What is the main message of The How of Happiness?

Find science-based strategies for increasing happiness and well-being in The How of Happiness .

How long does it take to read The How of Happiness?

Reading time may vary, but The How of Happiness can be read in several hours. The Blinkist summary takes just 15 minutes.

Is The How of Happiness a good book? Is it worth reading?

The How of Happiness is worth reading because it provides practical advice backed by research for living a happier life.

Who is the author of The How of Happiness?

Sonja Lyubomirsky is the author of The How of Happiness .

The How of Happiness Summary of Key Ideas and Review

Name: The How of Happiness
Rating: 4.5 (239 reviews)
Author: Sonja Lyubomirsky

Introduction

What’s in it for me? Learn a scientific approach to increasing your happiness.

Does the world really need yet another guide to happiness? There’s already an overwhelming number of books, podcasts, and magazine articles on the topic.

Unfortunately, most of them are by self-appointed happiness gurus rather than actual scientists. The result is often a mishmash of loosely interpreted academic studies, folk wisdom, anecdotes, personal theories, and pure speculation.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Over the past decade, the field of social psychology has accumulated a large body of research on what we can do to increase our happiness.

Not much of this research has been communicated to the general public – until now. In these blinks, you’ll find something that definitely fills a gap in the self-help market: a guide to happiness that’s based entirely on science.

Along the way, you’ll learn

why obtaining the object of your desire isn’t all it’s cracked up to be;
why your genes aren’t your destiny, as far as happiness is concerned; and
why doing less of something can sometimes be more beneficial than doing more of it.

Key idea 1 of 8

Our personal circumstances affect our happiness much less than we think.

If you could change one thing about your life, what would it be? A new job, relationship, or place of residence? More time, money, health, or beauty?

Most of us dream about something like this – some change in our personal circumstances that we imagine would make our lives much better than they currently are. We go around thinking, “If only such-and-such would happen to me, then I would be happy.”

But according to scientific research, these fantasies are mostly just that: fantasies.

The key message here is: Our personal circumstances affect our happiness much less than we think.

Averaging out the data from a number of different studies shows that personal circumstances appear to account for only 10 percent of the variations in people’s levels of happiness. In other words, if one person is happier than another, only 10 percent of that variation can be explained by differences in the incidental details of their lives, like their income or marital status.

That might seem counterintuitive. After all, most of us would enjoy a big boost of happiness if we got married, became rich, or experienced some other major, positive change in our circumstances – right?

Yes – but the boost would probably be short-lived. That’s because of a phenomenon called hedonic adaptation. It turns out that we human beings have an incredible knack for getting used to changes in our lives. Think of how you feel when you buy a shiny new gadget. At first, it’s exciting – but then the novelty wears off, the pleasure fades, and you go back to feeling the same way you did before.

Research shows that a similar thing happens when people get married or become rich. One study found that couples enjoyed a boost of happiness after they tied the knot, but it only lasted two years. Another study found that lottery winners experienced an even shorter-lived boost of one year.

Now, none of this means that circumstances don’t have any effect on our long-term happiness. A third study found that married couples reported being “very happy” at a higher rate than singles. But the difference was surprisingly small: 25 versus 21 percent, respectively – a difference of merely four percentage points.

If that’s true of something as big and meaningful as getting married, how much happiness do you think that new job or house will really bring you in the long run?

Key idea 2 of 8

Our genes play a big role in our happiness, but they’re only part of the equation.

All right – so our personal circumstances account for only 10 percent of our happiness. That raises an obvious question: What about the other 90 percent?

Well, right away, we can rule out the effects of a number of other things on how happy we are – not just income and marital status, but also occupation, attractiveness, health, gender, ethnicity, age, religion, place of origin, and even major life experiences, like being popular or getting bullied in school.

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Key idea 3 of 8

Our thoughts and behavior account for 40 percent of our happiness.

If you crunched all the data from the research we looked at in the previous blink, you’d find that genes account for 50 percent of the variations in people’s happiness.

Add the 10 percent attributable to circumstances, and you’re up to 60 percent. But that still leaves 40 percent of our happiness unaccounted for. Where does it come from?

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Key idea 4 of 8

Intervention studies enable researchers to identify the thoughts and behaviors that increase our happiness.

OK – so 40 percent of our happiness depends on our thoughts and behavior. But which ones actually make us happier?

The easiest way to answer this question would be to find a bunch of happy people and observe how they think and behave. For example, if happy people tend to be more grateful than their unhappy counterparts, we can conclude that gratitude is one of the secrets to happiness, right?

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Key idea 5 of 8

The effectiveness of a happiness-boosting activity depends on when and how often you practice it.

If writing a gratitude journal only once per week makes people happy, you might expect that writing in one three times per week would make them even happier. The more, the better, right?

Wrong. In fact, quite the opposite: In the author’s intervention study, the group whose members wrote in their journal three times per week reported no benefits whatsoever. They experienced the same levels of happiness as the control group, whose members did nothing at all. The positive effects reported by the once-a-week group had completely disappeared.

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Key idea 6 of 8

Variety and commitment also determine the effectiveness of a happiness-boosting activity.

So there you have it: if you want to increase your happiness, it’s not just what you do that matters – it’s how you do it. That, in a nutshell, is one of the central insights of this research, and it has some very practical implications. As we’ve seen, the same activity can be highly beneficial or completely ineffective depending on how much of it you do and how often you do it.

But there’s more to “the how of happiness” than frequency and timing. In this blink, we’re going to take a look at two more variables that can make or break your attempts to increase your happiness by changing your thoughts and behaviors.

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Key idea 7 of 8

Practice happiness-boosting activities in ways that feel right for you and vary them to keep them fresh.

But wait a minute – there seems to be a contradiction here. On the one hand, you’ve got to keep repeating a happiness-boosting activity to continue experiencing its benefits. On the other hand, repetition can take away those benefits since it can make the activity feel tedious.

How do you get around this paradox? Well, the trick is to combine repetition with variety. Basically, you need to come at the activity from different angles to prevent it from getting stale. And in doing this, you can also find how to do the activity in ways that are best-suited to your particular needs.

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Key idea 8 of 8

You can select from many happiness-boosting activities, so pick the ones that fit you the best.

In these blinks so far, we’ve focused on two activities that can boost happiness: practicing gratitude and committing acts of kindness. By digging into them, we’ve uncovered some general principles that apply to any happiness-boosting activity.

But the author’s research has shown that a number of other activities can increase our levels of happiness as well. In this final blink, we’re going to round things out by taking a quick look at them.

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