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Sonja Lyubomirsky
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The How Of Happiness: A Practical Guide to Getting The Life You Want Paperback – February 4, 2010

by Sonja Lyubomirsky (Author)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 1,703 ratings
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The key tenet of THE HOW OF HAPPINESS is that every human being has a happiness 'set point' which, depending on how high or low it is, can determine how positive or negative they feel. This book offers a practical approach to help readers increase their set point, and find a level of happiness above that which they would normally feel, and feel more satisfaction in life.

Based on scientific research and trials, this is a groundbreaking book that offers a practical plan to enable readers to achieve a more positive outlook at home, at work and in their personal life. It will also be of enormous benefit to the hundreds of thousands of people who suffer from depression in the UK as it provides the tools to feel better about life.

Previous page
  1. Print length
    384 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Piatkus
  4. Publication date
    February 4, 2010
  5. Dimensions
    6.22 x 1.02 x 7.83 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0749952466
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0749952464
  8. See all details
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  1. They devote a great amount of time to their family and friends, nurturing and enjoying those relationships.
    Highlighted by 2,615 Kindle readers
  2. If we can accept as true that life circumstances are not the keys to happiness, we’ll be greatly empowered to pursue happiness for ourselves.
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  3. First, grateful thinking promotes the savoring of positive life experiences.
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Piatkus (February 4, 2010)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 384 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0749952466
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0749952464
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.6 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.22 x 1.02 x 7.83 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 1,703 ratings

About the author

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Sonja Lyubomirsky

Sonja Lyubomirsky

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Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ph.D., is professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside. She received her B.A., summa cum laude, from Harvard University and her Ph.D. in social psychology from Stanford University. Her research – on the possibility of permanently increasing happiness — has been honored with a Science of Generosity grant, a John Templeton Foundation grant, a Templeton Positive Psychology Prize, and a million-dollar grant from NIMH. Lyubomirsky’s 2008 book, The How of Happiness (Penguin Press) has been translated into 19 languages, and her forthcoming book, The Myths of Happiness, will be released on January 3, 2013. Her work has been written up in hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles, and she has appeared in multiple TV shows, radio shows, and feature documentaries in North America, South America, Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. Lyubomirsky lives in Santa Monica, California, with her family.

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
1,703 global ratings
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Looked used than what it says as new
I purchased this yesterday and got it today but when I opened it, it was damage in a secured box. I bought this new but it’s already ripped and definitely not because of the delivery. It says it’s new but it’s ripped and looked used. Very disappointing :(
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Top reviews from the United States

Tricia C.
5.0 out of 5 stars Great interactive book!
Reviewed in the United States on April 21, 2024
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I’ve been digging into creating my own happiness and this book was perfect! I really appreciated the self assessment, the tools to help you pick your paths to happiness, and the ability to focus on content specific to those paths. I was expecting a traditional cover to cover read and was pleasantly surprised! I’d recommend to anyone who understands you can control your levels of happiness.
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5.0 out of 5 stars More and more, I tell myself, "I am happy!"
Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2015
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Sonja's dedication to the field of happiness shows in this work recommended to me by my therapist. Since reading the "9 Choices of Happiness: How We Choose to be Happy," awhile ago, I've wanted to know more about what I can do to ensure my own happiness. Sonja provides that with "The How of Happiness".

I seem to have a low (and high) set point due to genetics. In other words, I have a mood disorder. I've sought for methods to smooth that out and have a more normal and even happy life. Sonja is dedicated to helping all people, not just those with mood disorders. I saw from her work, which I devoured in just a few days, that I could potentially achieve increasing levels of happiness beyond what I had ever had before.

I transcribed her twelve areas of activity into Goalscape, a tool I use to set and achieve goals. Goalscape uses concentric circles to display goals and sub goals. Twelve areas fit around the circle like numbers on the face of a clock. At the center is my central goal, "A Happy You". I realized perhaps for the first time, that happiness was more dependent on what I did than a chemical from a bottle. Certainly good medication or supplements can be important, but there is only so much they can do.

So much of happiness depends on what we do with our lives. Sonja gives suggestions that can guide goal setting and help me get (and stay) happy that much faster and inexpensively. She does not advocate a particular faith, but she explains the role of religion and spirituality in increasing happiness. She talks about how we become inured to good things around us and need to overcome that through gratitude and savouring joys. If we don't take time to slow down and be mindful, we can miss joys in our lives. Over the past year I've started practising meditation, and she explained how this practice can promote happiness, which gives me incentive to continue and make it more regular. I've also started a daily practice of Bible reading.

She explains that many of her suggestions sound like common sense and have been around for millennia but have only recently been supported through scientific experiments. She herself is involved in happiness research which gives her voice that much more credibility. I have yet to experience the full benefit of her work because many of the practices she advocates work over a period of time. In our current world, it is sometimes difficult to be optimistic, but she fully explains the benefits of predicting a favourable outcome. I have decided to make happiness my number one value.

Material things can bring short term benefits, but we quickly become inured to improvements in our circumstances. However, a change in our daily activities can produce a great and quick change in our level of happiness. Sonja explains how building relationships and social interaction can help promote happiness. Being a loner, I've struggled with this. A new romance started early this year has budded into a relationship that has the potential to be lasting.

For the past year I've programmed an app that analyses daily activities from check lists. I have noticed that when I score and analyse my daily check lists, it promotes my happiness. I was not sure why. After reading Sonja's book, I discovered that many of the items on my check lists were activities she suggested from the scientific literature that promote happiness. When I do more of them in a day, a greater level of happiness is achieved. So I am dedicating myself to continue with my check lists, even on days I don't feel like doing them. For awhile this past year, actually several times, I let my check lists slide. Upon encouragement from a friend who has seen how much of a difference my check lists make, resuming them has almost instantly restored me to happiness and my former activity level. Committing to goals itself is one area Sonja mentions in her book.

Sonja leaves it up to the reader to select specific activities and choose which areas of the twelve to work on. Some attention to each of the twelve areas is beneficial, but of course it works to prioritize what gets focused on first. Action is the key. With my check lists I can keep more things in scope and can work on most of the twelve areas simultaneously. I may sound too analytical about being happy, but I have discovered that happiness is best not merely left to chance. I want to consistently produce happy feelings and am willing to implement what science has discovered about the human potential for producing those feelings.

You may wonder if I have become happy. I am discovering tools that help me produce happiness more consistently, more often, and more deeply. I am discovering tools that bring me back when I dip into depression. Have I fully beat depression? No. I would love to say that I have. I still have a mood disorder. But I am optimistic about my ability to deal with it. The fear of being overcome by it is much less. I think my optimism will increase as I continue to apply the principles I've learned in Sonja's book. More and more, I tell myself, "I am happy!" Thank you, Sonja, for your dedicated efforts to help as many people as you can.
145 people found this helpful
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Dane
4.0 out of 5 stars A Wonderful Beginning
Reviewed in the United States on February 18, 2013
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Five stars for value. Four stars because there is so much room in the book for improvement.

The pros:
1) Hooray that Sonja is putting a dent in one of the greatest insanities of our culture: The lack of intentional focus on happiness in education and science (a slight oversight for the last 2,000 years).
2) How wonderful that some money has actually been spent in research on life's most important quest.
3) It's great that we are coming to understand the value of happiness on all levels such that it is considered important to study and do research.
4) The scientific lens is a valuable lens to turn on just about any topic and this appears to be the most comprehensive effort in that direction so far for the general reader.
5) Lots of good ideas.
6) Some valuable counter-intuitive information.
7) It has already changed my life for the better.
8) It brought happiness to read.

In short, how could anyone go wrong reading anything even slightly useful about increasing happiness? Read the book.

The cons:

Kindle cons: Questionnaires were hard to fill out on kindle. I'm building a website for myself and others to interactively and easily DO and record and even measure happiness consistent with many of the books features. The index lacks page numbers.

Content cons:

1) As valuable as statistical research data is, it is incredibly blind to the complexity of the individual. You have NO information about how and why, on an individual level, the trend was set:
Person a) got happier simply because they love attention and were getting more attention in some experiment.
Person b) got happier because an experiment gave them some flow and focus, enabling them to feel productive and our culture teaches that we are more valuable if we are productive so they felt more valuable and this made them happy.
c) got happier because the double-blind was thin and they picked up the researchers confidence that this approach would make them happier and decided to prove them right on some level.
d) got happier overall but the writing part of the experiment was annoying while the thinking part was exhilarating. e) got happier because she had a crush on the researcher and WANTED to look happier for their next encounter so she would look better.

I would consider the research twice as valuable if it was partnered with a personal explanation by each person in the experiment that could be dipped into online so that the subjective information could be gathered and matched more to the situation of the individual reader, who is not a statistic. This is where intuition trumps science in personal choices sometimes. And less scientific and subjective socially acceptable stories leave an incomplete picture, why not add in some data gathered through hypnosis to see how that diverges from the socially acceptable reasons people give (someone may not want to SAY that they were happier because they felt sexy around one researcher and wanted to look good, but it may have had far more bearing than the experiment).

2) You can learn so much reading about group results and suggestions but also continue one of the biggest trends in our unhappiness inherent in the culture: separation from our moment to moment experience and awareness in favor of external information about what we ought to be feeling and doing to be happy.

3) The author placed an enormous emphasis on how everything in the book was scientific at the beginning but in doing so discounted the 30% of anecdotal stories she shares about her own life, which in some cases is more informative than the science done so far. I may have missed it, but since double-blinds are considered so vital, it also was not clear in many cases if a double-blind was present in the experiments done in a classroom etc. If you are in a happiness course with a happiness expert trying to be happy that in itself is an environment predisposed to happiness. And so in some cases the lesson may be to spend more time in a happiness class experimenting rather than doing any one thing in particular.

So much of what she finds HAS been common wisdom anecdotally for a long time. Which perhaps suggests that scientists need to learn to be less confident when dismissing things that cannot YET be be proved just because they don't have the measuring devices or budgets to explore the subjective terrain of consciousness with the same precision they can design a bridge. Given how vastly ignorant science remains in so many subjective areas it seems appropriate not only to invest a LOT more money in developing the science that can catch up to our internal nuances but also for scientists to be humble to the fact that there are many ways to know something without measuring it in a double-blind experiment that is very crude and still completely subjective when it comes to creating a story about WHY a certain cause had a certain result in a majority of people (but never everyone).

Overall, I found the book a great use of my time.

One thing not addressed in the book is the 20% of the population that is HSP, as defined by Elaine Arron. It turns out that 20% of every species thrives by taking a contrarian stance relative to the rest of the herd and has an uncommonly sensitive nervous system, making environmental control more important than it is for the other 80% of the population. This twenty percent of people may greatly distort data for the rest of the population in some experiements so it would be interesting to see how results differ when groups are first sorted into HSPs and non HSPs.

As part of that 20% I find that my environment physically plays a role in my happiness much more than 10%. I also want to share, for those who do have more time and money, that it is quite possible to boost happiness 20-30% for years by constantly adjusting, improving and redesigning life and environment in small and fun ways specifically to increase happiness (I use my own subjective one to ten scale) through travel, many small home-improvements, joy-based shopping, hobbies (I've taken up radio control planes) etc. And finally, I think that happiness strategies may be cyclical. At one time my happiness, joy and pleasure came 90% from exploring romantic relationships. At another time it came 90% from inner growth and meditation. And now it is coming 90% from exploring and creating a beautiful life materially in hundreds of small ways. It's coming from living in the question: "What is the most exciting day I can imagine and how can I create that day NOW?" When I did not have any money that would have been a depressing question and meditation was exhilarating. Now that I do have the money to fly to Vegas for a Cirque du-Soleil show later in the evening that question wakes me up and engages me fully in flow - one of the states conducive to happiness. And I have no doubt that what brings my happiness will shift again within five years. All of this points to the blind-spots in research and the importance of understanding each of us as unique individuals who are not static, and do not respond statically to the same stimuli, but on a journey in which our values and what brings us happiness changes.
29 people found this helpful
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5.0 out of 5 stars Wanna Be Happier?
Reviewed in the United States on December 8, 2023
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Then this is an excellent book to guide you. It is both practical and comprehensive, easily understood and with a solid scientific basis. Warning- just reading it won’t make you happier, you need to do regular actions for the recommendations to have any effect. Nevertheless if you do so you will likely be a happier and more socially connected individual.
One person found this helpful
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Kent Andersson
5.0 out of 5 stars Finally, easy to understand scientific book, absolutely love it
Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2023
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I've been on a journey myself, and in hindsight I seem to have figured out many of the ways to become happier myself, but also to be able to spread happiness to others.
About three years ago, I decided to market myself more, so I started to appreciate what I'm good at, but I also began giving positive feedback to friends and coworkers, in public! This road led to many positive experiences that I wished to spread to others.
I got increasingly interested in positive psychology, but much of the best material was hard to understand, then I found this book, it's so to the point, and if I want to know more, I follow the reference.
Really appreciate how easy it is to understand, the good examples and how she guides me on finding the best approach for me.

I recommend this book to everyone that... No, not any particular type of person:
I recommend this book to Everyone!
Read it and you will become a happier person.
4 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Erick
5.0 out of 5 stars A ciência da felicidade
Reviewed in Brazil on October 11, 2021
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O que mais gostei desse livro é que é pesadamente baseado em pesquisas científicas, contendo todas as referências bibliográficas no final do livro. Diferente de muitos livros estilo "coach".

Não é necessariamente um livro super "divertido" de ler, mas é muito valioso. Recomendo fortemente.
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Rule 62 Ken
5.0 out of 5 stars Practical and Science-based
Reviewed in Canada on March 10, 2020
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In The How of Happiness, psychology professor Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky explores the science behind what makes us happy, embarking on a "Chilton's Manual" (familiar to those of us who have fixed our own cars) of happiness. She notes how the self-help section of bookstores are full of tomes about how to be happy, but many are anecdotal as opposed to being the product of scientific research. Is what is promoted in these books accurate and generally correct? The author looks to science and to her own research, as well as that of others who have studied this question, for the answer to that question.

Dr. Lyubomirsky dispels the notion that most of our happiness is the product of our good fortune, that lottery winners live happily ever after or that people who buy their dream car or their dream home get a life-long smile to come with it. As she points out, the happiness that accompanies these things are fleeting. According to her research and that of others, we have control over 40% of our happiness (no spoiler, it's on the cover of the book.) She makes the case that each of us has a "happiness set point" which is genetically set that accounts for another 50% or our happiness (which can still be adjusted, much like our weight) and that our circumstances only account for the remaining 10% of our happiness.

In the second part of the book, the author lists 12 activities that have been proven through studies to boost our happiness. But before explaining each of these in some detail, she asks the reader to embark on a self-diagnostic questionnaire, the results of which are designed to show which of the 12 strategies are most effective for each individual. She then describes each of the 12 "happiness activities" in some detail, citing the studies that have supported their effectiveness, and then sets out a number of ways in which each of these strategies can be employed. As the author notes, many of these do line up with what is preached in self-help books (though not always), but she makes the case that these specific strategies have been shown to boost one's happiness according to the results of specific studies, many of which have been conducted through the research of herself and her colleagues.

The third section of the book describes strategies or "hows" to sustain happiness. An optional afterward chapter is directed specifically to anyone who may be suffering from depression. It looks at the most effective treatments for depression, including cognitive behavioural therapy, anti-depressant medications and other therapies. I found this chapter to be especially helpful in providing me with a better understanding of those friends and others who suffer from depression, as well as offering insight into the early warning signs of depression.

If you're curious about what the 12 strategies for cultivating happiness are, you could go to the "look inside" section of the Amazon sample of the book and just read the table of contents, but I'll save you that step. They are:

1. Expressing gratitude
2. Cultivating optimism
3. Avoiding overthinking and social comparison
4. Practicing acts of kindness
5. Nurturing social relationships
6. Developing strategies for coping
7. Learning to forgive
8. Increasing flow experiences (i.e. mindfulness or living in the present)
9. Savoring life's joy
10. Committing to your goals
11. Practicing religion or spirituality
12. Taking care of your body

These aren't spoilers, they're things we've all probably known. It is in the "how" to do these things that this book offers more than just pie-in-the-sky philosophy. The author is very good at anticipating questions about each of these, offering specific advice and suggestions, and writing in a practical solution-oriented manner as opposed to simply offering vague theories. It is apparent from reading this book that the study of happiness has been a labor of love for the author and one that she is happy to share with her readers.
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Femme
5.0 out of 5 stars Muy bueno
Reviewed in Mexico on October 2, 2019
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Muy bueno
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Azra
5.0 out of 5 stars Tolle Denkanstöße
Reviewed in Germany on October 22, 2020
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Das Buch gibt tolle Ideen und praktische Übungen, was man machen könnte, um generell ein bisschen zufriedener durch sein Leben zu laufen. Was mir persönlich am besten gefallen hat war

1. dass nicht nur Behauptungen aufgestellt, sondern die Aussagen auch statistisch untermauert werden.
2. dass es erfrischend wenig reißerisch ist. Gerade bei englischsprachigen Büchern fällt mir oft ein sehr emotionaler, pathetischer Tonus auf, der mir persönlich nicht gefällt.

Die Autorin schreibt freundlich, aber nicht übertrieben überschwänglich. Das Buch verspricht auch nicht das Leben umzukrempeln und die Antwort auf alle Probleme der persönlichen Welt zu geben. Das war mir sehr sympathisch. Es ist eines dieser Bücher, die man gern im Schrank stehen hat und immer mal wieder als Denkanstoß in die Hand nimmt und gibt auch nicht vor, mehr zu sein.
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Marten
5.0 out of 5 stars Thank you
Reviewed in France on December 20, 2015
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Je suis ravie avec cet achat. Merci beaucoup. Je vous souhaite de bonnes fêtes ! Que du plus +++++ ++++
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