Why Keeping Your Options Open Is A Really, Really Bad Idea

Glad to see that positive psychology is becoming more and more mainstream. Check out this article from Fast Company:

Given the choice, would you prefer to make an iron-clad, no-turning-back decision, or one you could back out of if you needed to? Does that seem like a stupid question? I understand why it might, but bear with me--because it isn't.

People overwhelmingly prefer reversible decisions to irreversible ones. They believe it's better to "keep your options open," whenever possible. They wait years before declaring a major, date someone for years before getting married, favor stores with a guaranteed return policy (think Zappos), and hire employees on a temporary basis (or use probationary periods), all in order to avoid commitments that can be difficult, or nearly impossible, to un-do.

People believe that this is the best way to ensure their own happiness and success. But people, as it turns out, are wrong.

Let's start with the happiness part. Research by Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert, author ofStumbling on Happiness, shows that reversible, keep-your-options-open decisions reliably lead to lower levels of satisfaction than irreversible ones. In other words, we are significantly less happy with our choices when we can back out of them.

(For example, in one of Gilbert's studies, people were asked to choose an art poster that they could keep. Those who were told that they could change their mind and return it for a different poster in the next 30 days reported being less happy with their poster than those who had to pick a poster and stick with it.)

Why does keeping our options open make us less happy? Because once we make a final, no-turning-back decision, the psychological immune system kicks in. This is how psychologists like Gilbert refer to the mind's uncanny ability to make us feel good about our decisions. Once we've committed to a course of action, we stop thinking about alternatives. Or, if we do bother to think about them, we think about how lousy they are compared to our clearly superior and awesome choice.

Most of us have had to make a choice between two colleges, or job offers, or apartments. You may have had to choose which candidate to hire for a job, or which vendor your company would engage for a project. When you were making your decision, it was probably a tough one--every option had significant pros and cons. But after you made that decision, did you ever wonder how you could have even considered the now obviously inferior alternative? "Wow, I can't believe I even thought about going to Yale, when Harvard is better in every way." (That's just an example--I am neutral when it comes to Harvard vs. Yale. I went to Penn, which incidentally was way better than those schools, but I digress ... )

Human beings are particularly good at rearranging and restructuring our thoughts to create the most positive experience possible in any situation. The psychological immune system protects us, to some extent, from the negative consequences of our choices--because after all, almost every choice has a downside. The key to happiness is to dwell as little as possible on that downside.

When you keep your options open, however, you can't stop thinking about the downside--because you're still trying to figure out if you made the right choice. The psychological immune system doesn't kick in, and you're left feeling less happy about whatever choice you end up making.

This brings us to the other problem with reversible decisions--new research shows that they don't just rob you of happiness, they also lead to poorer performance.

Once again, it's because thoughts related to making the right decision stay active in your mind when your options are open. This places a rather hefty burden on your working memory, and it's distracting. When you're still deciding what you should do, you don't have the cognitive resources to devote yourself fully to what you're actually doing. Your attention wanders. And as a result, your performance suffers. (For instance, in one study, people who made a reversible decision were able to recall fewer correct answers on a subsequent task then those who made a choice they had to stick with.)

So keeping your options open leads to less happiness and success, not more. Ironically, people don't actually change their minds and revise decisions very often. We just prefer having the option to do so, and that preference is costing us.

I'm not, for the record, saying reversible decisions are never beneficial. Obviously if you have no real basis for making a good choice in the first place and you're just guessing, or if the consequences of your choice might end up killing someone, the option of a do-over is probably a good thing.

But assuming that your choice is carefully considered and you've weighed your options, you will be both happier and more successful if you make a decision, and don't look back.

To learn more about reaching your career goals, check out Heidi's new book is Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals. Follow her on Twitter@hghalvorson. Her website iswww.heidigranthalvorson.com.

It seems completely irrational that keeping options open would lead to dissatisfaction but I do feel it's true (from personal experience).

The Mind of the Market by Michael Shermer

Here are my notes on the rest of Michael Shermer's The Mind of the Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics (click here to read my notes through chapter five, here to read my notes on chapter six and seven, and here to read my initial thoughts on this book).

In chapter eight, Why Money Can't Buy You Happiness, Shermer introduces Jeremy Bentham's "seven circumstances" by which "the value of a pleasure or a pain in considered (part of Bentham's "hedonistic calculus" to measure happiness):

• purity: "the chance it has of not being followed by sensations of the opposite kind"
• intensity: "the strength, force, or power of the pleasure"
• propinquity: "the proximity in time or place of the pleasure"
• certainty: "the sureness of the pleasure"
• fecundity: "the chance it has of being followed by sensations of the same kind"
• extent: "the number of persons to whom it extends"
• duration: "the length of time the pleasure will last"

Shermer then describes all the ways in which the standard of living has dramatically risen over the past fifty years -- median income is up, crime is up, leisure is up, pollution is down, and more -- and contrasts that with the statistic that "by all measures of the Subjective Well-Being (SWB), people are no happier today than they were half a century ago" (this I know I learned from The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less by Barry Schwarz and other books related to positive psychology) which he calls the "Happiness Disconnect."

Chapter eight continues quoting many ideas from positive psychology; since I've written much about this topic I'll refrain from writing about it here. Instead I'll list some of the books quoted in this chapter:

• The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States by Edward O. Laumann
• The Happiness Myth by Jennifer Hecht
• The Origin of Minds: Evolution, Uniqueness, and the New Science of the Self by Peggy La Cerra and Roger Bingham
• The Genesis of Animal Play: Testing the Limits by Gordon Burghardt

Chapter nine, Trust with Credit Verification, seems highly relevant to the current credit crisis. Shermer has a spot-on quote from Paul Zak: "when trust is low, investment lags. The same positive correlation holds for GDP growth and trust." Shermer goes on to say that "countries that have higher rates of generalized trust show higher rates of return on national stock markets" and "that in order for a nation to achieve prosperity it is vital to maximize positive social interactions among its members in order to increase trust." Surprisingly, Zak found that people in polluted environments tend to have less trust (related to levels of oxytocin) and found many other conclusions related to trust:

• trust and happiness: "people who trust and are trustworthy report being hapier"
• trust and touch: touch increases trust
• trust and smell: trust may be mediated by smell (read The Scent of Desire: Discovering Our Enigmatic Sense of Smell by Rachel Herz for more on smell)
• trust and neglect: "animals that are abused or neglected shortly after birth show a loss of regions in the brain that have oxytocin receptors, and those animals become withdrawn, socially inappropriate, and depressed."

Shermer continues to discuss Zak's findings throughout this chapter, including Zak's postulate that "evil" people (people who do not respond to oxytocin and who basically cannot be trusted) "are necessary from an evolutionary standpoint because they keep physiologic balance between appropriate levels of trust and distrust optimally tuned. Without these exceedingly selfish people, humans might have evolved into being unconditional trusters. If so, we would become susceptible to invasion by those who would prey on our perfectly trusting nature."

Chapter ten, The Science of Good Rules, starts out with Shermer's story of founding the three-thousand-mile nonstop transcontinental bicycle Race Across America (RAAM) from Los Angeles to New York and the subsequent creation of the Ultra-Marathon Cycling Association (UMCA) to deal with the development and adjudication of the rules as the rules increased in complexity with the number of participants. This chapter is all about the need for a society based on the rule of law and formal institutions, due to our evolved potential sources of conflict: "our selfish desire for self improvement conflicts with or altruistic desire for social enhancement, and our competitive desire to better our lot in life sometimes comes in conflict with the same desire that others have in themselves."

Chapter eleven is named after Google's corporate motto, Don't Be Evil. Shermer states:

For markets to be moral, there must be two conditions: (1) internal trust reinforced by personal relationships, and (2) external rules reinforced by social institutions.

This chapter what happens when those institutions fail, our desire to conform to the social norms of our group, WorldCom and Enron type corporate failures, Phil Zimbado's classic Stanford Prison Experiment, Stanley Milgram's well-known experiments on obedience to authority (increasing "shocks" to help someone "learn"), and (of course) Google. I have lots of friends who work at Google so the passage about the free meals and such at Googleplex weren't new to me, but they might be surprising to non-nerds.

Chapter twelve, Free to Choose, discusses the importance of freedom and the problems with paternalism while the epilogue, To Open the World, returns to the Yanomamo hunter-gatherers and the Manhattan consumer-traders that the book began with. Shemer's oversimplified conclusion?

Power kills; democracy saves. Spread democracy.

Trade leads to peace and prosperity. Spread trade.

Where Starbucks crosses frontiers, armies will not.

Where information and knowledge cross frontiers, armies will not.

Freedom finds a way.

I don't want to sound harsh, but I would not recommend this book. Maybe it's just me and my constant reading, but I found much of the book unoriginal. And I felt mislead about the book's premise, and that gives me a generally bad feeling.

Still, I enjoyed the education on free market theory!

Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future by Bill McKibben

For Baltimore Green Week (April 28 - May 2) I read:

• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver
• Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future by Bill McKibben
• The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan

Click here to read my entry about my desire to read these books. Also, you can click here to read my entries about Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and here to read those about The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

Today I'd finally like to share with you what I've learned from McKibben's Deep Economy.

Overall, this book makes me think of Small Giants: Companies that Choose to be Great Instead of Big by Bo Burlingham, which also preaches the idea that growth for the sake of growth does not work for everyone. Deep Economy takes it a step further and states that growth for the sake of growth is unsustainable, that it does not make us happy, and that it is and will continue to lead to growing instability and insecurity.

Chapter Two (The Year of Eating Locally) is a lot like Omnivore’s Dilemma and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. McKibben discusses CSAs (community supported agriculture) and after reading these three books I'm fairly certain that I will finally join a local CSA in Maryland.

I was surprised at how much Deep Economy related not just to Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and Omnivore’s Dilemma (they share many common examples -- Farmer's Diner - and sources) but also to all the books I've been reading about Positive Psychology. In fact, McKibben quotes Martin Seligman (author of Authentic Happiness) several times and quotes Happiness: Lessons from a New Science by Richard Layard with even greater frequency! It's even related to Renewing America’s Food Traditions: Saving and Savoring the Continent’s Most Endangered Foods (Salmon Nation was mentioned a few times).

Interestingly, McKibben (like Seligman) bashes on the rational economics theory, which was the focus of The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World by Tim Harford and which I really enjoyed reading!

Still, I really liked how Deep Economy contains so many facts. McKibben just packs them in, sometimes up to 10 per page and for a scientist like me, I find that very convincing.

Totally shocking to me (but really should have been so obvious) is that food produced in Cuba is organic by default due to the embargoes placed on the country. Also surprising was the fact that countries with Wal-marts are poorer than those without Wal-marts and the calculation of the economic value of ecosystem services (pollination, decomposition, etc.) at $33 trillion!

I found this paragraph from the last chapter (The Durable Future), which illustrates that "growth" cannot always be measured in pure economic terms, particularly interesting:

. . . a few people tried cleverness instead of force. Dried water hyacinth makes a superb bed for growing mushrooms. The mushrooms, sold across the region, "are particularly rich in potassium, magnesium, iodine, and calcium," and the system is small and cheap, perfect for microfinance schemes that give peasants small loans. Meanwhile, the cultivation of mushrooms breaks up the cellulose in the water hyacinth, leaving a medium perfect for raising earthworms, who in turn, produce a high-quality humus that can be used instead of synthetic fertilizer. Chickens feed on the worms, providing eggs, and chicken droppings supply the biogas digester, which in turn reduces the need to cut trees for firewood. Any hyacinth left over can be fed to cattle, whose manure goes right back on the fields.

McKibben mentions that a group of farmers in Detroit are now farming over 10 acres and producing crops such as alfalfa, hay, honey, eggs, milk, goat, and beef cattle. In't that just wild??! found this Kate Stohr New York Times article titled "In the Capital of the Car, Nature Stakes a Claim" and published December 3, 2003 which gives more information that McKibben provides in Deep Economy. The idea of locally owned food is really growing on me, not just as being more tasty but also as a viable business.

I also learned about cohousing and Ithaca's Ecovillage from Deep Economy. Cohousing, as described on the official Cohousing website, is:

Cohousing is a type of collaborative housing in which residents actively participate in the design and operation of their own neighborhoods.

Cohousing residents are consciously committed to living as a community. The physical design encourages both social contact and individual space. Private homes contain all the features of conventional homes, but residents also have access to extensive common facilities such as open space, courtyards, a playground and a common house.

It makes sense that such communities would be more sustainable in terms of energy use, though I'm not sure if I'd really want to live in such a community.

And of course, reading Deep Economy has given me a list of several books that I would like to read:

• Limits to Growth by Donella H. Meadows, Jorgen Randers, Dennis L. Meadows
• Small is Beautiful by E F Schumacher
• Branded Nation by James B. Twitchell
• Human Scale by Kirkpatrick Sale
• Planet of Slums by Mike Davis

Whew, look forward to future postings on The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine by Anne Harrington and some postings after I try out some of the recipes from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

A New Earth & Positive Psychology

I've completed my informal study of positive psychology and other books related to the science and economics of happiness by reading the following books:

• Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
• Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment by Martin E. P. Seligman
• The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom by Jonathan Haidt
• The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want by Sonja Lyubomirsky
• The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less by Barry Schwartz

I'm not planning to read any more but as I've been thinking about the topic, it has brought me back to thinking about Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, which I've written about on several occasions.

It seems to me that the purpose of A New Earth is to increase people's happiness and thus increase everyone's general happiness and to all become "awakened" or "enlightened."

But it also seems to me that positive psychology provides more of a plan to increase happiness, and certainly is much more based in science and facts.

So my advice to people who liked A New Earth: consider reading The How of Happiness (my favorite book so far about positive psychology) or some of the other books I've read in the field of positive psychology, particularly if you're looking for more concrete prescriptions of how to make your life better!

Terms from The Paradox of Choice

One more thing about Barry Schwartz's The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less. I learned many new terms from reading The Paradox of Choice; in many cases I already knew the concept but did not know the technical term.

Here are some of those terms:

• expected utility, experienced utility, remembered utility - basically utility is defined as what you get out of a certain experience and expected is past, experienced is present, and remembered is future. For us to know what we want, all three types of utility must align.
• availability heuristic - people assume that the more available some piece of information is to memory, the more frequently we must have encountered it in the past.
• anchoring - tendency to heavily rely , or "anchor," on one piece of information when making decisions, for example seeing $3,000 TVs for sale at Walmart will make people think that paying $1,000 for a smaller TV is reasonable when if that $3,000 TV had not been there they would have only been willing to spend $500.
• framing - how we feel about a decision or an event depends highly on how we "frame" it (whether we think we are getting a discount or paying a fee/surcharge).
• endowment effect - once you own something (it becomes part of your endowment), you value it more and giving it up becomes more of a loss.
• chooser versus picker - a chooser actively thinks about and reflects on possibilities before making a decision whereas a picker simply makes decisions without thinking and hopes for the best.
• maximizer versus satisficer - a maximizer wants to know that every decision made was the best that could be made whereas a satisficer settles for good enough (rather than perfect) without worrying about the possibility that there might be something better. Minimizers also tend to ruminate, savor positive events less, do not cope as well with negative events, and take longer to recover their sense of well-being after something bad happens to them. People tend to be "domain specific" in their tendencies to be maximizers or satisficers.
• second-order decisions - methods to reduce the burden of decisions (adopting rules or presumptions; creating standards; delegating authority to others; taking small steps; picking rather than choose).
• postdecision regret versus anticipated regret - the first can be thought of as "buyer's remorse" (which makes decisions harder to enjoy) while the second is thinking about the regret one could feel (which makes decisions tougher to make).
• counterfactual thinking - the ability to imagine a world that is different than our actual world. Upward counterfactual thinking (imagining a better result) may lead to envy and resentment but can also inspire and motivate change. Downward counterfactual thinking (imagining a worse result) can lead to pleasure or guilt in your current situation.
• sunk costs - costs that have already been incurred that cannot be recovered to any significant degree.
• positional goods - products and services whose value is mostly, if not exclusively, a function of their desirability in comparison to other options, for example a Rolex watch as compared to a generic brand from Walmart.

To read my other posts about The Paradox of Choice, click here; to read my other entries about positive psychology, click here.

And with that, I conclude my informal study of positive psychology and the science and economics of happiness. (I still plan to read Happiness: Lessons from a New Science by Richard Layard and The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness by Yongey Rinpoche Mingyur, but not until the summer or fall.)

The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz

Last week I finished Barry Schwartz's The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, the final book in my informal study of positive psychology and the science and economics of happiness. This time, I'll spare you the list of other books I've read on this topic and the other ones I intend to read over the summer.

When I wrote about The Paradox of Choice initially, I mostly wrote about how it compared to other books and why I did not enjoy reading it as much as others.

But I'd like to tell you a bit about the substance of the book, just in case you haven't read it.

First, Schwartz uses well picked cartoons from the New Yorker throughout the book to illustrate his points. I love that about this book.

My favorite cartoon is the one that concludes Chapter Ten (Whose Fault Is It? Choice, Disappointment, and Depression). In it, two chickens are on a snowbank with penguins in the far left corner, glaciers ahead of them, and cute little chicken footprints in the snow behind them. The caption is "They never should have allowed us to be free-range."

Well, I don't support free-range / cage-free chickens (but that's another story; click here to read my post about Part II of The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan to find out more) but the real point of this cartoon is that given options, animals and people alike don't always make the best decisions.

I also like some of the interesting facts I learned from this book. For example, did you know that the average sitcom now has about four fewer program minutes than it did a generation ago?

Also, Schwartz points out that we worry over decisions partly because sometimes decisions reveal something significant about ourselves.

In Part I (When We Choose), Schwartz explicitly states how overwhelming the options we face on a day to day basis are:

• A typical supermarket carries more than 30,000 items . . . and more than 20,000 new products hit the shelves every year, almost all of them doomed to failure.
• A century ago, a college curriculum entailed a largely fixed course of study, with a principal goal of educating people in their ethical and civic traditions . . . it was a way of raising citizens with common values and aspirations. Now there is no fixed curriculum, and no single course required of all students
• Surveys show that most people want more control over the details of their lives (more options), but most people also want to simplify their lives (usually easier with fewer options).
• People are voluntarily switching jobs so frequently now that they can never relax and enjoy what they have already accomplished; they've got to keep an eye out for their next opportunity for advancement.

To sum it up, Schwartz says that the explosion of choices in modern life means that choice in many parts of our lives have gone from implicit (and often psychologically unreal) to explicit (and psychologically real), creating a burden that many of us are not aware of.

The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less by Barry Schwartz

Last night I finished Barry Schwartz's The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, the final book in my informal study of positive psychology and the science and economics of happiness. The other books I read were:

• Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
• Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment by Martin E. P. Seligman
• The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom by Jonathan Haidt
• The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want by Sonja Lyubomirsky

And the ones I intend to read later this year on this topic are:

• Happiness: Lessons from a New Science by Richard Layard
• The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness by Yongey Rinpoche Mingyur

Anyway, I enjoy reading many books in one subject area to really learn a lot from different sources. What's great about this is that each book in the subject area gets easier to read as you become more familiar with the terms specific to that topic. But along with that comes the feeling that every book is kind of the same!

I'd say that while The Paradox of Choice does mention research done by Martin E. P. Seligman (Authentic Happiness), Sonja Lyubomirsky (The How of Happiness) and Robert H. Frank (The Economic Naturalist and Choosing the Right Pond), this book is most like Daniel Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness.

That's because Stumbling on Happiness and The Paradox of Choice both focus most on the idea that what people think makes them happy is not what actually makes them happy.

I really enjoyed Stumbling on Happiness, more than The Paradox of Choice, though I suspect that may simply be because of the order in which I read them; thus The Paradox of Choice no longer seems fresh or innovative.

I also suspect that the reason I was not overly impressed by The Paradox of Choice is because this book was published in 2004 and now in 2008, many of the findings in this book are commonly accepted and well known. For example, I've read many articles in the NYTimes in recent years about the idea that fewer choices lead to a boost in happiness though most people believe that more choices equals greater happiness (sometimes called the tyranny of choice):

• January 22, 2004 - "A Nation of Second Guesses" by Barry Schwartz
• December 7, 2004 - "With So Many Choices, No Wonder You Need Help" by Virginia Postrel
• January 26, 2006 - "Is Freedom Just Another Word for Many Things to Buy?" by Barry Schwartz, Hazel Rose Markus and Alana Connor Snibbe
• November 7, 2006 - "Mr. Bland Goes to Washington" by Barry Schwartz
• April 12, 2007 - "Unnatural Selections" by Barry Schwartz
• May 14, 2007 - "Web Videos Let Car Buyers Survey Their Many Choices" by Bob Tedeschi
• July 2, 2007 - "Money for Nothing" by Barry Schwartz
• September 24, 2007 - "TV Remote Moves Over for a Mouse" by David Carr
• February 26, 2008 - "The Advantages of Closing a Few Doors" by John Tierney
• April 17, 2008 - "To Cut or What? The World Butts In" by Anna Jane Grossman

Okay, well I didn't realize that Schwartz himself wrote many of these NYTimes pieces...still that definitely explains why the material did not seem fresh to me. I felt the same way when I read Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, when I was consciously aware of having read many of the examples from the book in NYTimes articles by the authors.

Anyway, I don't want to give you the impression that I didn't like The Paradox of Choice. I did enjoy it, I just didn't find it as exciting as many of the other books I've read lately on positive psychology and the psychology and economics of happiness.

If you're interested in finding out more, click here to check out this PBS interview with Schwartz.

And if my comparison to Stumbling on Happiness has intrigued you, click here to read the NYTimes review or here to read an excerpt.

The How of Happiness: Chapter by Chapter

I've been reading a lot about positive psychology and other books related to the science and economics of happiness and the one I've just finished is Sonja Lyubomirsky's The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want.

As I mentioned yesterday, this book is the most comprehensive guide to happiness and guide to applying the principles of positive psychology to your own life. Additionally, the book is easy to read and understand, well organized (something I very much appreciate as someone who loves to be organized), and full of facts and science!

Here are some of the things that I learned from each chapter of The How of Happiness:

Chapter One: Is It Possible to Become Happier?

1. 54% of adults in the United States are "moderately mentally healthly" but not flourishing
2. A study of severely depressed people that required them to write down three good things that happened each day every day, found that within fifteen days their depression became "mildly to moderately depressed" and 94% of them experienced relief.
3. Lyubomirsky’s research shows that 40% of happiness is within our control. Of the remaining 60%, 50% is determined by “set points” (genetics) and 10% by circumstances.
4. One study showed that those who were happy as college freshmen had higher salaries sixteen years later without an initial wealth advantage.
5. Another study showed that women who expressed sincere joy in their college yearbook photos were relatively more likely to be married by age twenty-seven and more likely to have satisfying marriages at age fifty-two.

Chapter Two: How Happy Are You and Why?

1. On Lyubomirsky's Subjective Happiness Scale (1 to 7), college students tend to score lower (below 5) than working adults and retired people (about 5.6).
2. Studies show that 15% of people in the United States (and 21% of women) will become clinically depressed at some point.
3. The World Health Organization predicts that by the year 2020, depression will be the second-leading cause of mortality in the world, affecting 30% of adults.
4. In the 1940s "one-third of all homes did not have running water, indoor toilets, or bathtub/showers, and more than half had no central heating" and the average score for American's happiness then was 7.5 out of 10. Today, "the typical house not only has running water, two or more baths, and central heating but it twice the size, with an average of two rooms per person, not to mention being equipped with microwave ovens, dishwashers, color TVs, DVD players, iPods, and personal computers. And real monthly personal income has more than doubled." Today the average score for American's happiness is now 7.2.
5. In 1976, researchers who studied the attitudes of 12,000 college freshmen at elite colleges/universities (age eighteen on average) and then measured their life satisfaction at age thirty-seven found that those whose primary goal as freshman was to make money were less satisfied with their lives at age thirty seven.
6. Both Californians and midwesterners believe that people in California are happier. But studies have shown that the overall satisfaction of both groups is the same!
7. Married couples get a boost in happiness for about two years ("marriage boost"), and then return to their happiness "set point."
8. It is believe that your "set point" cannot be changed; but we can still change our happiness levels!
9. Depression is associated with the short allele (as opposed to the long allele) of the 5-HTTLPR gene.
10. Happy people tend to have more activity in their left prefrontal cortex than in the right.

Chapter Three: How to Find Happiness Activities That Fit Your Interests, Your Values, and Your Needs

This chapter is just eleven pages long (three of which are taken up by a questionnaire). The twelve ways to increase happiness, as determined by Lyubomirsky are:

1. Expressing gratitude
2. Cultivating optimism
3. Avoiding overthinking and social comparison
4. Practicing acts of kindness
5. Nurturing relationships
6. Developing strategies for coping
7. Learning to forgive
8. Doing more activities that truly engage you
9. Savoring life's joys
10. Committing to your goals
11. Practicing religion and spirituality
12. Taking care of your body

Chapter Four: Practicing Gratitude and Positive Thinking

1. People who are consistently grateful have been found to be happier, more energetic, and more hopeful. "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."
2. Gratitude is thought to boost happiness for eight reasons: (1) promotes the savoring of positive life experiences; (2) bolsters self-worth and self-esteem; (3) helps people cope with stress and trauma; (4) encourages moral behavior; (5) can help build social bonds, strengthen existing relationships and nurture new ones; (6) tends to inhibit comparisons with others; (7) incompatible with negative emotions and may diminish or deter feeling such as anger, bitterness or greed; and (8) helps prevent hedonistic adaptation.
3. Some people make a distinction between "big optimism" ("produces an overall feeling of vigor") and "little optimism" ("predisposes people to behave in constructive, healthy ways in specific situations").
4. Participants in the "Best Possible Selves" experiment (each participant spent twenty minutes each day for four days writing a narrative description of their "best possible future selves") were "more likely to show immediate increases in positive moods, to be happier several weeks later, and even to report fewer physical ailments several months thence." -- I find this particularly interesting as this sounds, to me, a lot like The Secret, or the power of positive thinking.
5. Optimism is thought to boost happiness because: (1) it motivates us and makes us more likely to invest effort in reaching our goals; (2) prompts us to engage in active and effective coping; (3) promotes positive moods, vitality, and high morale.
6. Self-focused rumination is a technical term for overthinking.
7. Overthinking while sad may make you more likely to feel "besieged, powerless, self-critical, pessimistic, and generally negatively biased."

Chapter Five: Investing in Social Connection

1. Happier people are more likely to describe themselves as performing "random acts of kindness" such as "doing frequent altruistic acts..., spend[ing] a greater percentage of their time helping others..., and perform[ing] behaviors at hte office that go beyond the call of duty."
2. Doing varied acts of kindness on a regular basis makes people happy for an extended period of time. Practicing acts of kindness works because: (1) it helps you to perceive others more positively; (2) fosters a sense of interdependence and cooperation in your social community; (3) encourages a sense of awareness and appreciation for your own good fortune; (4) helps you to think of yourself as altruistic and compassionate which then promotes self-confidence; (5) can highlight your abilities and resources and make you feel in control of your life; and (6) leads other people to like you and appreciate you and to reciprocate in your times of need.
3. Caregivers of spouses with Alzheimer's disease show depression levels three times greater than the average person.
4. The happier a person is, the more likely he or she is to have a large circle of friends or companions, to have a romantic partner and to consider that partner her "great love," to have ample social support, to be married and to have a fulfilling and long lasting marriage, to be satisfied with her family life and social activities, and to receive emotional and tangible support from friends, supervisors, and coworkers.
5. An analysis of three communities of long-lived communities - Sardinians in Italy, Okinawans in Japan, and Seventh-Day Adventists in Loma Linda CA -- found that of the five things they had in common, "Put family first" and "Keep socially engaged" were the most common.
6. A study found that people who tried to respond "actively and constructively" to good news of loved ones or friends at least three times per day over a week became happier and less depressed.
7. Studies have shown that relative to married people, singles are closer to their friends and have more frequent contact with them and that lifelong single older women tend to have close to a dozen devoted decades-long friends!
8. Hugging is a terrific intimacy and friendship booster and may relieve stress, make you feel closer to someone, and even diminish pain.

Chapter Six: Managing Stress, Hardship, and Trauma

1. Close to half of United States adults will experience one severe traumatic event during their lifetimes. I'm not exactly sure what events constitute severe traumatic events.
2. A groundbreaking (and now classic) study found that two-thirds of female breast cancer survivors reported that their lives had been altered for the better after developing the disease.
3. Bereavement has been found to be associated with an elevation in stress hormones called glutocorticoids, and friendly social contact can lower these hormones.
4. Women cancer patients who attend weekly support groups have been found to live an average of eighteen months longer.
5. Forgiving people are more likely to be happier, healthier, more agreeable and more serene and are better able to empathize with others and to be spiritual/religious and less likely to be hateful, depressed, hostile, anxious, angry and neurotic.
6. Men tend to hold onto hurts and grudges longer than women.

Chapter Seven: Living in the Present

1. Those who can capture the joy of the present moment (by hanging on to good feelings or appreciating good things for example) are less likely to experience depression, stress, guilt, and shame.
2. People who obtain pleasure from looking forward (by imagining future happy events for example) are likely to be optimistic and to experience intense emotions.
3. People who reminisce about the past (by looking back on happy days or rekindling joy form for example) are best able to buffer stress.
4. Mutual reminiscence (the technical term for sharing memories with other people) comes with lots of happy thoughts like joy, accomplishment, amusement, contentment, and pride.
5. The more time older adults spend reminiscing, the more they have positive affect and higher morale.
6. Sharing successes and accomplishments with others has been associated with elevated pleasant emotions and well-being.
7. Mindful people are more likely to be happy, optimistic, self-confident, and satisfied with their lives, to experience frequent and intense positive emotions, to have positive social relationships and less likely to be depressed, angry, anxious, hostile, self-conscious, impulsive, or neurotic.
8. Nostalgic experiences create positive feelings, reinforce our sense of being loved and protected, and bolsters self-esteem.

Chapter Eight: Happiness Activity No.10: Committing to Your Goals

1. Committed goal pursuit is thought to boost happiness for six reasons: (1) provides a sense of purpose and a feeling of control over our lives; (2) boosts self-esteem and stimulates us to feel confident and efficacious; (3) adds structure and meaning to daily life; (4) helps us learn to master our use of time; (5) help us cope with problems; and (6) often involves other people and social connections can boost happiness in and of themselves.
2. "The pursuit of goals that are intrinsic, authentic, approach-oriented, harmonious, activity-based, and flexible will deliver more happiness than the pursuit of goals that are extrinsic, inauthentic, avoidance-oriented, conflicting, circumstance-based, or rigid."

Chapter Nine: Taking Care of Your Body and Your Soul

1. Religious people are happier, healthier, and recover better from trauma.
2. Those active in their religions live longer with a variety of disease and are healthier in general.
3. Spiritual people are happier, physically and mentally healthier, cope better, have more satisfying marriages, use drugs/alcohol less often, and live longer lives.
4. Almost seven out of ten Americans report praying every single day and only 6% report never praying!
5. Meditation has been shown to be effective in patients with heart disease, chronic pain, skin disorders, depression, anxiety, and substance abuse.
6. Meditating reduces stress, boosts positive mood, self-esteem, and feelings of control.
7. Aerobic exercise has been shown to be just as effective as SSRIs (like Zoloft) in treating depression.
8. Physical activity is thought to boost happiness for several reasons: (1) makes you feel in control of your body and health; (2) offers potential for flow and can distract you from worries and ruminations; and (3) can provide opportunities for social contact and thus reinforce social support and friendships.
9. Pretending to be happy can actually make you happier!

Chapter Ten: The Five Hows Behind Sustainable Happiness

1. Patients with hypertension -- who must take meditation each day and eat low-sodium diets -- are much more likely to adhere to their strict regimens if they have family support, especially from spouses.
2. Research proves that a continual and perfect state of bliss is not only impossible but also maladaptive.

To summarize, the main things I've learned from this book are:

1. Journal writing is remarkable! It can help increase happiness through a variety of methods (writing about gratitude, reflecting on acts of kindness, analyzing traumas, imagining your best possible future self, goal-setting, etc.).
2. Variety is the spice of life! Whether we're talking about being charitable, expressing gratitude, setting and striving for goals, make sure to vary your activities to get the most benefit.

If you have any interest in positive psychology or are interested in learning concrete scientifically proven methods to become happier and have a better life, I highly recommend that you pick up a copy of The How of Happiness.

The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want by Sonja Lyubomirsky

I've read several positive psychology and other books related to the science and economics of happiness:

• Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
• Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment by Martin E. P. Seligman
• The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom by Jonathan Haidt

Continuing my study of this topic, I've been reading Sonja Lyubomirsky's The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want. And then I'll still have three other books on this subject to read:

• The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less by Barry Schwartz
• Happiness: Lessons from a New Science by Richard Layard
• The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness by Yongey Rinpoche Mingyur

(I may read The Paradox of Choice in May 2008 and put off reading the other two for a few months.)

Lyubomirsky is a professor of Psychology at the University of California, Riverside and has been working on groundbreaking scientific research in the study of happiness.

As evident on the cover, Lyubomirsky's research shows that 40% of happiness is within our control. Of the remaining 60%, 50% is determined by "set points" (genetics) and 10% by circumstances.

Further, this book also discusses concepts of positive psychology learned in other books, such as :

• External circumstances (wealth, beauty, etc) does not create to lasting happiness.
• The secret of happiness is that it lies within ourselves.
• Happiness can boost energy, creativity, the immune system, productivity, and longevity.
• Happy people tend to be committed to lifelong goals and ambitions, have enduring and deep social networks, live in the present moment, are comfortable expressing gratitude, are likely to be spiritual or religious.
• Even happy people face stress, crises and even tragedies.

Out of the books I've read related to positive psychology and the study of happiness, The How of Happiness is the most comprehensive guide to happiness. I'm sure you'll agree after reading just the Table of Contents:

Foreward 1

Part One: How to Attain Real and Lasting Happiness

1. Is It Possible to Become Happier? 13
A Program for Lasting Happiness 14
Do You Know What Makes You Happy? 16
Discovering the Real Keys to Happiness 19
The Most Rewarding "Work" You'll Ever Do 24
Why Be Happy? 24

2. How Happy Are You and Why? 27
Where Do You Fit In? 30
Happiness Myths 38
The Limits of Life Circumstances 41
The Happiness Set Point 52
The Promise of Intentional Activity 63
Conclusion 67

3. How to Find Happiness Activities That Fit Your Interests, Your Values, and Your Needs 69
Three Ways That Strategies Can Fit 70
Corniness, Again 72
Person-Activity Fit Diagnostic 73
P.S. More Options 78
Final Words 79

Part Two: Happiness Activities

Foreword to Part Two: Before You Begin 83

4. Practicing Gratitude and Positive Thinking 88
Happiness Activity No. 1: Expressing Gratitude 89
Happiness Activity No. 2: Cultivating Optimism 101
Happiness Activity No. 3: Avoiding Overthinking and Social Comparison 112

5. Investing in Social Connections 125
Happiness Activity No. 4: Practicing Acts of Kindness 125
Happiness Activity No. 5: Nurturing Social Relationships 138

6. Managing Stress, Hardship, and Trauma 150
Happiness Activity No. 6: Developing Strategies for Coping 151
Happiness Activity No. 7: Learning to Forgive 169

7. Living in the Present 180
Happiness Activity No. 8: Increasing Flow Experiences 181
Happiness Activity No. 9: Savoring Life's Joys 190
Final Words 204

8. Happiness Activity No.10: Committing to Your Goals 205
Six Benefits of Committed Goal Pursuit 206
What Kind of Goals Should You Pursue? 208
Recommendations for Committed Goal Pursuit 214

9. Taking Care of Your Body and Your Soul 227
Happiness Activity No. 11: Practicing Religion and Spirituality 228
Happiness Activity No. 12: Taking Care of Your Body (Meditation) 240
Happiness Activity No. 12: Taking Care of Your Body (Physical Activity) 244
Happiness Activity No. 12: Taking Care of Your Body (Acting Like a Happy Person) 250

Part Three: Secrets to Abiding Happiness

10. The Five Hows Behind Sustainable Happiness 257
The First How: Positive Emotion 258
The Second How: Optimal Timing and Variety 266
The Third How: Social Support 270
The Fourth How: Motivation, Effort, and Commitment 273
The Fifth How: Habit 277
Conclusion 280

The Promise of Abiding Happiness: An Afterword 282

Postscript: If You Are Depressed 285
What Is Depression? 285
The Causes of Depression 289
The Most Effective Treatments for Depression 293
The Cure for Unhappiness Is Happiness 302
Surmounting Setbacks 304

Appendix: Additional Happiness Activities That May Fit 305
Acknowledgments 309
Notes 3113
Index 359

Click here to read an excerpt of The How of Happiness from the author's website. Lyubomirsky's website also includes a sample syllabus for those interested in learning more about positive psychology and a reading group guide to aid discussion of her book; I think I'll save a copy of that on my hard drive just in case I want to learn even more about this topic.

It seems like way too many books have recently been published about happiness; not just the ones I've read but also:

• Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein (2008)
• The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World by Eric Weiner (2008)
• Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment by Tal Ben-Shahar (2007)
• Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier by Robert Emmons (2007)
• The Science of Happiness: How Our Brains Make Us Happy-and What We Can Do to Get Happier by Stefan Klein (2006)
• What Happy Companies Know: How the New Science of Happiness Can Change Your Company for the Better by Dan Baker, Cathy Greenberg and Collins Hemingway (2006)
• Happiness: The Science behind Your Smile by Daniel Nettle (2005)
• What Happy People Know: How the New Science of Happiness Can Change Your Life for the Better by Dan Baker and Cameron Stauth (2004)
• The Science of Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Mood by Stephen R. Braun (2001)
• The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living by Dalai Lama (1998)
• The Pursuit of Happiness: Who is Happy and Why by David G. Myers (1993)
• Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1991)

I am hopeful that the findings of positive psychology will endure, though I wonder if all the buzz about happiness is really just hype.

Authentic Happiness and finding Meaning in Life

I finished reading Martin E. P. Seligman's Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment a few days ago and have written about positive psychology, the main concepts of this book, how authentic happiness and positive psychology can help you have a better marriage, and how to apply positive psychology to childrearing.

But I also want to share with you Seligman's discussion of finding meaning and purpose in life.

First, Seligman mentions receiving an advance copy of Robert Wright's Nonzero: The Logic Of Human Destiny.

Click here to view the table of contents and to read excerpts on the author's website and click here to read a review of Nonzero in the NYTimes Book Review.

Nonzero uses game theory to develop a philosophy of history answering the question, what is the purpose in evolution? Wright believes as Seligman writes, "We are, at this moment, living through the end of the storm before the calm. The Internet, globalization, and the absence of nuclear war are not happenstance. They are almost inevitable products of a species selected for more win-win scenarios. The species stands at an inflection point after which the human future will be much be much happier than the human past."

Nonzero a follow-up to Wright's The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology (named one of the 12 best books of 1994 by NYTimes Book Review), which I bought recently at a local library book sale.

But back to Authentic Happiness. Seligman proposes that negative emotion evolved to help us in win-loss situations and that positive emotions have evolved to motivate and guide us through win-win situations. Of negative emotion, Seligman writes,

When we are in deadly competition, when it is eat or be eaten, fear or anxiety are our motivators and our guides. When we are struggling to avoid loss or to repel trespass, sadness and anger are our motivators and our guides. When we feel a negative emotion, it is a signal that we are in a win-loss game. Such emotions set up an action repertoire that fights, flees, or gives up. These emotions also activate a mindset that is analytical and narrows our focus so nothing but the problem at hand is present.

I don't know if I agree with the analytical part but the rest makes sense to me. Of positive emotion, Seligman writes,

When we are in a situation in which everyone might benefit - courting, hunting together, raising children, cooperating, planting seeds, teaching and learning - joy, good cheer, contentment, and happiness motivate us and guide our actions. Positive emotions are part of a sensory system that alerts to us the presence of a potential win-win. They also set up an action repertoire and a mindset that broadens and builds abiding intellectual and social resources. Positive emotions, in short, build the cathedrals of our lives.

Seligman concludes Authentic Happiness with his belief that evolution may be bringing us to God who is not supernatural or the creator of the universe, but one who acquires omnipotence, omniscience, and goodness through the natural progression of win-win. It is our responsibility to further this progress.

You are vouchsafes the choice of what course to take in life. You can choose a life that forwards these aims, to a greater or lesser degree. Or you can, quite easily, choose a life that has nothing to do with these aims. You can even choose a life that actively impedes them. You can choose a life built around increasing knowledge: learning, teaching, educating children, science, literature, journalism, and so many more opportunities. You can choose a life built around increasing power through technology, engineering, construction, health services, or manufacturing. Or you can choose a life built around increasing goodness through the law, policing, firefighting, religion, ethics, politics, national service, or charity.

But ultimately finding meaning in life means to find happiness by using your signature strengths everyday in the main realms of living and to forward knowledge, power, or goodness.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants a better life. Can't wait to learn more about positive psychology!