Sonja lyubomirsky the how of happiness

Sonja lyubomirsky the how of happiness

Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Riverside. Originally from Russia, she received her A.B., summa cum laude, from Harvard University and her Ph.D. in Social/Personality Psychology from Stanford University. Lyubomirsky currently teaches courses in social psychology and positive psychology and serves as the Department of Psychology’s Vice Chair. Her teaching and mentoring of students have been recognized with the Faculty of the Year Award (twice) and the Faculty Mentor of the Year Award.

Lyubomirsky’s research has been honored with the Diener Award for Outstanding Midcareer Contributions in Personality Psychology, the Christopher J. Peterson Gold Medal, the UC Riverside Distinguished Research Lecturer Award, a Templeton Positive Psychology Prize, a Science of Generosity grant, two John Templeton Foundation grants, a Character Lab grant, A Psychology & Philosophy grant, and a million-dollar grant (with Ken Sheldon) from the National Institute of Mental Health to conduct research on the possibility of permanently increasing happiness. Her research has been written up in hundreds of magazines and newspapers and she has appeared in multiple TV shows, radio shows, and feature documentaries in North America, South America, Asia, Australia, and Europe. She has lectured widely to a variety of audiences throughout the world, including business executives, educators, physicians, entrepreneurs, military officers, mental health professionals, life coaches, retirees, students, and scholars. Lyubomirsky’s best-selling The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want (Penguin Press) is now translated and published in 23 countries, and The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, But Doesn’t, What Shouldn’t Make You Happy, But Does (Penguin Press) is translated (or will be) in 16 countries.

In her work, Lyubomirsky has focused on developing a science of human happiness. To this end, her research addresses three critical questions:

1) What makes people happy?
2) Is happiness a good thing?
3) How can we make people happier still?

For example, she is currently exploring the potential of happiness-sustaining activities – for example, expressing gratitude, doing acts of kindness, fostering micro-connections, acting more extraverted, making someone else happier, affirming significant values, visualizing a positive future, and savoring positive experiences – to durably increase a person’s happiness level. She has been conducting research on happiness for 30 years and has published widely in the area.

Lyubomirsky lives happily in beautiful Santa Monica, California with her husband, Peter Del Greco, and their children, Gabriella, Alexander, and little ones Isabella and Olivia.

To visit Lyubomirsky’s academic (UC Riverside) website, please click here. Download Lyubomirsky’s CV here.

To arrange a speaking engagement for Sonja Lyubomirsky, please email sonja[at]ucr.edu or or dial (212) 725 – 5547.

“The How of Happiness” by Sonja Lyubomirsky (Book Summary)

NOTE: If you’re into the science of happiness and positive emotions, check out our latest book, The Happy Life Formula. It’s all about creating more happiness in our lives so that we can become not only happier, but also healthier and more successful.

The How of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsky is the most complete book on the science of happiness and wellbeing I’ve ever read.

Its premise is simple: We all want to be happier, but few of us know how to go about improving our happiness.

Well, this book changes that. Using sound scientific research, it shows you exactly how to go about raising your levels of happiness.

The book essentially does three things: 1) It explains how happiness works. 2) It explains why happiness matters. 3) It outlines 12 science-backed activities for becoming happier.

If you’re new to Positive Psychology—the science of well-being and flourishing—this book is where to start.

Who is The How of Happiness for?

1. We All Want Happiness… But We’re Looking in the Wrong Places

“In almost every nation—from the United States, Greece and Slovenia to South Korea, Argentina and Bahrain—when asked what they want most in life, people put happiness at the top of their lists.”

“What do you think would make you happier? Take a moment to consider. Might it be:

If your answers look anything like these, all of which friends have confided to me over the years, you’re in for a surprise. None of these things will make you substantially happier. But this doesn’t mean that the goal of finding lasting happiness is unrealistic or naïve. The catch is that we tend to look for happiness in the wrong places. What we believe would make a huge difference in our lives actually—scientific research shows—makes only a small difference, while we overlook the true sources of personal happiness and well-being.”

That’s where most of us find ourselves: We want happiness… but we have no clue how happiness works.

Happiness is literally the number one goal for most people in life. It’s what we’re chasing all of our lives. Yet do we ever question whether our assumptions about happiness are correct? Do we ever stop and dare to figure out happiness really works?

That’s why Positive Psychology and the science of happiness is so important. It shows us what really makes us happy and what doesn’t. Knowing that, we can finally create our lives in ways that are optimized for happiness.

2. The Pie-Chart Theory of Happiness

“The result of our discussions over the next few years was a discovery about the causes of well-being. Together, we were essentially able to identify the most important factors determining happiness, represented in the following simple pie chart.”

So, the pie-chart theory shows us how happiness really works: Your level of happiness is determined by your genetic set-point (accounting for 50% of the variance in happiness), external circumstances (10%), and intentional activity (40%).

Let’s unpack those variables a bit:

So there you have it. That’s how happiness works.

There are two important takeaways here. First, happy people aren’t happy because they have more money, faster cars, or better looks than their less happy peers. Instead, where they differ is in their behavior: they engage in more behaviors that boost happiness, such as spending time with their family, practicing optimism, exercising regularly, savoring life’s pleasures, living in the present moment, or expressing gratitude for what they have.

Second, the key to happiness lies not in changing your genes (which is impossible) and not in changing your circumstances (which is hard and impractical), but in changing what you do and how you think.

3. Three Happiness Myths Holding You Back

“One of the great obstacles to attaining happiness is that most of our beliefs about what will make us happy are in fact erroneous. Yet they have been drummed into us, socialized by peers and families and role models and reinforced by the stories and images ever-present in our culture. Many of the presumed sources of happiness seem so intuitive and so commonsensical that all of us—even happiness researchers!—are prone to fall under their spell. This is where science can shine a clear and vivid light. The three major myths about happiness that we tend to fall for are plainly illuminated by the happiness pie chart.”

As I alluded to before, our false assumptions about happiness are keeping us from becoming the happiest we could be.

Sonja Lyubomirsky mentions the following three myths in the book:

4. Why Do Circumstances Account for So Little?

“One of the great ironies or our quest to become happier is that so many of us focus on changing the circumstances of our lives in the misguided hope that those changes will deliver happiness. For example, in an attempt to allay unhappiness, a recent graduate may choose a high-paying job in a distant city, a middle-aged divorcee may undergo beautifying cosmetic surgery, or a retired couple may buy an apartment with a view. Unfortunately, all of these individuals will probably only become temporarily happier. An impressive body of research now shows that trying to be happy by changing our life situation ultimately will not work.

Why do life changes account for so little? Because of a very powerful force that psychologists call ‘hedonic adaptation’.”

Life circumstances are the stable facts about your life: your gender, age, ethnicity, where you grew up, and significant life events that shaped your childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. They also include your occupation, income, religious affiliations, living conditions, health status, and whether you’re married, divorced, widowed, separated, or single.

All of these circumstances put together only account for 10% of how happy people are.

How is that possible?

It’s possible because of a peculiar phenomenon called hedonic adaptation—“the observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes.”

At first, we react strongly to changes in circumstances, but, over time, their emotional impacts lose their power. We take good things for granted. We overcome obstacles. In both cases, we may freak out in the beginning, but then move on as if it were no big deal. In other words, we adapt.

You’ve undoubtedly experienced this in your own life. The initial thrill of a new house, car, or pay raise is wonderful, but the enjoyment rarely lasts for more than a couple of days.

Winning the lottery is a good example. Research shows that within a few months, people who win the lottery are about as happy as they were initially.

So that’s the bad news about hedonic adaptation: Positive events and circumstances may feel good in the moment, but due to our natural propensity to adapt, they will never create lasting happiness.

And now for the good news: I propose that we’re actually lucky to have this ability to adapt quickly to changing circumstances. Why? Because it’s incredibly useful when bad things happen.

Without this ability, we would always be at the mercy of what happens in our lives. If something good happens, cool. If something bad happens—the death of a loved one, or the suffering of a debilitating injury—we’d be miserable for our lives.

Hedonic adaptation acts like a safety guard preventing us from spiraling into the abyss of depression after negative life events. Meanwhile, we can optimize our behavior (which accounts for 40% of our happiness!) and create happiness for ourselves that way. Bingo!

5. The Benefits of Happiness

“…becoming happier doesn’t just make you feel good. It turns out that happiness brings with it multiple fringe benefits. Compared to their less happy peers, happier people are more sociable and energetic, more charitable and cooperative, and better liked by others. Not surprisingly then, happier people are more likely to get married and to stay married, and to have a richer network of friends and social support… they actually show more flexibility and ingenuity in heir thinking and are more productive in their jobs. They are better leaders and negotiators and earn more money. They are more resilient in the face of hardship, have stronger immune systems and are physically healthier. Happy people even live longer.”

Happiness is more than a feel-good state. It’s a state of high performance, greater resiliency, thriving health, and boosted productivity.

Our minds and bodies literally perform at their best when we’re feeling good.

Entire books have been written on how we can capitalize on the performance-enhancing effects of happiness and use them to create more success for ourselves. Rather than the result of success, happiness seems to be the cause of it.

Check out our summaries of The Happiness Advantage and The Happiness Track for more on this.

6. Happiness Takes Effort

“It may be obvious that to achieve anything substantial in life—learn a profession, master a sport, raise a child—a good deal of effort is required. But many of us find it difficult to apply the notion of effort to our emotional or mental lives. Without effort, we might ‘get lucky,’ but like a long-forgotten New Year’s resolution, the success will be short-lived. Consider how much time and commitment many people devote to physical exercise, whether it’s going to the gym, jogging, kickboxing, or yoga. My research reveals that if you desire greater happiness, you need to go about it in a similar way. In other words, becoming lastingly happier demands making some permanent changes that require effort and commitment every day of your life. Pursuing happiness takes work, but consider that this ‘happiness work’ may be the most rewarding work you’ll ever do.”

Changing your behavior—especially lifelong habits!—takes effort.

Most happiness activities, as you’re about to see, aren’t exactly easy to follow through with. Applying these strategies in your life takes planning, effort, and dedication.

So, if you’re serious about becoming happier, pull up your sleeves, spit in your hands, and get ready to put in the work.

7. The 12 Happiness Activities

These are Sonja Lyubomirsky’s 12 science-backed happiness activities. The book explains why each activity works and then gives multiple ways to practice it.

We’ll now discuss three specific strategies.

8. Break the Habits of Overthinking and Rumination

“The evidence that overthinking is bad for you is now vast and overwhelming. If you are someone who is plagued by ruminations, you are unlikely to become happier before you can break that habit. Indeed, I will go so far as to say that if you are an overthinker, one of the secrets to your happiness is the ability to allay obsessive overthinking and to reinterpret and redirect your negative thoughts into more neutral or optimistic ones.”

If you’re struggling with overthinking, you need to find a way to fix it. Otherwise, as Lyubomirsky says, you might as well forget about happiness. And yes, you can fix this disease of overthinking! I’ve done so myself. Sure, I’m nowhere near perfect, but compared to when I was younger, I’m 100 times better.

So, how can you overcome rumination and overthinking? Two strategies from the book are:

But hands down the best strategy to break the deadlock of overthinking is mindfulness—the ability to step back from your thoughts/feelings and watch them from a safe distance in a nonjudgmental and accepting way.

Mindfulness is the most important skill I’ve ever come across in my entire life. Not only has it helped me beat the curse of overthinking, it has also made me a happier, kinder, more compassionate, more productive, and overall better person.

Let’s discuss this further in the next point.

9. Practice Mindfulness

“A series of studies conducted at the University of Rochester focused on people ‘high in mindfulness’, that is, those who are prone to be mindfully attentive to the here and now and keenly aware of their surroundings. It turns out that such individuals are models of flourishing mental health. Relative to the average person, they are more likely to be happy, optimistic, self-confident and satisfied with their lives, and less likely to be depressed, angry, anxious, hostile, self-conscious, impulsive or neurotic.

Furthermore, people who are habitually mindful of their current experiences are more likely to experience frequent and intense positive emotions, to feel self-sufficient, competent and to have positive social relationships, while those who are not usually mindful report more illness and physical symptoms.”

In short: mindfulness is great. So how do you practice it? There are two ways: formal and informal.

Formal practice is what we call meditation. You take time out of your day to focus on an object of concentration (e.g., your breath), and bring your mind back to that object every time you get distracted and are lost in thinking.

Informal practice doesn’t require taking any time out of your day. Instead, you simply do whatever you’re currently doing in a mindful way. We call this mindful eating, mindful cooking, mindful showering, or mindful commuting. Whatever you do, you give your full attention to it. When you get lost in thought, you bring your attention back to the task at hand. That’s easier said than done, but that’s the gist of it.

If you’re new to this, you want to start with formal practice so that you get a feel for what mindfulness involves and what it feels like. If you’re to take the plunge, check out our beginner’s guide on meditation and start a daily practice.

10. Have a Project

“In 1932, weighed down by the sorrows and agonies of his self-absorbed and aimless clients, an Australian psychiatrist named W. Béran Wolfe summed up his philosophy like this: ‘If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden, or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi Desert.’ He was right. People who strive for something personally significant, whether it’s learning a new craft, changing careers, or raising moral children, are far happier than those who don’t have strong dreams or aspirations. Find a happy person, and you will find a project.”

Call it a project, goal, dream, aspiration, or whatever—you need something you’re working on and/or something you’re working toward.

Goals give you meaning, a sense of purpose, a feeling of control, and a positive outlook on life. They get us fired up and out of bed in the morning. They put us into that high-performance state of enthusiasm, positivity, and motivation.

If your life lacks meaning, if you’re bored a lot of the time, if you don’t know what to do with yourself, it’s likely because you’re not pursuing any projects you’re passionate about.

If you want greater happiness, figure out a worthwhile project and get on it. Happy people have projects.

Further Reading

If you enjoyed this summary, you’ll probably enjoy other books on Positive Psychology and the science of happiness. Some of my favorites are:

And if you want more summaries like this one, check out Blinkist for instant access to 2,000+ summaries of the best nonfiction and self-help books ever.

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The How Of Happiness: An Insightful Summary

Interested in learning some happiness-boosting strategies from The Science of Happiness in an easy-breezy, smart, and fun way? This is the first book to dive into! This synopsis will capture your attention and prod you to buy the self-help/pop-sci bestseller.

Here is a teaser: If you think getting married will make you happier forever, or that divorce will make a person sulk and feel miserable for the rest of their lives, you are wrong in either case. Dive in for more.

Summary of The How of Happiness

Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky’s research-based book “The How of Happiness” tells us that we cannot achieve long-term happiness by changing our life circumstances. The joys of marriage or a lucrative job do not last. However, we can boost our daily happiness using simple behavioral strategies called positive interventions.

The book is based on extensive research by experts from positive psychology — the branch of science that studies happiness, strengths, wellbeing, and things making a good life. Its author, Sonja Lyubomirsky, is a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Riverside. She received her B.A. from Harvard University and her Ph.D. in social psychology from Stanford University.

One surprising revelation from the book is: Marriage does not make us lastingly happier. A famous study on marriage shows the happiness boost of marriage only lasts for an average of 2 years.

Though people do receive an emotional boost from highly positive events such as getting married, these initial boosts do not last indefinitely (Lucas, Clark, Georgellis, and Diener, 2003), as people tend to adapt to their life circumstances over time (i.e., to experience hedonic adaptation; Lyubomirsky, 2011).

A marriage, or any other intimate relationship, that has entered the phase of hedonic adaptation, makes one feel boredom, dissatisfaction, and neglect, and they stop paying attention to their partner. It is a crucial factor fuelling divorce or breakup.

People also adapt to divorce rather sooner than they expect. On average, people do not seem to stay miserable for as long as they think they will do. In fact, after some years, divorced people become happier than they were before.

9 Delightful Insights Summarizing The How of Happiness

1. Mindfulness, Savoring, Flow

All three can increase our happiness.

• Mindfulness is being attentive to the present moment with no judgment. Highly mindful people, that is, those who are sharply aware of their “here & now” are more likely to flourish and score on the positive side of mental health.

• Savoring is trying to feel and admire, enjoy, and extend our present positive experiences to the fullest. Those who savor the things they have in their life are happier people. We should let ourselves truly appreciate the beauty and meaning in the things we are surrounded with.

• Flow is a state of deep absorption in an activity, with such intense focus that we lose the sense of time. The book suggests being in a state of flow can be rewarding in itself and can make us significantly happier.

2. Marriage

• Married couples get a happiness boost for about two years. Then they return to their baseline happiness. Then what are the secrets of keeping a marriage happy and satisfying?

• One vital secret behind happy and fulfilling marriages is how a couple responds to each other’s successes. If they revel in being happy at their counterpart’s successes, it creates a major uptick in their relationship satisfaction.

• So, if there’s good news to share, what matters is they are happy as if it were their own success, not the other person’s. Not when they quip, “I’m so happy for you,” but when they exclaim, “I’m so happy!”

• Also, studies show couples who idealize each other are less likely to lose love and satisfaction in their relationship. Idealizing means maximizing one’s strengths and virtues while minimizing weaknesses and flaws.

• Moreover, idealizing one’s spouse can work as a self-fulfilling prophecy, a psychological theory that says beliefs eventually turn real.

• Being Single
Studies show that single people are no less happy than and enjoy as great happiness as married people. Singles find their life’s meaning in other social relationships, like friends, partners, relatives, groups, and hobbies.

3. Ageing

• It may surprise you that youth and early adulthood are not the sunniest times of our lives.

• What research conclusively confirms is that older people are actually happier and more satisfied with their lives than younger people. Happiness increases as we age, after around 40 years, and peaks after 60 years.

• One key strategy for older people to get happier is to spend more time reminiscing — which is the act of retrieving autobiographical memories.

• What reminiscing does is breed positive feelings and make the person feel more loved and protected. The more time the seniors spend remembering their old times, the more positivity they add to their mood, morale, and self-esteem. Find out how to grow old gracefully.

4. Religion

• Religious people tend to have more security, meaning, and purpose in life.

• Actively practicing divinity or spirituality is linked to better physical health, more pro-social behavior, and being more successful at keeping away from unhealthy behaviors such as smoking.

• Those who are religious are happier, healthier, and cope better when they fall into bad times. It may be because of the social support of their religious group.

5. Money

What about using money to buy happiness?

• Research shows that as long as you meet your basic needs, it’s how you spend your money — not how much you possess — that influences your happiness more. The key is not in how financially successful you are, but what you do with it and how you deal it out.

• While on money and happiness, we must note humans are prone to hedonic adaptation. Hedonic adaptation is the notion that after positive (or negative) events, followed by an increase in positive (or negative) feelings, people return to a relatively stable, baseline level of affect (Diener, Lucas, & Scollon, 2006).

• So, if you keep on amassing wealth for the sake of it, it will not make you happier and happier — but less and less happy. Because you rapidly get used to that wealth.

• In short, money makes us happier, but only till our basic needs are met, and thereafter, when we spend it in certain happiness-boosting ways.

6. Experiences

Research finds it is not the things that keep us happy for long, but our experiences. Things we collect lie outside us, while our experiences nest inside us.

Experiences are superior to goods and assets in making us happier because:

• First, most of the stuff we buy doesn’t change much after we have bought them. We adapt to them a great deal faster. Note the word: Adapt. This is the hedonic adaptation we talked about earlier.

• Second, an experience is in itself more social. We are more likely to share and relive our fond memories with others – much more than are our stuff.

• The third reason experiences make us happier is that we are less likely to compare them to those of others. You don’t usually claim your holiday happiness was bigger than your friend’s, do you?

• It does not take us long to start feeling that our prized acquisitions have been there forever. In time, they grow old and dull, and we get eager to replace them with new shiny things we’d again get adapted to soon.

• In contrast, experiences grow in value and joy as time passes. A fun-filled weekend, a lovely dinner, or a meaningful conversation can get embossed into our memories and bring happiness every time we revisit them.

7. Altruism

Altruism is when we act out of concern for another’s wellbeing expecting no reward. Altruism is the opposite of selfishness.

• Charity and altruism make us doubly happy. With altruism, both the giver and the receiver feel happier.

• When we give freely, we not only feel more positive about ourselves but also about those who receive – that they are worthy of our kindness and respect.

• When we’re charitable, we actively go out to reduce the distresses of poverty and suffering in the world. In the process, we distract ourselves from our own petty problems, gain a greater appreciation for our good fortune, and step away from our worries.

8. Goals And Success

All of us have goals in life that define us.

• When we pursue our life goals, it adds structure and purpose to our lives. They raise our self-esteem and self-confidence and make us creative and productive. Most often, each of our major life goals is made up of many smaller goals. report this ad

• When we achieve these small goals, each makes us happier. It starts a positive feedback loop. Those many moments of small joys now drive us towards our bigger goals.

• So you see, when we feel happy and good while striving towards our major life goals, we are more likely to keep working at it. Thus, happier people have greater chances of becoming successful.

• Happiness comes before success and drives it.

9. Gratitude

• Those who are routinely grateful are more energetic and optimistic, have better mental and physical health, have better relationships, and are high on happiness.

• Feeling regularly grateful can bring us a bunch of benefits for physical and mental health.

• Eight Reasons Gratitude Makes You Happier:

They also tend to be more helpful and empathetic, more spiritual and religious, more forgiving, and less materialistic…[and] less likely to be depressed, anxious, lonely, envious, or neurotic.

12 Positive (Happiness) Interventions From The Book

We can create our happiness. As we read, forty percent of our happiness depends on the activities we do with intention. Experts call these activities positive interventions. We could call them happiness interventions or happiness-boosing actions.

A positive intervention (or happiness intervention) is an evidence-based, intentional act or series of actions (behavioral strategy) meant to increase (away from zero) that which causes or constitutes well-being and flourishing in non-clinical populations.

These strategies do not involve making major shifts to one’s current life situations and can be used by anyone, whatever their genetic make-up. Lyubomirsky lays down the following twelve interventions to do to increase our happiness:

However, she does not decree to you to start practicing all twelve. Instead, she thoughtfully offers a Person-Activity Fit Diagnostic scale to find out which activities could be the best for your personality and asks you to pick from those your 4 best-fitting happiness strategies.

What Determines Your Happiness

According to research, half of our happiness is determined by our genes, and most of the rest by our intentional activities, while the remaining by our circumstances. Professor Lyubomirsky simplifies the research with a pie-chart that she calls happiness pizza.

Look at the picture below:

What The Happiness Pie Chart tells us is 50% of our happiness (the blue part in the figure) is determined by our genes, called the happiness set point. And 40% (the green area) comes from our intentional activity, while the rest 10% is decided by our circumstances or life events.

Sonja Lyubomirsky and her collaborator Ken Sheldon were given more than a million dollars by the National Institute of Mental Health to study and find out what makes happy people happy, and how to use that ken to raise the happiness of the general population.

In the preface, she writes: “The star of The How of Happiness is science. To my knowledge, this is the first how-to-become-happier book authored by someone who has actually conducted research revealing how people can achieve a greater sense of happiness in their lives. Every suggestion that I offer is supported by scientific research.”

Professor Lyubomirsky reveals in the opening pages this critical fact about happiness:

Our happiness doesn’t depend on our circumstances as much as we think.

We talk more on this up next.

How Much Of Your Happiness Can You Control

The fact is you can’t do much about that 50% of your genetic set point. So, if your parents are happy, you have got a big shot at being happy. The reverse also holds true.

And data-wise, your life’s happenings surprisingly make up only around 10% of your happiness. So, a lottery win or an unfortunate accident does not impact more than 10% of our overall happiness.

From the data, however, we get this highly practical insight to run away with:

You can make yourself happier by 40% directly through your actions and thoughts. You have to concur that forty percent is one hefty figure. So much so that in fact, one of the book’s original titles was The 40 Percent Solution.

Remaking yourself as a happier person, a new person, is entirely in your hands, if you are willing to bring to bear some effort and commitment.

What Things Do Not Make You Happy

We live our whole lives with many happiness myths. We don’t realize the list of what all do not make us happy is a long one.

If you think a new relationship, looking younger, losing weight, having more money, a new job, will give you unending happiness, then you’re dead wrong. Positive psychology says, the circumstances and changes that happen to us, however great, don’t affect our happiness too much.

We tend to settle back to our base level after any happiness boost we get from a positive life event. The reason behind this is a common quirk of human nature called hedonic adaptation.

Hedonic adaption means we quickly become habituated and inured to most of the changes in our lives.

Things we think are going to make us lastingly happy, actually do not make us lastingly happy. And the things we think are going to keep us forever sad, do not actually keep us forever sad.

Another myth about happiness is attaching an If or When to your happiness journey. Such as:

How Can You Measure Your Happiness

The book lays out a way to measure your happiness before you begin, and after you end, the process of adding happiness interventions to your life. After all, how else would you know if you’re better off doing what it suggests?

The short four-question test Lyubomirsky and her colleagues devised for this is called the Subjective Happiness Scale. You could check out your level of general happiness here.

Rap Song Based On The How of Happiness

The rap song below is a great summary of the 12 strategies from The How of Happiness:

Sonja lyubomirsky the how of happiness

“As pragmatic as a car manual, this how-to is anything but self-help fluff. Drawn from a career of rigorous research, Lyubomirsky’s argument that 40 percent of our joy is within our control could convince the staunchest fatalist that happiness is both a choice and a lifelong endeavor. She explores 12 ways to exploit that slice, such as savoring pleasure, pursuing goals, and living in the present, and ends with a guide to sustaining your newfound contentment.”
—Liz Somes, Psychology Today

“The How of Happiness…is a hybrid of accessible research and worksheets to help diligent readers scour away sadness.”
—New York Post

“Sonja Lyubomirsky’s The How of Happiness provides some excellent advice on improving positive moods. A social psychologist, Lyubomirsky writes with authenticity and with logical prose more fitting of a scientific journal than a New Age spiritualist…here exercises are backed by scientific study to help improve individual happiness.”
—Wordpress.com

“Sonja Lyubomirsky differs from most self-help authors on at least three counts. First, she is a scholar who has herself done pioneering research on the topic. Second, she writes a delightfully elegant prose. Third, she provides practical suggestions for improving one’s life that are easy to follow. All together, this makes The How of Happiness a wonderful addition to everyone’s library.”
—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Claremont Graduate University Professor of Psychology and Management, and author of Flow

“Everyone has an opinion about happiness, and unfortunately, many of them write books. Finally we have a self-help book from a reputable scientist whose advice is based on the best experimental data. Charlatans, pundits, and new-age gurus should be worried and the rest of us should be grateful. THE HOW OF HAPPINESS is smart, fun, and interesting—and unlike almost every other book on the same shelf, it also happens to be true.”
—Daniel Gilbert, Harvard University Professor of Psychology, and author of Stumbling on Happiness

“Our Founding Fathers told us it is our right to pursue happiness – but they left it vague about how to attain that holy grail of modern life. Sonja Lyubomirsky’s The How of Happiness, the result of her groundbreaking research into happiness, shows us the way to a life of purpose, productivity, and joy.”
—Arianna Huffington

“The How of Happiness is the authoritative guide to what makes us happy and how to achieve happiness, written by a world authority on happiness research, Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky. Read this book, follow its suggestions, and you’ll be happier.”
—Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, Yale University Professor of Psychology, and author of Women Who Think Too Much

“The How of Happiness uses cutting edge psychological research to provide a series of sound, practical recommendations to make life more satisfying. Becoming happier may take some work, but reading Sonja Lyubomirsky’s book is an effortless pleasure.”
—Barry Schwartz, Swarthmore College Dorwin Cartwright Professor of Social Theory and Social Action, and author of The Paradox of Choice

“The right place to look for science-based advice on How To Become Happier.”
—Martin Seligman, University of Pennsylvania Robert A. Fox Leadership Professor of Psychology and author ofLearned Optimism

Sonja lyubomirsky the how of happiness

Happiness consists in activity. It is a running stream, not a stagnant pool.
– John Mason Good

Many are familiar with the Serenity Prayer, written by German philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr and widely adopted for use in twelve-step programs: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” But how can you know the difference?It should be obvious by now where the secret to happiness does not lie. The fountain of happiness lies not in changing our genetically determined set points, for they are, by definition, resistant to change, influence, or control. We are also unlikely to find lasting happiness by changing our life circumstances. Although we may achieve temporary boosts in well-being by moving to new parts of the country, securing raises, or changing our appearances, such boosts are unlikely to be long-lasting. The primary reason, as I have argued, is that people readily and rapidly adapt to positive circumstantial changes. I would furthermore be remiss if I failed to point out other reasons why circumstantial changes may prove unsuccessful in making us permanently happier: because they can be very costly, often impractical, and sometimes even impossible. Does everyone have the money, resources, or time to change her living situation, her job, her spouse, her physical appearance?

If the secret to happiness does not lie in increasing our set points or in positively impacting the circumstances of our lives, what is left? Is it possible to attain greater happiness and sustain it? To be sure, most of us do become happier at some point during our lives. Indeed, contrary to popular belief, people actually get happier with age. A twenty-two-year study of about two thousand healthy veterans of World War II and the Korean War revealed that life satisfaction increased over the course of these men’s lives, peaked at age sixty-five, and didn’t start significantly declining until age seventy-five (see p. 64).

This is heartening news. But what precisely can we do to hasten or bolster such increases in happiness? The answer lies in the pie chart theory of happiness. Recall that 50 percent of individual differences in happiness are governed by genes, 10 percent by life circumstances, and the remaining 40 percent by what we do and how we think-that is, our intentional activities and strategies. The secret of course lies in that 40 percent.*** If we observe genuinely happy people, we shall find that they do not just sit around being contented. They make things happen. They pursue new understandings, seek new achievements, and control their thoughts and feelings. In sum, our intentional, effortful activities have a powerful effect on how happy we are, over and above the effects of our set points and the circumstances in which we find themselves. If an unhappy person wants to experience interest, enthusiasm, contentment, peace, and joy, he or she can make it happen by learning the habits of a happy person.

***But click here for two slides from Lyubomirsky’s 2019 Melbourne talk on revisiting this pie chart.