The Science of Well-Being: Powerful Happiness Hacks That 5 Million People Are Using

KEYPOINTS

• 01

  A realistic target: 5–15% happier

  Dr. Laurie Santos, the Yale cognitive scientist behind 'The Psychology of a Good Life' (Yale's most popular course in 300 years, with 1,200 sign-ups in three days), says doing the work can raise positive emotion and life satisfaction by about 5–15%. That might move you from a 5 to nearly a 7 out of 10. Mel admits her first thought was that it wasn't enough. Santos says that instinct to go from zero to 100 is part of the problem.

• 02

  Happiness is a leaky tire

  Like learning violin, French or Guitar Hero on hard, happiness takes ongoing practice. Good habits pump the tire up, then it slowly leaks. Santos says she isn't naturally happy but has become maybe 20–30% happier by doing her own homework. She stresses that happiness can be changed, not fixed at birth.

• 03

  Two kinds: happy in your life and happy with your life

  Scholars measure both everyday positive emotion and overall satisfaction and meaning. New parents can be deeply satisfied with life while miserable in it, with no sleep and dirty diapers. Someone flying first class and eating at the best restaurants can have plenty of pleasure but feel empty. Many strategies raise both.

• 04

  We're wired to survive, not thrive

  Evolution favored fear and anger over contentment. The meditating Buddha under a tree would have starved or been eaten. The resulting negativity bias makes us notice the threat in the bush, the bad news on Instagram, and that everyone else in the cafeteria has a friend. Santos says knowing this is a reason for self-compassion: your brain is doing what it was built to do.

• 05

  Circumstances matter less than we think, above a floor

  Grades, promotions, a new relationship or a new house don't boost happiness as much as we predict. Her caveat: if you can't feed your family or are living in a refugee camp, changing circumstances matters a lot. Mel recalled her bank card bouncing at the gas station and how relentless that stress was.

• 06

  Money stops buying daily happiness at a point

  Santos cites the late Daniel Kahneman's study, which she dates to around 2009. Higher income raised positive emotion and lowered stress until about $75,000 a year, then leveled off. She puts that at roughly $110,000 today. Reasons include getting busier as you earn more, and hedonic adaptation: first class and trainers become normal.

• 07

  Time famine hits as hard as unemployment

  Harvard Business School's Ashley Whillans studies 'time affluence.' Santos says feeling chronically time-starved shows up in surveys as a hit to well-being similar to being unemployed. Whillans also finds people at any income level who spend money to buy back time, like the neighbor's kid mowing the lawn or wash-and-fold laundry, end up happier.

• 08

  Social connection is the first lever, for introverts too

  Happy people spend more time with people they care about. Nick Epley at the University of Chicago paid commuters on the L train, with a $5 Starbucks card, to talk to strangers. They felt more energized and less lonely than people told to enjoy their solitude. Introverts got the same boost. They just predicted it would be far worse. Epley's line: 'Nobody waves, but everybody waves back.'

• 09

  Helping others voluntarily makes you feel richer in time

  Doing something nice, like offering to take something off a colleague's plate, makes you feel you must have time to spare. It only works when it's chosen, not obligatory caregiving. Her fix for loneliness, which she says is around 60% across groups, is to text whoever you think is loneliest. She cites Kostadin Kushlev at Georgetown finding the happiest people are the ones taking action, and a 'feel good, do good' effect: upbeat gym music made people more likely to volunteer or donate blood.

• 10

  Presence and self-compassion

  She cites Dan Gilbert's finding that people's minds wander about 48.9% of the time, and that mind wandering, even toward a vacation, goes with lower happiness. Kristin Neff's self-compassion has three steps: notice inwardly that you're struggling, recognize it's common to all humans, then treat yourself like a friend and ask what you can take off your plate. Don't compare your insides to other people's outsides.