Gretchen Rubin's Search for Happiness, by Knowledge@Wharton
you happy? Could you be happier? Gretchen Rubin was already "pretty happy" when she asked herself these very questions. In search of the answers, she started her own pursuit of happiness, which eventually became a New York Times bestseller titled, The Happiness Project. She has now written a second book, Happier at Home, based on the idea that the home is the foundation of happiness. Knowledge@Wharton recently spoke with Rubin about why happy people work more hours each week, how to make and keep happiness resolutions, how to ward off the three happiness leeches and how to start your own Happiness Project. An edited version of the transcript appears below. Knowled... posted on Aug 13 2013 (23,847 reads)

The Difference Between Meaning & Happiness, by Jill Suttie, Jason Marsh
a Happy Life Different from a Meaningful One? A scientific controversy about the relationship between meaning and happiness raises fundamental questions about how to live a good life. Philosophers, researchers, spiritual leaders—they’ve all debated what makes life worth living. Is it a life filled with happiness or a life filled with purpose and meaning? Is there even a difference between the two? Think of the human rights activist who fights oppression but ends up in prison—is she happy? Or the social animal who spends his nights (and some days) jumping from party to party—is that the good life? These aren’t just academic questions. The... posted on Mar 28 2014 (34,780 reads)

How America Lost Track of the Good Life - and Where to Find It Now, by Sarah van Gelder
decades, we've been taught that economic growth and buying more stuff will make us happy—while trashing the planet. The good news is, there’s a better kind of happy: It starts with meaningful work, loving relationships, and a thriving natural world. Photo by Tom Wang / Shutterstock. In the last 100 years, we got very confused about happiness. This is no small thing. The way we define happiness drives what we do, what we’re willing to sacrifice, and how we spend our money and our time. This confusion didn’t just happen. Advertisers spend billions spreading the illusion that more stuff will bring us happiness. And policy wonks of all pol... posted on Mar 13 2015 (34,127 reads)

Happiness The Hard Way, by Darrin M. McMahon
think it is probably fair to assume that most Americans today consider happiness not only something that would be nice to have, but something that we really ought to have—and, moreover, something that’s within our power to bring about, if only we set our minds to it. We can be happy, we tell ourselves, teeth gritted. We should be happy. We will be happy. That is a modern article of faith. But it is also a relatively recent idea in the West which dates from the 17th and 18th centuries, a time that ushered in a dramatic shift in what human beings could legitimately hope to expect in and from their lives. People prior to the late 17th century thought happiness was a matter ... posted on Mar 7 2013 (13,434 reads)

Four Ways Happiness Can Hurt You, by June Gruber
recent years, we’ve seen an explosion of scientific research revealing precisely how positive feelings like happiness are good for us. We know that they motivate us to pursue important goals and overcome obstacles, protect us from some effects of stress, connect us closely with other people, and even stave off physical and mental ailments. This has made happiness pretty trendy. The science of happiness made the covers of Time, Oprah, and even The Economist, and it has spawned a small industry of motivational speakers, psychotherapists, and research enterprises. This website,Greater Good, features roughly 400 articles about happiness, and its parenting... posted on May 24 2012 (21,985 reads)

Three Things that Matter Most in Youth and Old Age, by Nancy Hill
a world that daily throws both curiosities and crises at us, it can be difficult to discern what is important. An unexpected event can render what matters today insignificant tomorrow. How do you keep perspective? I turned to two groups—children under seven and adults over 70—to explore this question: What is important? Children, I reasoned, have relatively little to clutter their lives, and in that simplicity they might be able to hone in on what really matters. Adults with more than seven decades of experience would have deep insight into what is most worthy of attention. I expected to find patterns and did. What people left out was as telling as what they included.... posted on Oct 29 2016 (42,406 reads)

7 Ways to Make Happiness Last, by Allan Hamilton
a surgeon I have used the word “cancer” — the C-word — thousands of times in my life. I have spent my entire professional life researching it, trying to find ways to resect it, suppress it, and, whenever possible, outright annihilate it. I knew what it was. I just never imagined what it could do. I thought it was just a word. I was wrong. It’s nothing like a word. It’s a force. I tripped over it, actually. I went to sleep for what I believed was a relatively routine surgery. The details are not important but the theme is. When I awoke, I was told my procedure had been “aborted.” I was in bit of a post-anesthetic haze because I re... posted on Jan 22 2013 (51,336 reads)

How To Be Happy: The Fine Print, by Stacey Kennelley
of us want to be happy and stay that way, and research from positive psychology has shown that making a habit of certain day-to-day activities—like expressing gratitude, exercising, or performing acts of kindness—can help us get there. But few researchers have considered how to identify an activity that’s best suited to your particular personality and lifestyle. Sonja Lyubomirsky, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside, started to explore these questions in her 2007 book, The How of Happiness. Now, Lyubomirsky and a graduate student of hers, Kristin Layous, are zeroing in on why some activities may&nb... posted on Aug 13 2012 (24,837 reads)

Why Worry? Find Meaning! , by Emily Esfahani Smith
is for takers. Meaning is for givers. Guess who feels better? Button Lady by Lee White Something interesting has been happening in recent years. Meaning has regained a foothold in our universities, and especially in an unexpected place—the sciences. Many of the “meaning” researchers are working in a field called positive psychology—a discipline that grounds its findings in empirical studies, but also draws on the rich tradition of the humanities. Positive psychology was founded by the University of Pennsylvania’s Martin Seligman, who, after decades of working as a research psychologist, had come to believe that his field was in crisis. He... posted on Jan 25 2018 (35,840 reads)

Does Trying to Be Happy Make Us Unhappy?, by Adam Grant
we muddle through our days, the quest for happiness looms large. In the U.S., citizens are granted three inalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The kingdom of Bhutan created a national index to measure happiness. But what if searching for happiness actually prevents us from finding it? There’s reason to believe that the quest for happiness might be a recipe for misery. In a series of new studies led by psychologist Iris Mauss, the more value people placed on happiness, the less happy they became. I saw it happen to Tom, a savant who speaks half a dozen languages, from Chinese to Welsh. In college, Tom declared a major in computer science, but fou... posted on Dec 28 2015 (20,507 reads)

Mattieu Ricard: Happiness Is A Skill, by Tami Simon
Simon: Today my guest is Matthieu Ricard. Matthieu is an author and photographer who earned a PhD in cell genetics. He is also a Buddhist monk who has served as the Dalai Lama’s French interpreter since 1989. Matthieu has written several books, including The Monk and the Philosopher, The Quantum and the Lotus, as well as The Art of Meditation. With Sounds True, he has released an audio learning program based on his book called Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill. In this episode of “Insights at the Edge,” I spoke with Matthieu via Skype quite late at night while he was at his monastery in Nepal. We discussed the ski... posted on May 14 2013 (55,665 reads)

Which Countries Are Happiest in The Science of Happiness?, by Juliana Breines
how the happiness levels of students in our online course vary depending on where they live. To what extent is happiness related to where you live? Which countries have the most—and least—happy residents? Are residents of wealthier countries happier? These are some of the questions we considered when analyzing data from the survey we presented to the 112,000 students who registered for our online course, “The Science of Happiness.” So far, more than 40,000 students, hailing from over 200 countries and areas of sovereignty around the world, have taken the survey. Previously, we reported on how students’ happiness levels relate to factors like age an... posted on Jan 9 2015 (35,221 reads)

Debunking the Myths of Happiness, by Jason Marsh
things seem more American than the pursuit of happiness, but are we going about it all wrong? That’s one of the questions raised by The Myths of Happiness, the new book by Sonja Lyubomirsky. Lyubomirsky is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside, and one of the leading researchers in the field of positive psychology. Her previous, best-selling book, The How of Happiness, published in 2008, is chock full of the best research-based practices for increasing happiness. The Myths of Happiness follows up on that work by explaining how our assumptions about what will and won’t bring us happiness are often flat-out wrong. Und... posted on Jun 12 2013 (27,190 reads)

Our Greatest Obstacle to Happiness and How to Transcend It, by Maria Popova
the greatest paradox of human life is that although happiness is the most universal of our longings, it is unobtainable by striving. Every seeming end we seek — love, money, purpose, the perfect cappuccino — we seek as a means to happiness, and yet happiness defies the usual laws of effort and achievement: The more ferociously we try to attain it, the more it eludes us. How to break out of this paradox and transcend our self-imposed limitations in the pursuit of happiness is what artist Agnes Martin (March 22, 1912–December 16, 2004) examines in a set of notes prepared for a 1979 lecture at the University of New Mexico, Santa Fe, included in Ag... posted on Jun 6 2017 (16,058 reads)

Economics of Happiness: The New Economy, by John De Graaf and Linda Sechrist
the Rules to Benefit America’s People   Most Americans are facing their most significant economic challenges in generations. From the hardships of unemployment to the perils of mounting debt, worry about the health of a national economy that depends on consumerism and market success dominates our conversation. But have we asked what the economy is really for?   Since the Second World War, we have been assured that more economic growth is good for us. But is it? By any measure, the U.S. economy, in its pursuit of constant growth, is in dire need of critical life support. Too many people have lost jobs, homes, scholarships and retirement savings, along with pea... posted on Nov 20 2011 (23,531 reads)

The Top 10 Insights from the "Science of a Meaningful Life" in 2013, by Greater Good
past few years have been marked by two major trends in the science of a meaningful life. One is that researchers continued to add sophistication and depth to our understanding of positive feelings and behaviors. Happiness is good for you, but not all the time; empathy ties us together, and can overwhelm you; humans are born with an innate sense of fairness and morality, that changes in response to context. This has been especially true of the study of mindfulness and attention, which is producing more and more potentially life-changing discoveries. The other factor involves intellectual diversity. The turn from the study of human dysfunction to human s... posted on Jan 23 2014 (128,300 reads)

Why Happiness is the Wrong Pursuit, by Christine Carter
way to lead a joyful life is not to pursue happiness for ourselves, argues Christine Carter, but to pursue it for others “Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.” –Helen Keller Money doesn’t buy happiness. Obvious, right? On some abstract level, we know that money and other outward signs of success won’t ultimately make us happy—perhaps because we know wealthy or famous or powerful people who are deeply unhappy—but on another level, we don’t really believe it… or at least we don’t belie... posted on Feb 5 2015 (36,581 reads)

Top 10 Insights from the Science of a Meaningful Life 2015, by Jason Marsh, Kirra Dickinson, Kira M. Newman, Jill Suttie, Jeremy Adam
than a decade after Greater Good first started reporting on the science of compassion, generosity, happiness—what we call “the science of a meaningful life”—the research in our field is acquiring ever more nuance and sophistication. New studies build on and even re-interpret findings from previous years, particularly as their authors use more exacting methods, with bigger and broader data sets, and consider additional factors to explain prior results. These nuances are clearly reflected in this year’s list of our Top 10 Insights from the Science of a Meaningful Life—the fourth such list compiled by Greater Good’s editors. Indeed, many of this... posted on Jan 7 2016 (18,451 reads)

College Happiness Clubs Spread Joy and Random Acts of Kindness, by Lexi Dwyer
students often get stereotyped as stressed out and sleep-deprived. But at universities across the country, students are aiming to change that as they join clubs dedicated to a common, joyful purpose: spreading happiness. Eleanor Collier / Stanford Happiness Collective The Stanford Happiness Collective was started three years ago "with the goal of doing things to brighten people's days," its president, junior Eleanor Collier told TODAY. Northwestern University is home to one of the country's oldest college happiness clubs, which began unofficially in 2008 when a group of students handed out hot chocolate outside the library on a cold evening right before fin... posted on Feb 24 2016 (12,070 reads)

Five Science-Backed Strategies for More Happiness, by Kira M. Newman
you know that happiness has its own holiday? Four years ago, the General Assembly of the United Nations proclaimed March 20 to be the International Day of Happiness. It’s easy to understand why they see happiness as something to celebrate: Happy people are healthier; they get sick less often and live longer. Happy people are more likely to get married and have fulfilling marriages, and they have more friends. They make more money and are more productive at work. Based on decades of research, it has become clear that happiness is not just a personal issue; it’s a matter of public health, global economics, and national well-being. But it doesn’t come easy, as most o... posted on Apr 29 2016 (69,593 reads)