It is good to know your present personal happiness level to estimate your happiness set point. For this the book provides some self-reports you can do like the “Subjective Happiness Scala”. You should repeat the report after 2 weeks because it is a heavily subjective report and the result depends on your current emotional state, your preceding events etc.. So it is best to take the average of several reports to get a better estimation.

There is also a “Depression Scale” in the book to determine your depression score. Sounds funny but it is a serious topic as the World Health Organization predicts that by the year 2020 depression will be the second-leading cause of mortality in the entire world, affecting 30 percent of all adults.

Some Happiness Myths

The following statements are generally accepted but they are wrong.

Happiness must be “Found”

Happiness is not out there, it is inside us. Happiness is more than anything a state of mind, a way of perceiving and approaching ourselves and the world in which we reside. So the right thing to do is to change and manage your state of mind.

Happiness lies in changing our circumstances

As mentioned in my first part of this review the circumstances control only about 10% of your happiness level. Changing the circumstances of our lives (like Material Wealth or Beauty) can make us happier but only for a small period of time. It is not lasting. There is a very interesting experiment described in the book:

They asked Americans in 1940 when one third of all homes did not have running water, indoor toilets or central heatings what their overall satisfaction of life is. They reported being “very happy” with an average score of 7.5 out of 10. The typical house today has not only running water, two or more baths, central heating but is twice the size with color TVs, DVD players, iPods, PCs etc.. Surprisingly the average score for Americans happiness today is 7.2!

You either have it or you don’t

Yes, some part of our happiness level is determined by our genes but it is possible to overcome our genetic programming.

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The How of Happiness

Currently I’m reading “The How Of Happiness – A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want” from Sonja Lyubomirsky a Ph. D. from the Stanford University. This post is part 1 of the review.

It 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. The book starts with a very interesting question and a surprising answer.

What do you think would make you happier ?
- A relationship?
- An extra bedroom ?
- A baby?
- More money?
- More Time ?

If your answer looks anything like these you’re in for a surprise. None of these things will make you substantially happier. We often look for happiness in the wrong places. What we believe would make a huge difference in our lives, actually makes only a small difference, while we overlook the true sources of personal happiness and well-being. Why is it so hard for us to believe that money really doesn’t make us happy? Because the truth is that money does make us happy. BUT our misunderstanding is that “we think money will bring lots of happiness for a long time, and actually it brings a little happiness for a short time.”

The 40 Percent Solution
50% of the factors which determine happiness are the genetically Set Points. They can’t be changed and therefore they shouldn’t be in the focus. The smallest part by 10 % are the circumstances we live in. So life circumstances like house, money, etc. are not the keys to happiness. That means that the remaining 40 % is within our ability to control, the 40% for opportunities to increase or decrease our happiness levels through what we do in our daily lives and how we think. This is the interesting part and it is the main focus of the book.

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The path to happiness

The basic equipment to achieve complete happiness is just the right mental state. Ideally you shouldn’t be dependent on external things. One has to concentrate on the mind itself. There are thousands of different thoughts all day and therefore it is important to identify which of them are helpful, which are neutral and which are harmful. We should reduce negative thoughts and nourish the helpful ones.

So the first step in seeking happiness is to learn how negative emotions and behaviour are harmful to us and how positive thoughts are helpful. It lies within our own hands.
“Identify and culture positive mental states; identify and eliminate negative mental states”
This way of thinking – attracting positive thoughts and eliminating negative thoughts – is not a simple task. In fact, you can’t accomplish it by adopting a particular thought or practice once or twice.

Change takes time.
And transforming your mind takes even more time. It is a process of learning.
Through repeated practice we should try to achieve that disturbances of our mind only remain on the surface, like waves that may ripple on the surface of an ocean but don’t have much effect deep down. Negative disturbances of the mind should dissipate very quickly, there shouldn’t be an effect on the deeper mind. In daily life there will be always situations where you feel distracted, angry, jealous etc. but the art is, that these thoughts don’t have influence on your deeper mind. Sometimes you can be thrown off the track but ideally that shouldn’t last for long.

This art takes time, as the Dalai Lama was trained since he was four years old !

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This post is about inner worth and the difference between happiness and pleasure.

Inner Worth

A sense of inner worth is very important these days. Not just that you have a inner worth but also the source of it plays a major role. The best thing you can do is to gain strength from multiple sources and not just a single one.

For example building your inner worth just on material things is very risky because if you loose your fortune what else do you have ? If there is no second or third anchor you can count on there is nothing left but depression.

Happiness vs. Pleasure

Have you ever asked yourself what the difference between happiness and pleasure is? Most people are often confused about this.

One way to explain the difference is to describe the target of these states of mind. Happiness relates more to the heart and mind and pleasure more to the physical senses. “Happiness that depends mainly on physical pleasure is unstable; one day it’s there, the next day it may not be.”

Knowing this difference can be a great help making right decisions. Before you make the decision just ask yourself:  ”Will it bring me happiness (or just temporal pleasure) ? ” Depending on the answer you can make your decision much easier.

Living with this knowledge means that your achieved form of happiness will be much more stable and remains despite the up’s and down’s of life. This form of happiness should be part of your very being.

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Basic Idea

The purpose of our existence is to seek happiness.

The essential point is that happiness is determined more by one’s state of mind than by external events. It’s always better not to be dependent on external factors to be happy. Your happiness should be a result of your state of mind and attitude. So success may result in a temporary feeling of elation but sooner or later our overall level of happiness tends to migrate back to a certain baseline. After a appropriate time period we always fall back to our day-to-day level of happiness. The length of that period depends on the importance of that event.
The interesting question is: Is it possible to modify the level of this baseline so that our “normal” happiness is on a higher level ?

Comparing Thoughts

Comparing a present situation with the past or comparing ourselves to others is very often the main source of unhappiness. For example let’s take a look at the income of a person and let’s assume that this year it is about $20′000. And let’s further assume that the person is happy right now. After months or maybe a year (that depends on the person) that person normally isn’t happy anymore with his income because he got used to this specific amount. After a pay raise for example to $25′000 he will be happy again, but it will not last forever, so the absolute amount can’t be a factor to be happy. It’s the pay raise itself that makes the person happy, but unfortunately only for a short time period. I think that the more frequent one gets such pay raises the shorter the time will be that the person is happy.

The second comparison we make and which makes us unhappy is the comparison with others. Most people can’t be happy if the neighbor is making more money. The absolute amount is not important anymore even if it is way too much to spend in a life time, people can be unhappy if someone else earns more.

The key thing is to get independent of external factors.

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