January 7, 2010 | 
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The happiness equation
When I was 10 years old I had two realizations which would profoundly influence the course of my life. The first was my family, and most of my friend’s families, were living lives that had the pretense of happiness, but were, at heart, dissatisfied and lonely. I was a pretty easygoing kid, so I accepted the pretense. Then I grew up enough to start to see through the “everything is fine” act my mother strictly enforced around our house. I saw my parents and my older siblings seemed to be tense and upset much of the time. I started to really look at the adults around me, and saw most of them also seemed unhappy with the lives they were living. I also started to take a deeper look at my own feelings, and discovered I had pain of my own I had been denying. Until that time I had known there was injustice and suffering in the world, but I had simply not realized there was so much unhappiness.
My second realization was happiness is the only thing that mattered to people. All human actions and struggles were driven by the desire to find true and lasting happiness. In fact, people would do anything to be happy – whatever that meant to them. I expressed it then with the following formulation: If God were to appear to you, in a form you absolutely accepted was God, and told you what you had to do to be eternally happy, you would do it. It wouldn’t matter if it was something horrible or painful God told you to do, if you fully believed it would bring eternal happiness, you would do it. Since I didn’t believe God was going to make a personal appearance to me, I set out on what has become my life’s work – learning how to be happier. Fortunately, once I found my own happiness, I learned one of my greatest joys was helping other people to be happier, so I found a career as well. Later, when I learned how to be happily married, I began teaching others ways to deepen their satisfaction and happiness in their own relationships.
All this is really preamble to talking about a book entitled, “The How of Happiness.” I will be interviewing its author Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky on my radio show this Friday. She is a professor of social psychology at University of California, Riverside and has been researching the science of happiness for 20 years. Regular readers know I don’t usually discuss books or authors in this column that are the subject of that week’s radio interview, but I really think this is a great book if you want to both understand how happiness works, and create more of it in your life.
In brief, her conclusion is our happiness in made up of three parts. Fifty percent is genetic, and forms our happiness set point. This set point is fully formed at birth and is unchangeable. If we do nothing else to affect our happiness level, we will always return to this point. Only 10 percent of happiness is determined by the circumstances of our life. Rich or poor, married or single, where we live, the job we have, all the stuff we’ve been told will make us happy or sad, only makes a 10 percent difference. The remaining 40 percent is created through intentional activities. These are the way we conduct ourselves in life, and can change the way we think and feel about life. The book identifies 12 categories of activities which promote happiness, and which, if practiced regularly throughout life, will raise our level of well being and happiness. If we stop the happiness practice, we return to our set point. Some of these activities include taking care of our bodies, spiritual practice, having attitudes of forgiveness, kindness and gratitude. Each person must discover which activities suit their personality, and follow those three or four regularly. There are simple tests in the book to take in order to determine which activities will give you the best results.
I think this is one of the best self-help books I have ever read. It lays out a clear and simple way to determine how you can make yourself happier. Unless you’re expecting a personal visit from God telling you what to do, this book may be your best alternative.
Dr. Jeffrey Low has been a therapist since 1978. He currently works with individuals and couples in Sonoma. He hosts “The Relationship Show” on KSVY every Friday at 2 p.m.
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