S. Lewis in his famous book Mere Christianity, in his

description of a man named Dick who wants to be happy and good. “As long as Dick does not

turn to God, he thinks his niceness is his own, and just as long as he thinks that, it is not his own.

It is only when Dick realizes that his niceness is not his own but a gift from God, and when he

offers it back to God—it is just then that it begins to be really his own. For now Dick is

beginning to take a share in his own creation. The only things we can keep are the things we

freely give to God. What we try to keep for ourselves is just what we are sure to lose.”[35]

If you walk the transcendental path, you will get happier, but only if getting happier is not

your goal. Your goal must be seeking truth and the good of others.

THE WAY FORWARD

We can’t tell you what your transcendental path should be, but we can tell you that you will

build a better life if you pursue one. The science clearly shows that metaphysical experiences are

not superstitious nonsense, but rather provide a benefit to your happiness you cannot get

elsewhere. Finding and following your path presents challenges, of course, of which we have

laid out three of the biggest. Take on the following lessons using your management skills, and

you will experience the greatest gain.

1. Spiritual life can be hard because it goes against the stimuli around us that

constantly fragment our attention. We must work to be present and mindful, and we can get

better at doing so.

2. It is an error to wait around and hope that a spiritual practice finds us; that probably

won’t occur. We need to do the work to build a spiritual practice, just like anything else of

value. The most important step is the first one.

3. The focus of a faith or spiritual practice must not be primarily an inner one. The

benefit to ourselves is immense, but the motive must be a search for truth and the love of

others.

Unlike the lessons in the preceding chapters, these are harder to put into immediate practice,

with immediate results. So let’s add a fourth lesson, to usher in the first three over the coming

months and years of your life: Commit a set period of time each day to your spiritual or

philosophical life. For example, start your morning with just fifteen minutes of reading wisdom

literature and sitting in contemplation or prayer. If your house is too crazy for that, find that slot

during your lunch break or in the evening. At first, fifteen minutes will feel like a lot, but it will

get easier over time, and if you keep at it, you will want to extend it. The key to success at the

beginning, though, is consistency. Just fifteen minutes, every day.

This brings us to the end of the second phase in the plan to build the life you want. Pay

attention and manage what matters—the four fundamental pillars of family, friendship, work,

and faith—by taking on the greatest challenges to each one.

In these eight chapters, we have covered an enormous amount of knowledge, spanning

literally thousands of scientific studies. No doubt many of the lessons and concepts surprised

you. Many others you knew, but you needed to be reminded. But probably all of them made

basic sense. In general, happiness lessons should always pass the “Grandma test.” (If Grandma

would say, “That’s nonsense,” you should be very suspicious.)

The challenge now is remembering the lessons. For most people, life’s complications make it

easy to forget new ideas and slip back into old patterns. For this reason, this book finishes with a

truly surefire way to cement the principles of building your life and getting happier: become the

teacher.

A Note from Oprah

I have loved learning ever since I was a little girl. I have also loved sharing what I’ve

learned. In fact, as I write this it seems to me that knowledge is never really complete until

it’s shared.

For me, The Oprah Winfrey Show was always at heart a classroom. I was curious about

so many things, from the intricacies of the digestive system to the meaning of life. There

was so much I wanted to know, so many questions to be asked and answered—and I figured

other people were likewise curious and questioning, so I invited guests to come and be our

teachers. Of course, it turned out that many members of the audience also had wisdom to

share. So many people came to the show and shared so much.

The joy of shared knowledge also explains why I started a book club. The novels and

memoirs that mean the most to me are the ones that open my eyes to deeper truths and new

experiences, or bring meaningful ideas into sharper focus—and it’s not in my nature to keep

these truths and experiences and ideas to myself! Even as I’m reading a book I love, I’m

imagining talking about it with other people, and that only enhances my enjoyment.

The truth is, I have always felt called to be a teacher, and I say that with no hubris in

my heart. In my view, a teacher is not the one who knows everything; it’s simply the one

who shares what they’ve learned.

I have taught classes and workshops at my girls’ school in South Africa, but mostly

my role there is mentor. (Well, mentor and student. I could write a book about the tough

lessons I learned in the process of building a school. Not to mention the lessons the girls

themselves continually teach me. The sheer number of them—hundreds by now—

reinforces the lesson of detached attachment I mentioned earlier. It’s just not possible to be

invested in specific outcomes for so many girls, each of whom has her own background, her

own abilities, her own dreams and desires. My job is to open the door for them; only they

can decide what they’ll do when they walk through.)

When I’m mentoring “my girls,” I like to emphasize that success in life isn’t as much

about having the right answers as it is about asking the good questions: What does living

well mean—for me, not according to someone else’s model—and how do I do it? What is

genuinely worth striving for? What can I offer, and how can I serve? What lessons can I

glean from my experiences, especially the toughest ones? How do I make the best use of

my limited time on this earth?

It’s no coincidence that these are the very same questions Arthur Brooks has explored

in this book. They get to the heart of what it means to get happier. They acknowledge that it

is an active process, a matter not of being but of becoming. And they spotlight the most

important part of the process: your agency. They recognize that the person in control of

your happiness—your happierness—is and forever will be you.

I see myself in so much of this book. And I suspect you have seen yourself, too. Not

just the person you’ve been, but the truly happier person you can become. As I follow the

principles that Arthur presents, I am becoming happier. I’m actually having fun—a word

that previously didn’t exist in my vocabulary because I was so work-focused. Now I’m

traveling, adventuring, saying yes to new experiences—because I want to and not because I

feel obligated. And I’ve verified many times over that happiness multiplies when we share

it. I hope this book lets your sharing begin.

When you learn, teach. When you get, give.

—MAYA ANGELOU

Conclusion

Now, Become the Teacher

You picked up this book to build a happier life, and you’ve read a lot

of ideas on how to do it. To put the ideas into practice, you have to

remember them. Here’s how to do that: teach what you’ve learned to a

plastic platypus.

OK, you probably need some explanation here. There is a technique

known as “plastic platypus learning,” in which people are instructed to

explain something they have learned to any inanimate object, such as,

well . . . a plastic platypus. It could also be a rubber ducky or a bowling ball

—that isn’t the point. What the research on this technique shows is that if

you can explain something coherently, you will absorb the information and

remember it. The reason is pretty simple, and you already know it. You

need to be metacognitive with the information—to use your prefrontal

cortex—so you can understand and use it. And the best way to do that is to

explain it clearly.

Even better than a plastic platypus, though, is a real person, and there

has been a lot of research showing that teaching a subject is the most

reliable way to learn it deeply. This was first demonstrated by the famous

language teacher Jean-Pol Martin, who successfully taught foreign

languages by making his students instruct one another.[1] Later research

illustrated this concept in experiments in which one group of students

studied materials by themselves while a second group explained them to

others.[2] (They both had the same amount of time.) The second group (the

student teachers) understood and remembered the material better than the

first.

Teaching others how to get happier is about more than just solidifying

the ideas in your own mind. With happiness in decline almost everywhere,

and especially in the United States, our world needs advocates and warriors

to help the millions suffering without relief. So many still believe that there

is not hope as long as there is pain in their lives. Find the people in your life

in this situation. Be their hope.

Now, you might be saying, “How can I help someone else build her life

when mine is still a work in progress?” That is precisely when and why you

are the most effective teacher. The best happiness teachers are the ones who

have had to work to gain the knowledge they offer, not the lucky ones who

fall out of bed every day in a great mood. Those lucky few are like the

fitness influencers on Instagram who have superior genetics, eat whatever

they want, and have no idea what the challenges are for the rest of us.

Don’t hide your own struggles. Use them to help others understand that

they are not alone, and getting happier is possible. Your pain gives you

credibility, and your progress makes you an inspiration. And sharing with

others increases that progress, making it the perfect win-win.

OLDER, WISER, HAPPIER

Teaching happiness is also the best strategy for getting happier as time

goes on. One of the biggest sources of suffering for many people in middle

age is the perception that while they have many years of life ahead, they are

somehow declining in their abilities. This is especially true for people who

have invested a lot in their skills.

If you feel like you have lost your edge or are a little burned out in

middle age or beyond, this is normal. Researchers have long noted that

many skills—analysis and innovation, for example—tend to rise quickly

very early in life and then fall through one’s thirties and forties. This is

called fluid intelligence. It’s what makes you good at what you do as a

young adult, and you really notice it when it declines, which is usually

earlier than you expect.[3]

There’s another kind of intelligence that comes later, called crystallized

intelligence, which is an increasing knack for combining complex ideas,

understanding what they mean, recognizing patterns, and teaching others.

This rises throughout middle age and can stay high well into old age. If you

are over fifty and notice that you are better at seeing patterns and explaining

ideas to others than you used to be, it’s because your crystallized

intelligence is higher.

The research on fluid and crystallized intelligence suggests that people

should hold different roles throughout their lives that complement each type

of smarts—but always tending toward teaching and mentoring others as the

years pass, because that is your increasing natural strength. Maybe that is a

change in job or career, or a different emphasis in what you do in your

regular profession. The way we often see this play out for people who take

time away from the workforce to raise their kids is that when the nest is

empty, they return to work in a different kind of role than the one they left

years earlier.

This isn’t just professional advice, by the way. In life, we do best and

are happiest when we rely more on our wisdom as we age. One of the

reasons people love being grandparents so much—besides the fact that you

can spoil the kids all day and then they go home!—is because it relies on

crystallized intelligence. Grandparents lean on their experience and wisdom

and tend not to freak out over little things, which makes everything easier

and more fun.

And this brings us back to teaching the lessons for getting happier. As

you age, becoming a happiness teacher will feel more and more natural to

you. The older you get, the more this information will become truly yours.

Others will seek you out to learn it.

THE MOST IMPORTANT BUILDING BLOCK OF ALL

As you’ve read this book, you may have noticed a running theme: every

practice that helps you build the life you want is based on one thing.

Love.

To embark on a project to get happier, and to do the work to manage

your emotions, is to say that you love yourself enough to make this

investment. All of the pillars of happiness are about love, too: love for your

family, love for your friends, love made visible by bringing your best self to

work, and love for the divine through your transcendent journey. And to

become the teacher of what you have learned is an act of abundant love

toward everyone in your life.

Like happiness, love isn’t a feeling. As Martin Luther King Jr., put it in

1957, “Love is not this sentimental something that we talk about. It’s not

merely an emotional something. Love is creative, understanding goodwill

for all.”[4] Love is a commitment, an act of will and discipline. Love, like

getting happier, is something that you get better at with practice. It becomes

more automatic with repetition. It becomes a habit over time. And when it

does, everything else falls into place.

Start each day saying, “I don’t know what this day will bring, but I will

love others and allow myself to be loved.” Whenever you are wondering

what to do in a particular situation—whether it’s big, like deciding to take a

new job, or little, like letting someone into your lane in traffic—ask, “What

is the most loving thing to do right now?” Armed with the knowledge you

have gained in this book, you will never go wrong.

Of course, you aren’t made of stone, and even if you commit to

emotional self-management and to building your family, friendships, work,

and faith, you will still have days when love seems out of reach. You will

react badly to someone; you will let your feelings get the better of you; you

will throw up your hands in frustration. That’s only natural. The key to

progress isn’t perfection, it’s to begin again, and again, and again. Every

day is a new day, and another opportunity to pick up the hammer and go

back to work. Just remind yourself that the life you want is built on love,

and start again.

The two of us are doing the same with our own lives. We are part of the

same project—to get happier by building our lives on a foundation of love.

This is the principle that brought us together in this partnership, and to write

this book.

So just remember, we are walking alongside you, wishing you our very

best in your journey. And we ask that you do the same for us. Strengthening

one another, we can help each other build the lives we want. And together,

we can maybe even help build the world we want as well.

Acknowledgments

We loved working together on this book. However, we didn’t just hole up at Oprah’s house

and pound out the manuscript by ourselves. Many others made it possible with their ideas, hard

work, and support.

We are grateful to our research team of Rena Rudavsky, Reece Brown, and Bryce

Fuemmeler, who chased down thousands of references and checked fact after fact. Professor

Joshua Greene at Harvard vetted the neuroscience in this book, and gave us feedback that

improved the manuscript. Oprah thanks Deborah Way for helping her corral the words and

language to speak of happiness. Meanwhile, Tara Montgomery, Candice Gayl, and Bob Greene

gave us critical input and kept the book on track through a chaotic schedule. Nicole Nichols,

Chelsea Hettrick, and Nicole Marostica ran communications, making sure the world knows

about the project. And nothing would get done were it not for the support of many colleagues at

Harpo and ACB Ideas, especially Rachel Ayerst Manfredi, Molly Glaeser, Olivia Ladner, Joanna

Moss, Samantha Ray, and Mary Riner.

For their encouragement and guidance throughout, we’re indebted to Bria Sandford, our

editor at Portfolio; Anthony Mattero, Arthur’s literary agent at Creative Artists Agency; and our

legal representatives Marc Chamlin and Ken Weinrib.

Arthur thanks the leadership and his colleagues at the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard

Business School for creating a supportive and creative academic home where this work can

flourish. The MBA students in his Leadership and Happiness classes at HBS, and the

participants and supporters of the Leadership and Happiness Laboratory at HKS, are an inspiring

reminder that happiness is something we can improve and share. Arthur is also indebted to The

Atlantic, where many of the ideas and some of the passages in this book originally appeared in

Arthur’s weekly How to Build a Life column. Special thanks to Jeff Goldberg, Rachel Gutman-

Wei, Julie Beck, and Ena Alvarado-Esteller, who make the column possible each week. Arthur’s

research is generously supported by Dan D’Aniello, Ravenel Curry, Tully Friedman, Cindy and

Chris Galvin, and Eric Schmidt.

As we make clear in this book, happiness is built at home, in the bonds we count on in good

times and bad. We would be in no shape to advise anyone on getting happier were it not for the

love and support of our families. For Arthur, this starts with Ester Munt-Brooks, Arthur’s wife

and spiritual guru; also Joaquim, Carlos, Marina, Jessica, and Caitlin Brooks. For Oprah, thanks

to all my Dear Ones, you know who you are, who make me happier every day.

For more information on building the life you want and teaching

others to do the same, visit www.arthurbrooks.com/build.

Notes

INTRODUCTION: ALBINA’S SECRET

In the real-life stories in this introduction, except where indicated,

fictional names are used and some details have been changed to protect the

anonymity of the people quoted.

1. Michael Davern, Rene Bautista, Jeremy Freese, Stephen L. Morgan, and Tom W.

Smith, General Social Surveys, 1972–2021 Cross-section, NORC, University of

Chicago, gssdataexplorer.norc.org.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 1

2. Renee D. Goodwin, Lisa C. Dierker, Melody Wu, Sandro Galea, Christina W.

Hoven, and Andrea H. Weinberger, “Trends in US Depression Prevalence from 2015 to

2020: The Widening Treatment Gap,” American Journal of Preventive Medicine 63, no.

5 (2022): 726–33.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 2

3. Davern et al., General Social Surveys, 1972–2021 Cross-section.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 3

4. Global Happiness Study: What Makes People Happy around the World, Ipsos Global

Advisor, August 2019.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 4

CHAPTER ONE: HAPPINESS IS NOT THE GOAL, AND UNHAPPINESS IS NOT THE ENEMY
This chapter adapts ideas and takes passages from the following essays:
Arthur C. Brooks, “Sit with Negative Emotions, Don’t Push Them Away,” How to Build a Life,
The Atlantic, June 18, 2020; Arthur C. Brooks, “Measuring Your Happiness Can Help Improve It,”
How to Build a Life, The Atlantic, December 3, 2020; Arthur C. Brooks, “There Are Two Kinds of
Happy People,” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic, January 28, 2021; Arthur C. Brooks, “Different
Cultures Define Happiness Differently,” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic, July 15, 2021; Arthur C.
Brooks, “The Meaning of Life Is Surprisingly Simple,” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic, October
21, 2021; Arthur C. Brooks, “The Problem with ‘No Regrets,’ ” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic,
February  3,  2022;  Arthur  C.  Brooks,  “How  to  Want  Less,”  How  to  Build  a  Life,  The  Atlantic,
February 8, 2022; Arthur C. Brooks, “Choose Enjoyment over Pleasure,” How to Build a Life, The
Atlantic, March 24, 2022; Arthur C. Brooks, “What the Second-Happiest People Get Right,” How to
Build a Life, The Atlantic, March 31, 2022; Arthur C. Brooks, “How to Stop Freaking Out,” How to
Build  a  Life,  The  Atlantic,  April  28,  2022;  Arthur  C.  Brooks,  “A  Happiness  Columnist’s  Three
Biggest  Happiness  Rules,”  How  to  Build  a  Life,  The  Atlantic,  July  21,  2022;  Arthur  C.  Brooks,
“America Is Pursuing Happiness in All the Wrong Places,” The Atlantic, November 16, 2022.
1.  Jeffrey Zaslow, “A Beloved Professor Delivers the Lecture of a Lifetime,” Wall
Street Journal, September 20, 2007.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 1
2.  Saint Augustine, The City of God, book XI, ed. and trans. Marcus Dods (Edinburgh:
T. & T. Clark, 1871), chapter 26, published online by Project Gutenberg.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 2
3.  E. E. Hewitt, “Sunshine in the Soul,” Hymnary.org.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 3
4.  Yukiko Uchida and Yuji Ogihara, “Personal or Interpersonal Construal of Happiness:
A Cultural Psychological Perspective,” International Journal of Wellbeing 2, no. 4
(2012): 354–369.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 4
5.  Shigehiro Oishi, Jesse Graham, Selin Kesebir, and Iolanda Costa Galinha, “Concepts
of Happiness across Time and Cultures,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
39, no. 5 (2013): 559–77.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 5
6.  Dictionary.com, s.v. “happiness,” www.dictionary.com/browse/happiness.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 6
7.  Anna J. Clark, Divine Qualities: Cult and Community in Republican Rome (Oxford,
UK: Oxford University Press, 2007).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 7
8.  Anna Altman, “The Year of Hygge, the Danish Obsession with Getting Cozy,” New
Yorker, December 18, 2016.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 8
9.  Philip Brickman and Donald T. Campbell, “Hedonic Relativism and Planning the
Good Society,” in Adaptation Level Theory, ed. M. H. Appley (New York: Academic
Press, 1971): 287–301.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 9
10.  . Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (Boston: Beacon Press, 1946), xvii.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 10
11.  Catherine J. Norris, Jackie Gollan, Gary G. Berntson, and John T. Cacioppo, “The
Current Status of Research on the Structure of Evaluative Space,” Biological

Psychology 84, no. 3 (2010): 422–36.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 11
12.  Jordi Quoidbach, June Gruber, Moïra Mikolajczak, Alexsandr Kogan, Ilios Kotsou,
and Michael I. Norton, “Emodiversity and the Emotional Ecosystem,” Journal of
Experimental Psychology: General 143, no. 6 (2014): 2057–66.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 12
13.  Richard J. Davidson, Alexander J. Shackman, and Jeffrey S. Maxwell,
“Asymmetries in Face and Brain Related to Emotion,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8,
no. 9 (2004): 389–91.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 13
14.  Debra Trampe, Jordi Quoidbach, and Maxime Taquet, “Emotions in Everyday Life,”
PLoS One 10, no. 12 (2015): e0145450.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 14
15.  Daniel Kahneman, Alan B. Krueger, David A. Schkade, Norbert Schwarz, and
Arthur A. Stone, “A Survey Method for Characterizing Daily Life Experience: The Day
Reconstruction Method,” Science 306, no. 5702 (2004): 1776–80.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 15
16.  David Watson, Lee Anna Clark, and Auke Tellegen, “Development and Validation
of Brief Measures of Positive and Negative Affect: The PANAS Scales,” Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology 54, no. 6 (1988): 1063–70. Readers can take this test
by going to www.https://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/testcenter.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 16
17.  The averages are taken from the original research of Watson, Clark, and Tellegen
(1988).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 17
18.  Kristen A. Lindquist, Ajay B. Satpute, Tor D. Wager, Jochen Weber, and Lisa
Feldman Barrett, “The Brain Basis of Positive and Negative Affect: Evidence from a
Meta-analysis of the Human Neuroimaging Literature,” Cerebral Cortex 26, no. 5
(2016): 1910–22.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 18
19.  Paul Rozin and Edward B. Royzman, “Negativity Bias, Negativity Dominance, and
Contagion,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 5, no. 4 (2001): 296–320.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 19
20.  Emmy Gut, “Productive and Unproductive Depression: Interference in the Adaptive
Function of the Basic Depressed Response,” British Journal of Psychotherapy 2, no. 2
(1985): 95–113.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 20
21.  Neal J. Roese, Kai Epstude, Florian Fessel, Mike Morrison, Rachel Smallman, Amy
Summerville, Adam D. Galinsky, and Suzanne Segerstrom, “Repetitive Regret,
Depression, and Anxiety: Findings from a Nationally Representative Survey,” Journal
of Social and Clinical Psychology 28, no. 6 (2009): 671–88.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 21
22.  Melanie Greenberg, “The Psychology of Regret: Should We Really Aim to Live Our
Lives with No Regrets?” Psychology Today, May 16, 2012.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 22
23.  Daniel H. Pink, The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward
(New York: Penguin, 2022). This quote came via email from the author.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 23

24. John Keats, The Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends, ed. Sidney Colvin

(London: Macmillan and Co., 1925), published online by Project Gutenberg.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 24

25. Karol Jan Borowiecki, “How Are You, My Dearest Mozart? Well-being and

Creativity of Three Famous Composers Based on Their Letters,” Review of Economics

and Statistics 99, no. 4 (2017): 591–605.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 25

26. Paul W. Andrews and J. Anderson Thomson Jr., “The Bright Side of Being Blue:

Depression as an Adaptation for Analyzing Complex Problems,” Psychological Review

116, no. 3 (2009): 620–54.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 26

27. Shigehiro Oishi, Ed Diener, and Richard E. Lucas, “The Optimum Level of Well-

being: Can People Be Too Happy?” in The Science of Well-Being: The Collected Works

of Ed Diener, ed. Ed Diener (Heidelberg, London, and New York: Springer Dordrecht,

2009): 175–200.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 27

28. June Gruber, Iris B. Mauss, and Maya Tamir, “A Dark Side of Happiness? How,

When, and Why Happiness Is Not Always Good,” Perspectives on Psychological

Science 6, no. 3 (2011): 222–33.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 28

CHAPTER TWO: THE POWER OF METACOGNITION
This chapter adapts ideas and takes passages from the following essays:
Arthur C. Brooks, “When You Can’t Change the World, Change Your Feelings,” How to Build a
Life, The Atlantic, December 2, 2021; Arthur C. Brooks, “How to Stop Freaking Out,” How to Build
a Life, The  Atlantic,  April  28,  2022;  Arthur  C.  Brooks,  “How  to  Make  the  Baggage  of  Your  Past
Easier to Carry,” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic, June 16, 2022.
1.  “Viktor Emil Frankl,” Viktor Frankl Institut, www.viktorfrankl.org/biography.html.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 1
2.  Antonio Semerari, Antonino Carcione, Giancarlo Dimaggio, Maurizio Falcone,
Giuseppe Nicolò, Michele Procacci, and Giorgio Alleva, “How to Evaluate
Metacognitive Functioning in Psychotherapy? The Metacognition Assessment Scale
and Its Applications,” Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy 10, no. 4 (2003): 238–61.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 2
3.  Paul D. MacLean, T. J. Boag, and D. Campbell, A Triune Concept of the Brain and
Behaviour: Hincks Memorial Lectures (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 3
4.  Patrick R. Steffen, Dawson Hedges, and Rebekka Matheson, “The Brain Is Adaptive
Not Triune: How the Brain Responds to Threat, Challenge, and Change,” Frontiers in
Psychiatry 13 (2022).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 4
5.  Trevor Huff, Navid Mahabadi, and Prasanna Tadi, “Neuroanatomy, Visual Cortex,”
StatPearls (2022).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 5
6.  Joseph LeDoux and Nathaniel D. Daw, “Surviving Threats: Neural Circuit and
Computational Implications of a New Taxonomy of Defensive Behaviour,” Nature
Reviews Neuroscience 19, no. 5 (2018): 269–82; “Understanding the Stress Response,”
Harvard Health Publishing, July 6, 2020; Sean M. Smith and Wylie W. Vale, “The Role
of the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis in Neuroendocrine Responses to Stress,”
Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience 8, no. 4 (2006): 383–95.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 6
7.  LeDoux and Daw, “Surviving Threats.”
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 7
8.  Carroll E. Izard, “Emotion Theory and Research: Highlights, Unanswered
Questions, and Emerging Issues,” Annual Review of Psychology 60 (2009): 1–25.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 8
9.  APA Dictionary of Psychology, s.v. “joy,” American Psychological Association,
accessed December 2, 2022, dictionary.apa.org/joy.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 9
10.  “From Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Jefferson Smith, 21 February 1825,” Founders
Online.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 10
11.  Jeffrey M. Osgood and Mark Muraven, “Does Counting to Ten Increase or Decrease
Aggression? The Role of State Self-Control (Ego-Depletion) and Consequences,”
Journal of Applied Social Psychology 46, no. 2 (2016): 105–13.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 11
12.  Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, trans. H. R. James (London: Elliot Stock,
1897), published online by Project Gutenberg.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 12

13.  Amy Loughman, “Ancient Stress Response vs Modern Life,” Mind Body
Microbiome, January 9, 2020.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 13
14.  Jeremy Sutton, “Maladaptive Coping: 15 Examples & How to Break the Cycle,”
PositivePsychology.com, October 28, 2020.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 14
15.  Philip Phillips, “Boethius,” Oxford Bibliographies, last modified March 30, 2017.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 15
16.  . Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 16
17.  Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” in Essays: First Series (Boston: J. Munroe
and Company, 1841).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 17
18.  Daniel L. Schacter, Donna Rose Addis, and Randy L. Buckner, “Remembering the
Past to Imagine the Future: The Prospective Brain,” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 8,
no. 9 (2007): 657–61.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 18
19.  Marcus Raichle, “The Brain’s Default Mode Network,” Annual Review of
Neuroscience 38 (2015): 433–47.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 19
20.  Ulric Neisser and Nicole Harsch, “Phantom Flashbulbs: False Recollections of
Hearing the News about Challenger,” in Affect and Accuracy in Recall: Studies of
“Flashbulb” Memories, ed. E. Winograd and U. Neisser (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 1992).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 20
21.  Melissa Fay Greene, “You Won’t Remember the Pandemic the Way You Think You
Will,” The Atlantic, May 2021; Alisha C. Holland and Elizabeth A. Kensinger,
“Emotion and Autobiographical Memory,” Physics of Life Reviews 7, no. 1 (2010): 88–
131.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 21
22.  Linda J. Levine and David A. Pizarro, “Emotion and Memory Research: A Grumpy
Overview,” Social Cognition 22, no. 5 (2004): 530–54.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 22
23.  “Maha-satipatthana Sutta: The Great Frames of Reference,” trans. Thanissaro
Bhikkhu, Access to Insight, 2000.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 23
24.  James W. Pennebaker, Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions
(New York: Guilford Press, 2012).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 24
25.  Dorit Alt and Nirit Raichel, “Reflective Journaling and Metacognitive Awareness:
Insights from a Longitudinal Study in Higher Education,” Reflective Practice 21, no. 2
(2020): 145–58.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 25
26.  Seth J. Gillihan, Jennifer Kessler, and Martha J. Farah, “Memories Affect Mood:
Evidence from Covert Experimental Assignment to Positive, Neutral, and Negative
Memory Recall,” Acta Psychologica 125, no. 2 (2007): 144–54.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 26

27. Nic M. Westrate and Judith Glück, “Hard-Earned Wisdom: Exploratory Processing

of Difficult Life Experience Is Positively Associated with Wisdom,” Developmental

Psychology 53, no. 4 (2017): 800–14.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 27

CHAPTER THREE: CHOOSE A BETTER EMOTION

This chapter adapts ideas and takes passages from the following essays:

Arthur C. Brooks, “Don’t Wish for Happiness. Work for It,” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic,

April 22, 2021; Arthur C. Brooks, “The Link between Happiness and a Sense of Humor,” How to

Build a Life, The Atlantic, August 12, 2021; Arthur C. Brooks, “The Difference between Hope and

Optimism,” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic, September 23, 2021; Arthur C. Brooks, “How to Be

Thankful When You Don’t Feel Thankful,” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic, November 24, 2021;

Arthur C. Brooks, “How to Stop Dating People Who Are Wrong for You,” How to Build a Life, The

Atlantic, June 23, 2022.

1. Diane C. Mitchell, Carol A. Knight, Jon Hockenberry, Robyn Teplansky, and Terryl

J. Hartman, “Beverage Caffeine Intakes in the US,” Food and Chemical Toxicology 63

(2014): 136–42.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 1

2. Brian Fiani, Lawrence Zhu, Brian L. Musch, Sean Briceno, Ross Andel, Nasreen

Sadeq, and Ali Z. Ansari, “The Neurophysiology of Caffeine as a Central Nervous

System Stimulant and the Resultant Effects on Cognitive Function,” Cureus 13, no. 5

(2021): e15032; Thomas V. Dunwiddie and Susan A. Masino, “The Role and

Regulation of Adenosine in the Central Nervous System,” Annual Review of

Neuroscience 24, no. 1 (2001): 31–55; Leeana Aarthi Bagwath Persad, “Energy Drinks

and the Neurophysiological Impact of Caffeine,” Frontiers in Neuroscience 5 (2011):

116.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 2

3. Paul Rozin and Edward B. Royzman, “Negativity Bias, Negativity Dominance, and

Contagion,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 5, no. 4 (2001): 296–320.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 3

4. Charlotte vanOyen Witvliet, Fallon J. Richie, Lindsey M. Root Luna, and Daryl R.

Van Tongeren, “Gratitude Predicts Hope and Happiness: A Two-Study Assessment of

Traits and States,” Journal of Positive Psychology 14, no. 3 (2019): 271–82.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 4

5. Glenn R. Fox, Jonas Kaplan, Hanna Damasio, and Antonio Damasio, “Neural

Correlates of Gratitude,” Frontiers in Psychology 6 (2015): 1491; Kent C. Berridge and

Morten L. Kringelbach, “Pleasure Systems in the Brain,” Neuron 86, no. 3 (2015): 646–

64.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 5

6. Jane Taylor Wilson, “Brightening the Mind: The Impact of Practicing Gratitude on

Focus and Resilience in Learning,” Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and

Learning 16, no. 4 (2016): 1–13; Nathaniel M. Lambert and Frank D. Fincham,

“Expressing Gratitude to a Partner Leads to More Relationship Maintenance Behavior,”

Emotion 11, no. 1 (2011): 52–60; Sara B. Algoe, Barbara L. Fredrickson, and Shelly L.

Gable, “The Social Functions of the Emotion of Gratitude Via Expression,” Emotion 13,

no. 4 (2013): 605–9; Maggie Stoeckel, Carol Weissbrod, and Anthony Ahrens, “The

Adolescent Response to Parental Illness: The Influence of Dispositional Gratitude,”

Journal of Child and Family Studies 24, no. 5 (2014): 1501–9.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 6

7. Anna L. Boggiss, Nathan S. Consedine, Jennifer M. Brenton-Peters, Paul L.

Hofman, and Anna S. Serlachius, “A Systematic Review of Gratitude Interventions:

Effects on Physical Health and Health Behaviors,” Journal of Psychosomatic Research

135 (2020): 110165; Megan M. Fritz, Christina N. Armenta, Lisa C. Walsh, and Sonja

Lyubomirsky, “Gratitude Facilitates Healthy Eating Behavior in Adolescents and Young
Adults,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 81 (2019): 4–14.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 7
8.  M. Tullius Cicero, The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, trans. C. D. Yonge
(London: George Bell & Sons, 1891).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 8
9.  David DeSteno, Monica Y. Bartlett, Jolie Baumann, Lisa A. Williams, and Leah
Dickens, “Gratitude as Moral Sentiment: Emotion-Guided Cooperation in Economic
Exchange,” Emotion 10, no. 2 (2010): 289–93; David DeSteno, Ye Li, Leah Dickens,
and Jennifer S. Lerner, “Gratitude: A Tool for Reducing Economic Impatience,”
Psychological Science 25, no. 6 (2014): 1262–7; Jo-Ann Tsang, Thomas P. Carpenter,
James A. Roberts, Michael B. Frisch, and Robert D. Carlisle, “Why Are Materialists
Less Happy? The Role of Gratitude and Need Satisfaction in the Relationship between
Materialism and Life Satisfaction,” Personality and Individual Differences 64 (2014):
62–6.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 9
10.  Nathaniel M. Lambert, Frank D. Fincham, and Tyler F. Stillman, “Gratitude and
Depressive Symptoms: The Role of Positive Reframing and Positive Emotion,”
Cognition & Emotion 26, no. 4 (2012): 615–33.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 10
11.  Kristin Layous and Sonja Lyubomirsky, “Benefits, Mechanisms, and New Directions
for Teaching Gratitude to Children,” School Psychology Review 43, no. 2 (2014): 153–
9.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 11
12.  Nathaniel M. Lambert, Frank D. Fincham, Scott R. Braithwaite, Steven M. Graham,
and Steven R. H. Beach, “Can Prayer Increase Gratitude?” Psychology of Religion and
Spirituality 1, no. 3 (2009): 139–49.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 12
13.  Araceli Frias, Philip C. Watkins, Amy C. Webber, and Jeffrey J. Froh, “Death and
Gratitude: Death Reflection Enhances Gratitude,” Journal of Positive Psychology 6, no.
2 (2011): 154–62.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 13
14.  Ru H. Dai, Hsueh-Chih Chen, Yu C. Chan, Ching-Lin Wu, Ping Li, Shu L. Cho, and
Jon-Fan Hu, “To Resolve or Not to Resolve, That Is the Question: The Dual-Path Model
of Incongruity Resolution and Absurd Verbal Humor by fMRI,” Frontiers in
Psychology 8 (2017): 498; Takeshi Satow, Keiko Usui, Masao Matsuhashi, J.
Yamamoto, Tahamina Begum, Hiroshi Shibasaki, A. Ikeda, N. Mikuni, S. Miyamoto,
and Naoya Hashimoto, “Mirth and Laughter Arising from Human Temporal Cortex,”
Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry 74, no. 7 (2003): 1004–5.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 14
15.  E. B. White and Katherine S. White, eds., A Subtreasury of American Humor (New
York: Coward-McCann, 1941).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 15
16.  Mimi M. Y. Tse, Anna P. K. Lo, Tracy L. Y. Cheng, Eva K. K. Chan, Annie H. Y.
Chan, and Helena S. W. Chung, “Humor Therapy: Relieving Chronic Pain and
Enhancing Happiness for Older Adults,” Journal of Aging Research 2010 (2010):
343574.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 16

17.  Kim R. Edwards and Rod A. Martin, “Humor Creation Ability and Mental Health:
Are Funny People More Psychologically Healthy?” Europe’s Journal of Psychology 6,
no. 3 (2010): 196–212.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 17
18.  Victoria Ando, Gordon Claridge, and Ken Clark, “Psychotic Traits in Comedians,”
British Journal of Psychiatry 204, no. 5 (2014): 341–5.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 18
19.  Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio, trans. John Payne
(New York: Walter J. Black), published online by Project Gutenberg.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 19
20.  John Morreall, “Religious Faith, Militarism, and Humorlessness,” Europe’s Journal
of Psychology 1, no. 3 (2005).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 20
21.  Ori Amir and Irving Biederman, “The Neural Correlates of Humor Creativity,”
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 10 (2016): 597; Alan Feingold and Ronald Mazzella,
“Psychometric Intelligence and Verbal Humor Ability,” Personality and Individual
Differences 12, no. 5 (1991): 427–35.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 21
22.  Edwards and Martin, “Humor Creation Ability.”
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 22
23.  David Hecht, “The Neural Basis of Optimism and Pessimism,” Experimental
Neurobiology 22, no. 3 (2013): 173–99.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 23
24.  Researchers have found that optimism may distort reality even more. Hecht, “Neural
Basis of Optimism and Pessimism.”
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 24
25.  Jim Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . . and Others
Don’t (New York: HarperBusiness, 2001), 85.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 25
26.  Fred B. Bryant and Jamie A. Cvengros, “Distinguishing Hope and Optimism: Two
Sides of a Coin, or Two Separate Coins?” Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 23,
no. 2 (2004): 273–302.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 26
27.  Anthony Scioli, Christine M. Chamberlin, Cindi M. Samor, Anne B. Lapointe,
Tamara L. Campbell, Alex R. Macleod, and Jennifer McLenon, “A Prospective Study
of Hope, Optimism, and Health,” Psychological Reports 81, no. 3 (1997): 723–33.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 27
28.  Rebecca J. Reichard, James B. Avey, Shane Lopez, and Maren Dollwet, “Having the
Will and Finding the Way: A Review and Meta-analysis of Hope at Work,” Journal of
Positive Psychology 8, no. 4 (2013): 292–304.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 28
29.  Liz Day, Katie Hanson, John Maltby, Carmel Proctor, and Alex Wood, “Hope
Uniquely Predicts Objective Academic Achievement above Intelligence, Personality,
and Previous Academic Achievement,” Journal of Research in Personality 44, no. 4
(2010): 550–3.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 29
30.  Stephen L. Stern, Rahul Dhanda, and Helen P. Hazuda, “Hopelessness Predicts
Mortality in Older Mexican and European Americans,” Psychosomatic Medicine 63, no.

3 (2001): 344–51.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 30
31.  Miriam A. Mosing, Brendan P. Zietsch, Sri N. Shekar, Margaret J. Wright, and
Nicholas G. Martin, “Genetic and Environmental Influences on Optimism and Its
Relationship to Mental and Self-Rated Health: A Study of Aging Twins,” Behavior
Genetics 39, no. 6 (2009): 597–604.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 31
32.  Dictionary.com, s.v. “empath,” www.dictionary.com/browse/empath.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 32
33.  Psychiatric Medical Care Communications Team, “The Difference between
Empathy and Sympathy,” Psychiatric Medical Care.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 33
34.  Dana Brown, “The New Science of Empathy and Empaths (drjudithorloff.com),”
PACEsConnection (blog), January 4, 2018; Ryszard Praszkier, “Empathy, Mirror
Neurons and SYNC,” Mind & Society 15, no. 1 (2016): 1–25.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 34
35.  Camille Fauchon, I. Faillenot, A. M. Perrin, C. Borg, Vincent Pichot, Florian
Chouchou, Luis Garcia-Larrea, and Roland Peyron, “Does an Observer’s Empathy
Influence My Pain? Effect of Perceived Empathetic or Unempathetic Support on a Pain
Test,” European Journal of Neuroscience 46, no. 10 (2017): 2629–37.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 35
36.  Frans Derksen, Tim C. Olde Hartman, Annelies van Dijk, Annette Plouvier, Jozien
Bensing, and Antoine Lagro-Janssen, “Consequences of the Presence and Absence of
Empathy during Consultations in Primary Care: A Focus Group Study with Patients,”
Patient Education and Counseling 100, no. 5 (2017): 987–93.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 36
37.  Olga M. Klimecki, Susanne Leiberg, Matthieu Ricard, and Tania Singer,
“Differential Pattern of Functional Brain Plasticity after Compassion and Empathy
Training,” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 9, no. 6 (2014): 873–9.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 37
38.  Paul Bloom, Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion (New York:
Random House, 2017), 2.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 38
39.  Clara Strauss, Billie Lever Taylor, Jenny Gu, Willem Kuyken, Ruth Baer, Fergal
Jones, and Kate Cavanagh, “What Is Compassion and How Can We Measure It? A
Review of Definitions and Measures,” Clinical Psychology Review 47 (2016): 15–27.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 39
40.  Klimecki et al., “Differential Pattern.”
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 40
41.  Yawei Cheng, Ching-Po Lin, Ho-Ling Liu, Yuan-Yu Hsu, Kun-Eng Lim, Daisy
Hung, and Jean Decety, “Expertise Modulates the Perception of Pain in Others,”
Current Biology 17, no. 19 (2007): 1708–13.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 41
42.  Varun Warrier, Roberto Toro, Bhismadev Chakrabarti, Anders D. Børglum, Jakob
Grove, David A. Hinds, Thomas Bourgeron, and Simon Baron-Cohen, “Genome-Wide
Analyses of Self-Reported Empathy: Correlations with Autism, Schizophrenia, and
Anorexia Nervosa,” Translational Psychiatry 8, no. 1 (2018): 1–10; Aleksandr Kogan,
Laura R. Saslow, Emily A. Impett, and Sarina Rodrigues Saturn, “Thin-Slicing Study of
the Oxytocin Receptor (OXTR) Gene and the Evaluation and Expression of the

Prosocial Disposition,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108, no. 48

(2011): 19189–92.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 42

43. Hooria Jazaieri, Geshe Thupten Jinpa, Kelly McGonigal, Erika L. Rosenberg, Joel

Finkelstein, Emiliana Simon-Thomas, Margaret Cullen, James R. Doty, James J. Gross,

and Philippe R. Goldin, “Enhancing Compassion: A Randomized Controlled Trial of a

Compassion Cultivation Training Program,” Journal of Happiness Studies 14, no. 4

(2012): 1113–26.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 43

44. Carrie Mok, Nirmal B. Shah, Stephen F. Goldberg, Amir C. Dayan, and Jaime L.

Baratta, “Patient Perceptions and Expectations about Postoperative Analgesia”

(presentation, Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, Philadelphia, 2018).

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 44

CHAPTER FOUR: FOCUS LESS ON YOURSELF
This chapter adapts ideas and takes passages from the following essays:
Arthur  C.  Brooks,  “No  One  Cares,”  How  to  Build  a  Life,  The  Atlantic,  November  11,  2021;
Arthur C. Brooks, “Quit Lying to Yourself,” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic, November 18, 2021;
Arthur C. Brooks, “How to Stop Freaking Out,” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic, April 28, 2022;
Arthur C. Brooks, “Don’t Surround Yourself with Admirers,” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic, June
30, 2022; Arthur C. Brooks, “Honesty Is Love,” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic, August 18, 2022;
Arthur C. Brooks, “A Shortcut for Feeling Just a Little Happier,” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic,
August 25, 2022; Arthur C. Brooks, “Envy, the Happiness Killer,” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic,
October 20, 2022.
1.  Adam Waytz and Wilhelm Hofmann, “Nudging the Better Angels of Our Nature: A
Field Experiment on Morality and Well-being,” Emotion 20, no. 5 (2020): 904–9.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 1
2.  William James, The Principles of Psychology (New York: H. Holt and Company,
1890).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 2
3.  Michael Dambrun, “Self-Centeredness and Selflessness: Happiness Correlates and
Mediating Psychological Processes,” PeerJ 5 (2017): e3306.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 3
4.  Olga Khazan, “The Self-Confidence Tipping Point,” The Atlantic, October 11, 2019;
Leon F. Seltzer, “Self-Absorption: The Root of All (Psychological) Evil?” Psychology
Today, August 24, 2016.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 4
5.  Marius Golubickis and C. Neil Macrae, “Sticky Me: Self-Relevance Slows
Reinforcement Learning,” Cognition 227 (2022): 105207.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 5
6.  Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, An Introduction to Zen Buddhism (New York: Grove Press,
1991), 64.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 6
7.  This quote comes from email correspondence with one of the authors.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 7
8.  David Veale and Susan Riley, “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who Is the Ugliest of
Them All? The Psychopathology of Mirror Gazing in Body Dysmorphic Disorder,”
Behaviour Research and Therapy 39, no. 12 (2001): 1381–93.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 8
9.  The man told Arthur this story.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 9
10.  Dacher Keltner, “Why Do We Feel Awe?” Greater Good Magazine, May 10, 2016.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 10
11.  Michelle N. Shiota, Dacher Keltner, and Amanda Mossman, “The Nature of Awe:
Elicitors, Appraisals, and Effects on Self-Concept,” Cognition and Emotion 21, no. 5
(2007): 944–63.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 11
12.  Wanshi Shôgaku, Shôyôroku (Book of Equanimity): Introductions, Cases, Verses
Selection of 100 Cases with Verses, trans. Sanbô Kyôdan Society (2014).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 12
13.  Matthew 7:1, NIV.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 13

14.  . Marcus Aurelius, Meditations: A New Translation (London: Random House UK,
2002), 162.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 14
15.  Richard Foley, Intellectual Trust in Oneself and Others (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 2001).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 15
16.  Matthew D. Lieberman and Naomi I. Eisenberger, “The Dorsal Anterior Cingulate
Cortex Is Selective for Pain: Results from Large-Scale Reverse Inference,” Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences 112, no. 49 (2015): 15250–5; Ruohe Zhao, Hang
Zhou, Lianyan Huang, Zhongcong Xie, Jing Wang, Wen-Biao Gan, and Guang Yang,
“Neuropathic Pain Causes Pyramidal Neuronal Hyperactivity in the Anterior Cingulate
Cortex,” Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience 12 (2018): 107.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 16
17.  C. Nathan DeWall, Geoff MacDonald, Gregory D. Webster, Carrie L. Masten, Roy
F. Baumeister, Caitlin Powell, David Combs, David R. Schurtz, Tyler F. Stillman,
Dianne M. Tice, Naomi I. Eisenberger, “Acetaminophen Reduces Social Pain:
Behavioral and Neural Evidence,” Psychological Science 21, no. 7 (2010): 931–7.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 17
18.  “Allodoxaphobia (a Complete Guide),” OptimistMinds, last modified February 3,
2023.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 18
19.  APA Dictionary of Psychology, s.v. “behavioral inhibition system,” American
Psychological Association, dictionary.apa.org/behavioral-inhibition-system; Marion R.
M. Scholten et al., “Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS), Behavioral Activation System
(BAS) and Schizophrenia: Relationship with Psychopathology and Physiology,”
Journal of Psychiatric Research 40, no. 7 (2006): 638–45.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 19
20.  Kees van den Bos, “Meaning Making Following Activation of the Behavioral
Inhibition System: How Caring Less about What Others Think May Help Us to Make
Sense of What Is Going On,” in The Psychology of Meaning, ed. K. D. Markman, T.
Proulx, and M. J. Lindberg (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association,
2013), 359–80.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 20
21.  Annette Kämmerer, “The Scientific Underpinnings and Impacts of Shame,”
Scientific American, August 9, 2019; Jay Boll, “Shame: The Other Emotion in
Depression & Anxiety,” Hope to Cope, March 8, 2021.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 21
22.  Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching: A New English Version, trans. Stephen Mitchell (New York:
Harper Perennial, 1992), poem 9.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 22
23.  No doubt you would love to stop caring what others think; it gives you pain. But
here’s the problem: like regular pain, physical and emotional, it would be bad to erase it
completely. That would be abnormal and dangerous; this tendency could lead to what
psychologists call hubris syndrome or even be evidence of antisocial personality
disorder. See David Owen and Jonathan Davidson, “Hubris Syndrome: An Acquired
Personality Disorder? A Study of US Presidents and UK Prime Ministers over the Last
100 Years,” Brain 132, no. 5 (2009): 1396–406; Robert J. Blair, “The Amygdala and
Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex in Morality and Psychopathy,” Trends in Cognitive
Sciences 11, no. 9 (2007): 387–92.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 23
24.  Kenneth Savitsky, Nicholas Epley, and Thomas Gilovich, “Do Others Judge Us as
Harshly as We Think? Overestimating the Impact of Our Failures, Shortcomings, and
Mishaps,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81, no. 1 (2001): 44–56.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 24
25.  Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, trans. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Boston:
1867), published online by Project Gutenberg.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 25
26.  Joseph Epstein, Envy: The Seven Deadly Sins, vol. 1 (Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press, 2003), 1.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 26
27.  Jan Crusius, Manuel F. Gonzalez, Jens Lange, and Yochi Cohen-Charash, “Envy: An
Adversarial Review and Comparison of Two Competing Views,” Emotion Review 12,
no. 1 (2020): 3–21.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 27
28.  Henrietta Bolló, Dzsenifer Roxána Háger, Manuel Galvan, and Gábor Orosz, “The
Role of Subjective and Objective Social Status in the Generation of Envy,” Frontiers in
Psychology 11 (2020): 513495.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 28
29.  Hidehiko Takahashi, Motoichiro Kato, Masato Matsuura, Dean Mobbs, Tetsuya
Suhara, and Yoshiro Okubo, “When Your Gain Is My Pain and Your Pain Is My Gain:
Neural Correlates of Envy and Schadenfreude,” Science 323, no. 5916 (2009): 937–9.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 29
30.  Redzo Mujcic and Andrew J. Oswald, “Is Envy Harmful to a Society’s
Psychological Health and Wellbeing? A Longitudinal Study of 18,000 Adults,” Social
Science & Medicine 198 (2018): 103–11.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 30
31.  Nicole E. Henniger and Christine R. Harris, “Envy across Adulthood: The What and
the Who,” Basic and Applied Social Psychology 37, no. 6 (2015): 303–18.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 31
32.  Edson C. Tandoc Jr., Patrick Ferrucci, and Margaret Duffy, “Facebook Use, Envy,
and Depression among College Students: Is Facebooking Depressing?” Computers in
Human Behavior 43 (2015): 139–46.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 32
33.  Philippe Verduyn, David Seungjae Lee, Jiyoung Park, Holly Shablack, Ariana
Orvell, Joseph Bayer, Oscar Ybarra, John Jonides, and Ethan Kross, “Passive Facebook
Usage Undermines Affective Well-being: Experimental and Longitudinal Evidence,”
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 144, no. 2 (2015): 480–8.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 33
34.  Cosimo de’ Medici, Piero de’ Medici, and Lorenzo de’ Medici, Lives of the Early
Medici: As Told in Their Correspondence (Boston: R. G. Badger, 1911).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 34
35.  Ed O’Brien, Alexander C. Kristal, Phoebe C. Ellsworth, and Norbert Schwarz,
“(Mis)imagining the Good Life and the Bad Life: Envy and Pity as a Function of the
Focusing Illusion,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 75 (2018): 41–53.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 35
36.  Alexandra Samuel, “What to Do When Social Media Inspires Envy,” JSTOR Daily,
February 6, 2018.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 36

37. Alison Wood Brooks, Karen Huang, Nicole Abi-Esber, Ryan W. Buell, Laura

Huang, and Brian Hall, “Mitigating Malicious Envy: Why Successful Individuals

Should Reveal Their Failures,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 148, no.

4 (2019): 667–87.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 37

38. Ovul Sezer, Francesca Gino, and Michael I. Norton, “Humblebragging: A Distinct—

and Ineffective—Self-Presentation Strategy,” Journal of Personality and Social

Psychology 114, no. 1 (2018): 52–74.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 38

CHAPTER FIVE: BUILD YOUR IMPERFECT FAMILY
This chapter adapts ideas and takes passages from the following essays:
Arthur  C.  Brooks,  “Love  Is  Medicine  for  Fear,”  How  to  Build  a  Life,  The  Atlantic,  July  16,
2020;  Arthur  C.  Brooks,  “There  Are  Two  Kinds  of  Happy  People,”  How  to  Build  a  Life,  The
Atlantic,  January  28,  2021;  Arthur  C.  Brooks,  “Don’t  Wish  for  Happiness.  Work  for  It,”  How  to
Build  a  Life,  The  Atlantic,  April  22,  2021;  Arthur  C.  Brooks,  “How  Adult  Children  Affect  Their
Mother’s Happiness,” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic, May 6, 2021; Arthur C. Brooks, “Dads Just
Want to Help,” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic, June 17,  2021;  Arthur C. Brooks, “Those Who
Share a Roof Share Emotions,” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic, July 22, 2021; Arthur C. Brooks,
“Fake Forgiveness Is Toxic for Relationships,” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic, August 19, 2021;
Arthur C. Brooks, “Quit Lying to Yourself,” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic, November 18, 2021;
Arthur C. Brooks, “The Common Dating Strategy That’s Totally Wrong,” How to Build a Life, The
Atlantic, February 10, 2022; Arthur C. Brooks, “The Key to a Good Parent-Child Relationship? Low
Expectations,”  How  to  Build  a  Life,  The  Atlantic,  May  12,  2022;  Arthur  C.  Brooks,  “Honesty  Is
Love,” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic, August 18, 2022.
1.  Laura Silver, Patrick van Kessel, Christine Huang, Laura Clancy, and Sneha
Gubbala, “What Makes Life Meaningful? Views from 17 Advanced Economies,” Pew
Research Center, November 18, 2021.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 1
2.  Christian Grevin, “The Chapman University Survey of American Fears, Wave 9”
(Orange, CA: Earl Babbie Research Center, Chapman University, 2022).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 2
3.  Merril Silverstein and Roseann Giarrusso, “Aging and Family Life: A Decade
Review,” Journal of Marriage and Family 72, no. 5 (2010): 1039–58.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 3
4.  Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, trans. Constance Garnett (1901), published online by
Project Gutenberg.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 4
5.  Adam Shapiro, “Revisiting the Generation Gap: Exploring the Relationships of
Parent/Adult-Child Dyads,” International Journal of Aging and Human Development
58, no. 2 (2004): 127–46.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 5
6.  Shapiro, “Revisiting the Generation Gap.”
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 6
7.  Joshua Coleman, “A Shift in American Family Values Is Fueling Estrangement,”
The Atlantic, January 10, 2021; Megan Gilligan, J. Jill Suitor, and Karl Pillemer,
“Estrangement between Mothers and Adult Children: The Role of Norms and Values,”
Journal of Marriage and Family 77, no. 4 (2015): 908–20.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 7
8.  Kira S. Birditt, Laura M. Miller, Karen L. Fingerman, and Eva S. Lefkowitz,
“Tensions in the Parent and Adult Child Relationship: Links to Solidarity and
Ambivalence,” Psychology and Aging 24, no. 2 (2009): 287–95.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 8
9.  Chris Segrin, Alesia Woszidlo, Michelle Givertz, Amy Bauer, and Melissa Taylor
Murphy, “The Association between Overparenting, Parent-Child Communication, and
Entitlement and Adaptive Traits in Adult Children,” Family Relations 61, no. 2 (2012):
237–52.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 9

10.  Rhaina Cohen, “The Secret to a Fight-Free Relationship,” The Atlantic, September
13, 2021.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 10
11.  Shapiro, “Revisiting the Generation Gap.”
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 11
12.  Kira S. Birditt, Karen L. Fingerman, Eva S. Lefkowitz, and Claire M. Kamp Dush,
“Parents Perceived as Peers: Filial Maturity in Adulthood,” Journal of Adult
Development 15, no. 1 (2008): 1–12.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 12
13.  Ashley Fetters and Kaitlyn Tiffany, “The ‘Dating Market’ Is Getting Worse,” The
Atlantic, February 25, 2020.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 13
14.  . Anna Brown, “Nearly Half of U.S. Adults Say Dating Has Gotten Harder for Most
People in the Last 10 Years,” Pew Research Center, August 20, 2020.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 14
15.  Michael Davern, Rene Bautista, Jeremy Freese, Stephen L. Morgan, and Tom W.
Smith, General Social Surveys, 1972–2021 Cross-section, NORC, University of
Chicago, gssdataexplorer.norc.org.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 15
16.  Christopher Ingraham, “The Share of Americans Not Having Sex Has Reached a
Record High,” Washington Post, March 29, 2019; Kate Julian, “Why Are Young People
Having So Little Sex?” The Atlantic, December 15, 2018.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 16
17.  Gregory A. Huber and Neil Malhotra, “Political Homophily in Social Relationships:
Evidence from Online Dating Behavior,” Journal of Politics 79, no. 1 (2017): 269–83.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 17
18.  Cat Hofacker, “OkCupid: Millennials Say Personal Politics Can Make or Break a
Relationship,” USA Today, October 16, 2018.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 18
19.  Neal Rothschild, “Young Dems More Likely to Despise the Other Party,” Axios,
December 7, 2021.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 19
20.  “Is Education Doing Favors for Your Dating Life?” GCU Experience (blog), Grand
Canyon University, June 22, 2021.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 20
21.  Robert F. Winch, “The Theory of Complementary Needs in Mate-Selection: A Test
of One Kind of Complementariness,” American Sociological Review 20, no. 1 (1955):
52–6.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 21
22.  Pamela Sadler and Erik Woody, “Is Who You Are Who You’re Talking To?
Interpersonal Style and Complementarity in Mixed-Sex Interactions,” Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology 84, no. 1 (2003): 80–96.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 22
23.  Aurelio José Figueredo, Jon Adam Sefcek, and Daniel Nelson Jones, “The Ideal
Romantic Partner Personality,” Personality and Individual Differences 41, no. 3 (2006):
431–41.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 23

24.  Marc Spehr, Kevin R. Kelliher, Xiao-Hong Li, Thomas Boehm, Trese Leinders-
Zufall, and Frank Zufall, “Essential Role of the Main Olfactory System in Social
Recognition of Major Histocompatibility Complex Peptide Ligands,” Journal of
Neuroscience 26, no. 7 (2006): 1961–70.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 24
25.  Claus Wedekind, Thomas Seebeck, Florence Bettens, and Alexander J. Paepke,
“MHC-Dependent Mate Preferences in Humans,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B:
Biological Sciences 260, no. 1359 (1995): 245–9.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 25
26.  Pablo Sandro Carvalho Santos, Juliano Augusto Schinemann, Juarez Gabardo, and
Maria da Graça Bicalho, “New Evidence That the MHC Influences Odor Perception in
Humans: A Study with 58 Southern Brazilian Students,” Hormones and Behavior 47,
no. 4 (2005): 384–8.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 26
27.  Michael J. Rosenfeld, Reuben J. Thomas, and Sonia Hausen, “Disintermediating
Your Friends: How Online Dating in the United States Displaces Other Ways of
Meeting,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116, no. 36 (2019): 17753–
8.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 27
28.  Jon Levy, Devin Markell, and Moran Cerf, “Polar Similars: Using Massive Mobile
Dating Data to Predict Synchronization and Similarity in Dating Preferences,” Frontiers
in Psychology 10 (2019): 2010.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 28
29.  C. Price, “43% of Americans Have Gone on a Blind Date,” DatingAdvice.com,
August 6, 2022.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 29
30.  Elaine Hatfield, John T. Cacioppo, and Richard L. Rapson, “Emotional Contagion,”
Current Directions in Psychological Science 2, no. 3 (1993): 96–9.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 30
31.  James H. Fowler and Nicholas A. Christakis, “Dynamic Spread of Happiness in a
Large Social Network: Longitudinal Analysis over 20 Years in the Framingham Heart
Study,” BMJ 337 (2008): a2338.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 31
32.  Alison L. Hill, David G. Rand, Martin A. Nowak, and Nicholas A. Christakis,
“Emotions as Infectious Diseases in a Large Social Network: The SISa Model,”
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 277, no. 1701 (2010): 3827–
35.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 32
33.  Elaine Hatfield, Lisamarie Bensman, Paul D. Thornton, and Richard L. Rapson,
“New Perspectives on Emotional Contagion: A Review of Classic and Recent Research
on Facial Mimicry and Contagion,” Interpersona: An International Journal on Personal
Relationships 8, no. 2 (2014): 159–79.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 33
34.  Bruno Wicker, Christian Keysers, Jane Plailly, Jean-Pierre Royet, Vittorio Gallese,
and Giacomo Rizzolatti, “Both of Us Disgusted in My Insula: The Common Neural
Basis of Seeing and Feeling Disgust,” Neuron 40, no. 3 (2003): 655–64.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 34
35.  India Morrison, Donna Lloyd, Giuseppe Di Pellegrino, and Neil Roberts, “Vicarious
Responses to Pain in Anterior Cingulate Cortex: Is Empathy a Multisensory Issue?”

Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience 4, no. 2 (2004): 270–8.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 35
36.  Mary J. Howes, Jack E. Hokanson, and David A. Loewenstein, “Induction of
Depressive Affect after Prolonged Exposure to a Mildly Depressed Individual,” Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology 49, no. 4 (1985): 1110–3.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 36
37.  . Robert J. Littman and Maxwell L. Littman, “Galen and the Antonine Plague,”
American Journal of Philology 94, no. 3 (1973): 243–55.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 37
38.  Cassius Dio, “Book of Roman History,” in Loeb Classical Library 9, trans. Earnest
Cary and Herbert Baldwin Faoster (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925),
100–101.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 38
39.  Marcus Aurelius, “Marcus Aurelius,” in Loeb Classical Library 58, ed. and trans. C.
R. Haines (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1916), 234–35.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 39
40.  Courtney Waite Miller and Michael E. Roloff, “When Hurt Continues: Taking
Conflict Personally Leads to Rumination, Residual Hurt and Negative Motivations
toward Someone Who Hurt Us,” Communication Quarterly 62, no. 2 (2014): 193–213.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 40
41.  Denise C. Marigold, Justin V. Cavallo, John G. Holmes, and Joanne V. Wood, “You
Can’t Always Give What You Want: The Challenge of Providing Social Support to Low
Self-Esteem Individuals,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 107, no. 1
(2014): 56–80.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 41
42.  Hao Shen, Aparna Labroo, and Robert S. Wyer Jr., “So Difficult to Smile: Why
Unhappy People Avoid Enjoyable Activities,” Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology 119, no. 1 (2020): 23.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 42
43.  Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into
Values (New York: Random House, 1999).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 43
44.  Pavica Sheldon and Mary Grace Antony, “Forgive and Forget: A Typology of
Transgressions and Forgiveness Strategies in Married and Dating Relationships,”
Western Journal of Communication 83, no. 2 (2019): 232–51.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 44
45.  Vincent R. Waldron and Douglas L. Kelley, “Forgiving Communication as a
Response to Relational Transgressions,” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships
22, no. 6 (2005): 723–42.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 45
46.  Sheldon and Antony, “Forgive and Forget.”
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 46
47.  Buddhaghosa Himi, Visuddhimagga: The Path of Purification, trans. Bhikkhu
Ñāṇamoli (Sri Lanka: Buddhist Publication Society, 2010), 297.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 47
48.  Everett L. Worthington Jr., Charlotte Van Oyen Witvliet, Pietro Pietrini, and Andrea
J. Miller, “Forgiveness, Health, and Well-being: A Review of Evidence for Emotional
versus Decisional Forgiveness, Dispositional Forgivingness, and Reduced
Unforgiveness,” Journal of Behavioral Medicine 30, no. 4 (2007): 291–302.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 48

49. Brad Blanton, Radical Honesty (New York: Random House, 1996).

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 49

50. . Edel Ennis, Aldert Vrij, and Claire Chance, “Individual Differences and Lying in

Everyday Life,” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 25, no. 1 (2008): 105–18.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 50

51. Leon F. Seltzer, “The Narcissist’s Dilemma: They Can Dish It Out, but . . .”

Psychology Today, October 12, 2011.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 51

CHAPTER SIX: FRIENDSHIP THAT IS DEEPLY REAL
This chapter adapts ideas and takes passages from the following essays and podcast:
Arthur C. Brooks, “Sedentary Pandemic Life Is Bad for Our Happiness,” How to Build a Life,
The  Atlantic,  November  19,  2020;  Arthur  C.  Brooks,  “The  Type  of  Love  That  Makes  People
Happiest,” How to  Build a Life, The Atlantic, February 11, 2021; Arthur  C.  Brooks, “The Hidden
Toll of Remote Work,” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic, April  1, 2021;  Arthur C.  Brooks, “The
Best Friends Can Do Nothing for You,” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic, April 8, 2021; Arthur C.
Brooks,  “What  Introverts  and  Extroverts  Can  Learn  from  Each  Other,”  How  to  Build  a  Life,  The
Atlantic, May 20, 2021; Arthur C. Brooks, “Which Pet Will Make You Happiest?” How to Build a
Life, The Atlantic, August 5, 2021; Arthur C. Brooks, “Stop Waiting for Your Soul Mate,” How to
Build  a  Life,  The  Atlantic,  September  9,  2021;  Arthur  C.  Brooks,  “Don’t Surround  Yourself  with
Admirers,” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic, June 30, 2022; Arthur C. Brooks, “Technology Can
Make Your Relationships Shallower,” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic, September 29, 2022; Arthur
C.  Brooks,  “Marriage  Is  a  Team  Sport,” How  to  Build  a  Life,  The  Atlantic,  November  10,  2022;
Arthur C. Brooks, “How We Learned to Be Lonely,” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic, January 5,
2023;  Arthur  Brooks,  “Love  in  the  Time  of  Corona,”  The  Art  of  Happiness  with  Arthur  Brooks,
podcast audio, 39:24, April 13, 2020.
1.  Edgar Allan Poe, The Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe Including Essays
on Poetry, ed. John Henry Ingram (New York: A. L. Burt), published online by Project
Gutenberg.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 1
2.  Ludwig, “Death of Edgar A Poe,” Richmond Enquirer, October 16, 1849.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 2
3.  Edgar Allan Poe and Eugene Lemoine Didier, Life and Poems (New York: W. J.
Widdleton, 1879), 101.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 3
4.  . Melıkşah Demır, Ayça Özen, Aysun Doğan, Nicholas A. Bilyk, and Fanita A.
Tyrell, “I Matter to My Friend, Therefore I Am Happy: Friendship, Mattering, and
Happiness,” Journal of Happiness Studies 12, no. 6 (2011): 983–1005.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 4
5.  Melıkşah Demır and Lesley A. Weitekamp, “I Am So Happy ’Cause Today I Found
My Friend: Friendship and Personality as Predictors of Happiness,” Journal of
Happiness Studies 8, no. 2 (2007): 181–211.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 5
6.  Daniel A. Cox, “The State of American Friendship: Change, Challenges, and Loss,”
Survey Center on American Life, June 8, 2021.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 6
7.  Cox, “State of American Friendship.”
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 7
8.  John Whitesides, “From Disputes to a Breakup: Wounds Still Raw after U.S.
Election,” Reuters, February 7, 2017.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 8
9.  KFF, “As the COVID-19 Pandemic Enters the Third Year Most Adults Say They
Have Not Fully Returned to Pre-Pandemic ‘Normal,’ ” news release, April 6, 2022.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 9
10.  Maddie Sharpe and Alison Spencer, “Many Americans Say They Have Shifted Their
Priorities around Health and Social Activities during COVID-19,” Pew Research
Center, August 18, 2022.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 10

11.  Sarah Davis, “59% of U.S. Adults Find It Harder to Form Relationships since
COVID-19, Survey Reveals—Here’s How That Can Harm Your Health,” Forbes, July
12, 2022.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 11
12.  Lewis R. Goldberg, “The Development of Markers for the Big-Five Factor
Structure,” Psychological Assessment 4, no. 1 (1992): 26–42.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 12
13.  C. G. Jung, Psychologische Typen (Zurich: Rascher & Cie., 1921).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 13
14.  Hans Jurgen Eysenck, “Intelligence Assessment: A Theoretical and Experimental
Approach,” in The Measurement of Intelligence (Heidelberg, London, and New York:
Springer Dordrecht, 1973), 194–211.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 14
15.  Rachel L. C. Mitchell and Veena Kumari, “Hans Eysenck’s Interface between the
Brain and Personality: Modern Evidence on the Cognitive Neuroscience of
Personality,” Personality and Individual Differences 103 (2016): 74–81.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 15
16.  Mats B. Küssner, “Eysenck’s Theory of Personality and the Role of Background
Music in Cognitive Task Performance: A Mini-Review of Conflicting Findings and a
New Perspective,” Frontiers in Psychology 8 (2017): 1991.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 16
17.  Peter Hills and Michael Argyle, “Happiness, Introversion–Extraversion and Happy
Introverts,” Personality and Individual Differences 30, no. 4 (2001): 595–608.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 17
18.  . Ralph R. Greenson, “On Enthusiasm,” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic
Association 10, no. 1 (1962): 3–21.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 18
19.  Barry M. Staw, “The Escalation of Commitment to a Course of Action,” Academy of
Management Review 6, no. 4 (1981): 577–87.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 19
20.  Daniel C. Feiler and Adam M. Kleinbaum, “Popularity, Similarity, and the Network
Extraversion Bias,” Psychological Science 26, no. 5 (2015): 593–603.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 20
21.  Yehudi A. Cohen, “Patterns of Friendship,” in Social Structure and Personality: A
Casebook (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961), 351–86.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 21
22.  OnePoll, “Evite: Difficulty Making Friends,” 72Point, May 2019.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 22
23.  Yixin Chen and Thomas Hugh Feeley, “Social Support, Social Strain, Loneliness,
and Well-being among Older Adults: An Analysis of the Health and Retirement Study,”
Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 31, no. 2 (2014): 141–61.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 23
24.  Laura L. Carstensen, Derek M. Isaacowitz, and Susan T. Charles, “Taking Time
Seriously: A Theory of Socioemotional Selectivity,” American Psychologist 54, no. 3
(1999): 165–81.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 24
25.  Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics VIII (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, and
Company, 1893), 1, 3.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 25

26.  Michael E. Porter and Nitin Nohria, “How CEOs Manage Time,” Harvard Business
Review, July–August 2018.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 26
27.  Derek Thompson, “Workism Is Making Americans Miserable,” The Atlantic,
February 24, 2019.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 27
28.  Galatians 4:9, NIV; Yair Kramer, “Transformational Moments in Group
Psychotherapy” (PhD diss., Rutgers University Graduate School of Applied and
Professional Psychology, 2012).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 28
29.  “Magandiya Sutta: To Magandiya,” trans. Thanissaro Bhikkhu, Access to Insight,
November 30, 2013.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 29
30.  Thích Nhất Hạnh, Being Peace (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 2020), 91.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 30
31.  Neal Krause, Kenneth I. Pargament, Peter C. Hill, and Gail Ironson, “Humility,
Stressful Life Events, and Psychological Well-being: Findings from the Landmark
Spirituality and Health Survey,” Journal of Positive Psychology 11, no. 5 (2016): 499–
510.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 31
32.  Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, eds., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Basil: Letters
and Select Works, vol. 8 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995), 446.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 32
33.  . Adam K. Fetterman and Kai Sassenberg, “The Reputational Consequences of
Failed Replications and Wrongness Admission among Scientists,” PLoS One 10, no. 12
(2015): e0143723.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 33
34.  “Doris Kearns Goodwin on Lincoln and His ‘Team of Rivals,’ ” interview by Dave
Davies, Fresh Air, NPR, November 8, 2005.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 34
35.  Brian J. Fogg, Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 35
36.  Paul Samuelson and William Nordhaus, Economics, 19th ed. (New York: McGraw
Hill, 2010), l.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 36
37.  Zhiling Zou, Hongwen Song, Yuting Zhang, and Xiaochu Zhang, “Romantic Love
vs. Drug Addiction May Inspire a New Treatment for Addiction,” Frontiers in
Psychology 7 (2016): 1436.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 37
38.  Helen E. Fisher, Arthur Aron, and Lucy L. Brown, “Romantic Love: A Mammalian
Brain System for Mate Choice,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B:
Biological Sciences 361, no. 1476 (2006): 2173–86.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 38
39.  Antina de Boer, Erin M. van Buel, and G. J. Ter Horst, “Love Is More Than Just a
Kiss: A Neurobiological Perspective on Love and Affection,” Neuroscience 201 (2012):
114–24.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 39

40.  Katherine Wu, “Love, Actually: The Science behind Lust, Attraction, and
Companionship,” Science in the News (blog), Harvard University: The Graduate School
of Arts and Sciences, February 14, 2017.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 40
41.  “Harvard Study of Adult Development,” Massachusetts General Hospital and
Harvard Medical School, www.adultdevelopmentstudy.org.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 41
42.  Roberts J. Waldinger and Marc S. Schulz, “What’s Love Got to Do with It? Social
Functioning, Perceived Health, and Daily Happiness in Married Octogenarians,”
Psychology and Aging 25, no. 2 (2010): 422–31.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 42
43.  Jungsik Kim and Elaine Hatfield, “Love Types and Subjective Well-being: A Cross-
Cultural Study,” Social Behavior and Personality: An International Journal 32, no. 2
(2004): 173–82.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 43
44.  Kevin A. Johnson, “Unrealistic Portrayals of Sex, Love, and Romance in Popular
Wedding Films,” in Critical Thinking about Sex, Love, and Romance in the Mass
Media, ed. Mary-Lou Galician and Debra L. Merskin (Oxford, UK: Routledge, 2007),
306.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 44
45.  Litsa Renée Tanner, Shelley A. Haddock, Toni Schindler Zimmerman, and Lori K.
Lund, “Images of Couples and Families in Disney Feature-Length Animated Films,”
American Journal of Family Therapy 31, no. 5 (2003): 355–73.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 45
46.  . Chris Segrin and Robin L. Nabi, “Does Television Viewing Cultivate Unrealistic
Expectations about Marriage?” Journal of Communication 52, no. 2 (2002): 247–63.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 46
47.  Karolien Driesmans, Laura Vandenbosch, and Steven Eggermont, “True Love Lasts
Forever: The Influence of a Popular Teenage Movie on Belgian Girls’ Romantic
Beliefs,” Journal of Children and Media 10, no. 3 (2016): 304–20.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 47
48.  Florian Zsok, Matthias Haucke, Cornelia Y. De Wit, and Dick PH Barelds, “What
Kind of Love Is Love at First Sight? An Empirical Investigation,” Personal
Relationships 24, no. 4 (2017): 869–85.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 48
49.  Bjarne M. Holmes, “In Search of My ‘One and Only’: Romance-Oriented Media and
Beliefs in Romantic Relationship Destiny,” Electronic Journal of Communication 17,
no. 3 (2007): 1–23.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 49
50.  Benjamin H. Seider, Gilad Hirschberger, Kristin L. Nelson, and Robert W.
Levenson, “We Can Work It Out: Age Differences in Relational Pronouns, Physiology,
and Behavior in Marital Conflict,” Psychology and Aging 24, no. 3 (2009): 604–13.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 50
51.  Joe J. Gladstone, Emily N. Garbinsky, and Cassie Mogilner, “Pooling Finances and
Relationship Satisfaction,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 123, no. 6
(2022): 1293–314; Joe Pinsker, “Should Couples Merge Their Finances?” The Atlantic,
April 20, 2022.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 51

52.  Emily N. Garbinsky and Joe J. Gladstone, “The Consumption Consequences of
Couples Pooling Finances,” Journal of Consumer Psychology 29, no. 3 (2019): 353–69.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 52
53.  Laura K. Guerrero, “Conflict Style Associations with Cooperativeness, Directness,
and Relational Satisfaction: A Case for a Six-Style Typology,” Negotiation and Conflict
Management Research 13, no. 1 (2020): 24–43.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 53
54.  Rhaina Cohen, “The Secret to a Fight-Free Relationship,” The Atlantic, September
13, 2021.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 54
55.  David G. Blanchflower and Andrew J. Oswald, “Money, Sex and Happiness: An
Empirical Study,” Scandinavian Journal of Economics 106, no. 3 (2004): 393–415.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 55
56.  Kira S. Birditt and Toni C. Antonucci, “Relationship Quality Profiles and Well-being
among Married Adults,” Journal of Family Psychology 21, no. 4 (2007): 595–604.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 56
57.  World Bank, “Internet Users for the United States (ITNETUSERP2USA),” Federal
Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 57
58.  . Robert Kraut, Michael Patterson, Vicki Lundmark, Sara Kiesler, Tridas
Mukophadhyay, and William Scherlis, “Internet Paradox: A Social Technology That
Reduces Social Involvement and Psychological Well-being?” American Psychologist
53, no. 9 (1998): 1017–31.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 58
59.  Minh Hao Nguyen, Minh Hao, Jonathan Gruber, Will Marler, Amanda Hunsaker,
Jaelle Fuchs, and Eszter Hargittai, “Staying Connected While Physically Apart: Digital
Communication When Face-to-Face Interactions Are Limited,” New Media & Society
24, no. 9 (2022): 2046–67.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 59
60.  Martha Newson, Yi Zhao, Marwa El Zein, Justin Sulik, Guillaume Dezecache,
Ophelia Deroy, and Bahar Tunçgenç, “Digital Contact Does Not Promote Wellbeing,
but Face-to-Face Contact Does: A Cross-National Survey during the COVID-19
Pandemic,” New Media & Society (2021).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 60
61.  Michael Kardas, Amit Kumar, and Nicholas Epley, “Overly Shallow? Miscalibrated
Expectations Create a Barrier to Deeper Conversation,” Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology 122, no. 3 (2022): 367–98.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 61
62.  Sarah M. Coyne, Laura M. Padilla-Walker, and Hailey G. Holmgren, “A Six-Year
Longitudinal Study of Texting Trajectories during Adolescence,” Child Development
89, no. 1 (2018): 58–65.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 62
63.  Katherine Schaeffer, “Most U.S. Teens Who Use Cellphones Do It to Pass Time,
Connect with Others, Learn New Things,” Pew Research Center, August 23, 2019;
Bethany L. Blair, Anne C. Fletcher, and Erin R. Gaskin, “Cell Phone Decision Making:
Adolescents’ Perceptions of How and Why They Make the Choice to Text or Call,”
Youth & Society 47, no. 3 (2015): 395–411.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 63

64. César G. Escobar-Viera, César G., Ariel Shensa, Nicholas D. Bowman, Jaime E.

Sidani, Jennifer Knight, A. Everette James, and Brian A. Primack, “Passive and Active

Social Media Use and Depressive Symptoms among United States Adults,”

Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking 21, no. 7 (2018): 437–43; Soyeon

Kim, Lindsay Favotto, Jillian Halladay, Li Wang, Michael H. Boyle, and Katholiki

Georgiades, “Differential Associations between Passive and Active Forms of Screen

Time and Adolescent Mood and Anxiety Disorders,” Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric

Epidemiology 55, no. 11 (2020): 1469–78.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 64

65. David Nield, “Try Grayscale Mode to Curb Your Phone Addiction,” Wired,

December 1, 2019.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 65

66. . Monique M. H. Pollmann, Tyler J. Norman, and Erin E. Crockett, “A Daily-Diary

Study on the Effects of Face-to-Face Communication, Texting, and Their Interplay on

Understanding and Relationship Satisfaction,” Computers in Human Behavior Reports

3 (2021): 100088.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 66

CHAPTER SEVEN: WORK THAT IS LOVE MADE VISIBLE

This chapter adapts ideas and takes passages from the following essays and podcasts:

Arthur C. Brooks, “Your Professional Decline Is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think,” The

Atlantic, July 2019; Arthur C. Brooks, “4 Rules for Identifying Your Life’s Work,” How to Build a

Life, The Atlantic, May 21, 2020; Arthur C. Brooks, “Stop Keeping Score,” How to Build a Life, The

Atlantic, January 21, 2021; Arthur C. Brooks, “Go Ahead and Fail,” How to Build a Life, The

Atlantic, February 25, 2021; Arthur C. Brooks, “Here’s 10,000 Hours. Don’t Spend It All in One

Place,” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic, March 18, 2021; Arthur C. Brooks, “Are You Dreaming

Too Big?” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic, March 25, 2021; Arthur C. Brooks, “The Hidden Toll

of Remote Work,” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic, April 1, 2021; Arthur C. Brooks, “The Best

Friends Can Do Nothing for You,” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic, April 8, 2021; Arthur C.

Brooks, “The Link between Self-Reliance and Well-Being,” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic, July

8, 2021; Arthur C. Brooks, “Plan Ahead. Don’t Post,” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic, June 24,

2021; Arthur C. Brooks, “The Secret to Happiness at Work,” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic,

September 2, 2021; Arthur C. Brooks, “A Profession Is Not a Personality,” How to Build a Life, The

Atlantic, September 30, 2021; Arthur C. Brooks, “The Hidden Link between Workaholism and

Mental Health,” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic, February 2, 2023; Rebecca Rashid and Arthur C.

Brooks, “When Virtues Become Vices,” interview with Anna Lembke, How to Build a Happy Life,

podcast audio, 32:50, October 9, 2022; Rebecca Rashid and Arthur C. Brooks, “How to Spend Time

on What You Value,” interview with Ashley Whillans, How to Build a Happy Life, podcast audio,

34:24, October 23, 2022.

1. Timothy A. Judge and Shinichiro Watanabe, “Another Look at the Job Satisfaction–

Life Satisfaction Relationship,” Journal of Applied Psychology 78, no. 6 (1993): 939–

48; Robert W. Rice, Janet P. Near, and Raymond G. Hunt, “The Job-Satisfaction/Life-

Satisfaction Relationship: A Review of Empirical Research,” Basic and Applied Social

Psychology 1, no. 1 (1980): 37–64; Jeffrey S. Rain, Irving M. Lane, and Dirk D.

Steiner, “A Current Look at the Job Satisfaction/Life Satisfaction Relationship: Review

and Future Considerations,” Human Relations 44, no. 3 (1991): 287–307.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 1

2. Kahlil Gibran, “On Work,” in The Prophet (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923).

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 2

3. CareerBliss Team, “The CareerBliss Happiest 2021,” CareerBliss, January 6, 2021.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 3

4. Kimberly Black, “Job Satisfaction Survey: What Workers Want in 2022,” Virtual

Vocations (blog), February 21, 2022.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 4

5. Michael Davern, Rene Bautista, Jeremy Freese, Stephen L. Morgan, and Tom W.

Smith, General Social Surveys, 1972–2021 Cross-section, NORC, University of

Chicago, 2018, gssdataexplorer.norc.org.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 5

6. David G. Blanchflower, David N. F. Bell, Alberto Montagnoli, and Mirko Moro,

“The Happiness Trade-off between Unemployment and Inflation,” Journal of Money,

Credit and Banking 46, no. S2 (2014): 117–41.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 6

7. Mark R. Lepper, David Greene, and Richard E. Nisbett, “Undermining Children’s

Intrinsic Interest with Extrinsic Reward: A Test of the ‘Overjustification’ Hypothesis,”

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 28, no. 1 (1973): 129–37.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 7

8.  Edward L. Deci, Richard Koestner, and Richard M. Ryan, “A Meta-analytic Review
of Experiments Examining the Effects of Extrinsic Rewards on Intrinsic Motivation,”
Psychological Bulletin 125, no. 6 (1999): 627–68.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 8
9.  Jeannette L. Nolen, “Learned Helplessness,” Britannica, last modified February 11,
2023.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 9
10.  Melissa Madeson, “Seligman’s PERMA+ Model Explained: A Theory of
Wellbeing,” PositivePsychology.com, February 24, 2017; Esther T. Canrinus, Michelle
Helms-Lorenz, Douwe Beijaard, Jaap Buitink, and Adriaan Hofman, “Self-Efficacy, Job
Satisfaction, Motivation and Commitment: Exploring the Relationships between
Indicators of Teachers’ Professional Identity,” European Journal of Psychology of
Education 27, no. 1 (2012): 115–32.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 10
11.  . Arthur C. Brooks, Gross National Happiness: Why Happiness Matters for America
—and How We Can Get More of It (New York: Basic Books, April 22, 2008).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 11
12.  Philip Muller, “Por Qué Me Gusta Ser Camarero Habiendo Estudiado Filosofía,” El
Comidista, October 22, 2018. This author was a graduate student of Arthur’s.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 12
13.  Ting Ren, “Value Congruence as a Source of Intrinsic Motivation,” Kyklos 63, no. 1
(2010): 94–109.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 13
14.  Ali Ravari, Shahrzad Bazargan-Hejazi, Abbas Ebadi, Tayebeh Mirzaei, and
Khodayar Oshvandi, “Work Values and Job Satisfaction: A Qualitative Study of Iranian
Nurses,” Nursing Ethics 20, no. 4 (2013): 448–58.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 14
15.  Mary Ann von Glinow, Michael J. Driver, Kenneth Brousseau, and J. Bruce Prince,
“The Design of a Career Oriented Human Resource System,” Academy of Management
Review 8, no. 1 (1983): 23–32.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 15
16.  “The Books of Sir Winston Churchill,” International Churchill Society, October 17,
2008.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 16
17.  Charles McMoran Wilson, 1st Baron Moran, Winston Churchill: The Struggle for
Survival, 1940–1965 (London: Sphere Books, 1968), 167.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 17
18.  Anthony Storr, Churchill’s Black Dog, Kafka’s Mice, and Other Phenomena of the
Human Mind (London: Fontana, 1990).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 18
19.  Sarah Turner, Natalie Mota, James Bolton, and Jitender Sareen, “Self-Medication
with Alcohol or Drugs for Mood and Anxiety Disorders: A Narrative Review of the
Epidemiological Literature,” Depression and Anxiety 35, no. 9 (2018): 851–60.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 19
20.  Rosa M. Crum, Lareina La Flair, Carla L. Storr, Kerry M. Green, Elizabeth A.
Stuart, Anika A. H. Alvanzo, Samuel Lazareck, James M. Bolton, Jennifer Robinson,
Jitender Sareen, and Ramin Mojtabai, “Reports of Drinking to Self-Medicate Anxiety
Symptoms: Longitudinal Assessment for Subgroups of Individuals with Alcohol
Dependence,” Depression and Anxiety 30, no. 2 (2013): 174–83.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 20
21.  Malissa A. Clark, Jesse S. Michel, Ludmila Zhdanova, Shuang Y. Pui, and Boris B.
Baltes, “All Work and No Play? A Meta-analytic Examination of the Correlates and
Outcomes of Workaholism,” Journal of Management 42, no. 7 (2016): 1836–73;
Satoshi Akutsu, Fumiaki Katsumura, and Shohei Yamamoto, “The Antecedents and
Consequences of Workaholism: Findings from the Modern Japanese Labor Market,”
Frontiers in Psychology 13 (2022).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 21
22.  . Lauren Spark, “Helping a Workaholic in Therapy: 18 Symptoms & Interventions,”
PositivePsychology.com, July 1, 2021.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 22
23.  Cecilie Schou Andreassen, Mark D. Griffiths, Rajita Sinha, Jørn Hetland, and Ståle
Pallesen, “The Relationships between Workaholism and Symptoms of Psychiatric
Disorders: A Large-Scale Cross-sectional Study,” PLoS One 11, no. 5 (2016):
e0152978.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 23
24.  Longqi Yang, David Holtz, Sonia Jaffe, Siddharth Suri, Shilpi Sinha, Jeffrey Weston,
Connor Joyce, “The Effects of Remote Work on Collaboration among Information
Workers,” Nature Human Behaviour 6, no. 1 (2022): 43–54.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 24
25.  National Center for Health Statistics, “Anxiety and Depression: Household Pulse
Survey,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
www.cdc.gov/nchs/covid19/pulse/mental-health.htm.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 25
26.  Rashid and Brooks, “When Virtues Become Vices.”
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 26
27.  Clark et al., “All Work and No Play?”
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 27
28.  Rashid and Brooks, “How to Spend Time.”
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 28
29.  Andreassen et al., “Relationships between Workaholism.”
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 29
30.  Carly Schwickert, “The Effects of Objectifying Statements on Women’s Self
Esteem, Mood, and Body Image” (bachelor’s thesis, Carroll College, 2015).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 30
31.  Evangelia (Lina) Papadaki, “Feminist Perspectives on Objectification,” Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, December 16, 2019.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 31
32.  Lola Crone, Lionel Brunel, and Laurent Auzoult, “Validation of a Perception of
Objectification in the Workplace Short Scale (POWS),” Frontiers in Psychology 12
(2021): 651071.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 32
33.  Dmitry Tumin, Siqi Han, and Zhenchao Qian, “Estimates and Meanings of Marital
Separation,” Journal of Marriage and Family 77, no. 1 (2015): 312–22.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 33
34.  Margaret Diddams, Lisa Klein Surdyk, and Denise Daniels, “Rediscovering Models
of Sabbath Keeping: Implications for Psychological Well-being,” Journal of Psychology
and Theology 32, no. 1 (2004): 3–11.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 34

35. Lauren Grunebaum, “Dreaming of Being Special,” Psychology Today, May 16,

2011.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 35

36. Arthur C. Brooks, “ ‘Success Addicts’ Choose Being Special over Being Happy,”

How to Build a Life, The Atlantic, July 30, 2020.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 36

37. Josemaría Escrivá, In Love with the Church (Strongsville, OH: Scepter, 2017), 78.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 37

CHAPTER EIGHT: FIND YOUR AMAZING GRACE
This chapter adapts ideas and takes passages from the following essays:
Arthur  C.  Brooks,  “How  to  Navigate  a Midlife  Change  of  Faith,”  How to  Build  a Life,  The
Atlantic,  August  13,  2020;  Arthur  C.  Brooks,  “The  Subtle  Mindset  Shift  That  Could  Radically
Change the Way You See the World,” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic, February 4, 2021; Arthur C.
Brooks, “The Meaning of Life Is Surprisingly Simple,” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic, October
21,  2021;  Arthur  C.  Brooks,  “Don’t  Objectify  Yourself,”  How  to  Build  a  Life,  The  Atlantic,
September 22, 2022; Arthur C. Brooks, “Mindfulness Hurts. That’s Why It Works,” How to Build a
Life, The Atlantic, May 19, 2022; Arthur C. Brooks, “To Get Out of Your Head,  Get  Out  of  Your
House,” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic, August 11, 2022; Arthur C. Brooks, “How to Make Life
More Transcendent,” How to Build a Life, The Atlantic, October 27, 2022; Arthur C. Brooks, “How
Thich Nhat Hanh Taught the West about Mindfulness,” Washington Post, January 22, 2022; Rebecca
Rashid and Arthur C. Brooks, “How to Be Self-Aware,” interview with Dan Harris, How to Build a
Happy Life, podcast audio, 36:22, October 5, 2021; Rebecca Rashid and Arthur C. Brooks, interview
with Ellen Langer, “How to Know That You Know Nothing,” How to Build a Happy Life, podcast
audio, 37:45, October 26, 2021.
1.  Cary O’Dell, “ ‘Amazing Grace’—Judy Collins (1970),” Library of Congress,
www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-recording-preservation-
board/documents/AmazingGrace.pdf.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 1
2.  Steve Turner, Amazing Grace: The Story of America’s Most Beloved Song (New
York: HarperCollins, 2009); “The Creation of ‘Amazing Grace,’ ” Library of Congress,
www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200149085.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 2
3.  Lisa Miller, Iris M. Balodis, Clayton H. McClintock, Jiansong Xu, Cheryl M.
Lacadie, Rajita Sinha, and Marc N. Potenza, “Neural Correlates of Personalized
Spiritual Experiences,” Cerebral Cortex 29, no. 6 (2019): 2331–8.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 3
4.  Michael A. Ferguson, Frederic L. W. V. J. Schaper, Alexander Cohen, Shan Siddiqi,
Sarah M. Merrill, Jared A. Nielsen, Jordan Grafman, Cosimo Urgesi, Franco Fabbro,
and Michael D. Fox, “A Neural Circuit for Spirituality and Religiosity Derived from
Patients with Brain Lesions,” Biological Psychiatry 91, no. 4 (2022): 380–8.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 4
5.  . Mario Beauregard and Vincent Paquette, “EEG Activity in Carmelite Nuns during
a Mystical Experience,” Neuroscience Letters 444, no. 1 (2008): 1–4.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 5
6.  Masaki Nishida, Nobuhide Hirai, Fumikazu Miwakeichi, Taketoshi Maehara,
Kensuke Kawai, Hiroyuki Shimizu, and Sunao Uchida, “Theta Oscillation in the
Human Anterior Cingulate Cortex during All-Night Sleep: An Electrocorticographic
Study,” Neuroscience Research 50, no. 3 (2004): 331–41.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 6
7.  Andrew A. Abeyta and Clay Routledge, “The Need for Meaning and Religiosity: An
Individual Differences Approach to Assessing Existential Needs and the Relation with
Religious Commitment, Beliefs, and Experiences,” Personality and Individual
Differences 123 (2018): 6–13.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 7
8.  Lisa Miller, Priya Wickramaratne, Marc J. Gameroff, Mia Sage, Craig E. Tenke, and
Myrna M. Weissman, “Religiosity and Major Depression in Adults at High Risk: A
Ten-Year Prospective Study,” American Journal of Psychiatry 169, no. 1 (2012): 89–94;

Michael Inzlicht and Alexa M. Tullett, “Reflecting on God: Religious Primes Can
Reduce Neurophysiological Response to Errors,” Psychological Science 21, no. 8
(2010): 1184–90.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 8
9.  Tracy A. Balboni, Tyler J. VanderWeele, Stephanie D. Doan-Soares, Katelyn N. G.
Long, Betty R. Ferrell, George Fitchett, and Harold G. Koenig, “Spirituality in Serious
Illness and Health,” JAMA 328, no. 2 (2022): 184–97.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 9
10.  Jesse Graham and Jonathan Haidt, “Beyond Beliefs: Religions Bind Individuals into
Moral Communities,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 14, no. 1 (2010): 140–
50.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 10
11.  Monica L. Gallegos and Chris Segrin, “Exploring the Mediating Role of Loneliness
in the Relationship between Spirituality and Health: Implications for the Latino Health
Paradox,” Psychology of Religion and Spirituality 11, no. 3 (2019): 308–18.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 11
12.  Thích Nhất Hạnh, The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of
Meditation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), 6.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 12
13.  Kendra Cherry, “Benefits of Mindfulness,” VeryWell Mind, September 2, 2022.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 13
14.  Michael D. Mrazek, Michael S. Franklin, Dawa Tarchin Phillips, Benjamin Baird,
and Jonathan W. Schooler, “Mindfulness Training Improves Working Memory Capacity
and GRE Performance While Reducing Mind Wandering,” Psychological Science 24,
no. 5 (2013): 776–81.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 14
15.  Martin E. P. Seligman, Peter Railton, Roy F. Baumeister, and Chandra Sripada,
Homo Prospectus (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2016).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 15
16.  Jonathan Smallwood, Annamay Fitzgerald, Lynden K. Miles, and Louise H. Phillips,
“Shifting Moods, Wandering Minds: Negative Moods Lead the Mind to Wander,”
Emotion 9, no. 2 (2009): 271–6.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 16
17.  Kyle Cease, I Hope I Screw This Up: How Falling in Love with Your Fears Can
Change the World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017); Tiago Figueiredo, Gabriel
Lima, Pilar Erthal, Rafael Martins, Priscila Corção, Marcelo Leonel, Vanessa Ayrão,
Dídia Fortes, and Paulo Mattos, “Mind-Wandering, Depression, Anxiety and ADHD:
Disentangling the Relationship,” Psychiatry Research 285 (2020): 112798; Miguel
Ibaceta and Hector P. Madrid, “Personality and Mind-Wandering Self-Perception: The
Role of Meta-Awareness,” Frontiers in Psychology 12 (2021): 581129; Shane W. Bench
and Heather C. Lench, “On the Function of Boredom,” Behavioral Sciences 3, no. 3
(2013): 459–72.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 17
18.  Neda Sedighimornani, “Is Shame Managed through Mind-Wandering?” Europe’s
Journal of Psychology 15, no. 4 (2019): 717–32.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 18
19.  Smallwood et al., “Shifting Moods.”
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 19

20.  Heidi A. Wayment, Ann F. Collier, Melissa Birkett, Tinna Traustadóttir, and Robert
E. Till, “Brief Quiet Ego Contemplation Reduces Oxidative Stress and Mind-
Wandering,” Frontiers in Psychology 6 (2015): 1481.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 20
21.  Hạnh, Miracle of Mindfulness; Anonymous 19th Century Russian Peasant, The Way
of a Pilgrim and The Pilgrim Continues on His Way: Collector’s Edition (Magdalene
Press, 2019).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 21
22.  Lauren A. Leotti, Sheena S. Iyengar, and Kevin N. Ochsner, “Born to Choose: The
Origins and Value of the Need for Control,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 14, no. 10
(2010): 457–63; Amitai Shenhav, David G. Rand, and Joshua D. Greene, “Divine
Intuition: Cognitive Style Influences Belief in God,” Journal of Experimental
Psychology: General 141, no. 3 (2012): 423–8.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 22
23.  Mary Kekatos, “The Rise of the ‘Indoor Generation’: A Quarter of Americans Spend
Almost All Day Inside, New Figures Reveal,” DailyMail.com, May 15, 2018.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 23
24.  . Outdoor Foundation, 2019 Outdoor Participation Report, Outdoor Industry
Association, 2020.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 24
25.  “Global Survey Finds We’re Lacking Fresh Air and Natural Light, as We Spend
Less Time in Nature,” Velux Media Centre, May 21, 2019.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 25
26.  Wendell Cox Consultancy, “US Urban and Rural Population: 1800–2000,”
Demographia.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 26
27.  Howard Frumkin, Gregory N. Bratman, Sara Jo Breslow, Bobby Cochran, Peter H.
Kahn Jr., Joshua J. Lawler, and Phillip S. Levin, “Nature Contact and Human Health: A
Research Agenda,” Environmental Health Perspectives 125, no. 7 (2017): 075001;
Nielsen, The Nielsen Total Audience Report: Q1 2016 (New York: Nielsen Company,
2016).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 27
28.  Gregory N. Bratman, Gretchen C. Daily, Benjamin J. Levy, and James J. Gross,
“The Benefits of Nature Experience: Improved Affect and Cognition,” Landscape and
Urban Planning 138 (2015): 41–50.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 28
29.  F. Stephan Mayer, Cynthia McPherson Frantz, Emma Bruehlman-Senecal, and
Kyffin Dolliver, “Why Is Nature Beneficial? The Role of Connectedness to Nature,”
Environment and Behavior 41, no. 5 (2009): 607–43.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 29
30.  Henry David Thoreau, “Walking,” The Atlantic, June 1862.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 30
31.  Adam Alter, “How Nature Resets Our Minds and Bodies,” The Atlantic, March 29,
2013.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 31
32.  Kenneth P. Wright Jr., Andrew W. McHill, Brian R. Birks, Brandon R. Griffin,
Thomas Rusterholz, and Evan D. Chinoy, “Entrainment of the Human Circadian Clock
to the Natural Light-Dark Cycle,” Current Biology 23, no. 16 (2013): 1554–8.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 32

33. Wendy Menigoz, Tracy T. Latz, Robin A. Ely, Cimone Kamei, Gregory Melvin, and

Drew Sinatra, “Integrative and Lifestyle Medicine Strategies Should Include Earthing

(Grounding): Review of Research Evidence and Clinical Observations,” Explore 16, no.

3 (2020): 152–160.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 33

34. This is based on a conversation with Arthur.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 34

35. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1952).

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 35

CONCLUSION: NOW, BECOME THE TEACHER

This chapter adapts ideas and takes passages from the following essay:

Arthur C. Brooks, “The Kind of Smarts You Don’t Find in Young People,” How to Build a Life,

The Atlantic, March 3, 2022.

1. Safiye Temel Aslan, “Is Learning by Teaching Effective in Gaining 21st Century

Skills? The Views of Pre-Service Science Teachers,” Educational Sciences: Theory &

Practice 15, no. 6 (2015).

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 1

2. John A. Bargh and Yaacov Schul, “On the Cognitive Benefits of Teaching,” Journal

of Educational Psychology 72, no. 5 (1980): 593–604.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 2

3. Richard E. Brown, “Hebb and Cattell: The Genesis of the Theory of Fluid and

Crystallized Intelligence,” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 10 (2016): 606; Alan S.

Kaufman, Cheryl K. Johnson, and Xin Liu, “A CHC Theory-Based Analysis of Age

Differences on Cognitive Abilities and Academic Skills at Ages 22 to 90 Years,”

Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment 26, no. 4 (2008): 350–81; Arthur C. Brooks,

From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the

Second Half of Life (New York: Portfolio, 2022).

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 3

4. Martin Luther King Jr., “Loving Your Enemies” (sermon, Dexter Avenue Baptist

Church, Montgomery, AL, November 17, 1957).

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 4

About the Authors

Arthur C. Brooks is the William Henry Bloomberg Professor of the

Practice of Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School and Professor of

Management Practice at Harvard Business School, where he teaches

courses on happiness and leadership. He is the creator of the popular “How

to Build a Life” column at The Atlantic, an acclaimed public speaker, and

the author of numerous bestselling books, including From Strength to

Strength and Love Your Enemies.

As a global media leader and communications pioneer, Oprah Winfrey

has built unparalleled connections with people around the world. Through

The Oprah Winfrey Show, she entertained, enlightened, and uplifted

millions of viewers for twenty-five years. Her accomplishments as a

philanthropist and her commitment to books, reading, and education have

established her as one of the most respected and admired public figures

today.

What’s next on

your reading list?

Discover your next

great read!

Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.

_144870801_