Happiness, it turns out, takes practice. But first you have to learn what exactly happiness is
Professor Laurie Santos didn’t set out to create the most popular course in the history of Yale University and the most talked-about college course in America. She just wanted her students to be happy. And they certainly look happy as they file into a church — a literal church, Battell Chapel, that’s been converted to a lecture hall — on the Yale campus on a sunny April afternoon, lugging backpacks and chatting before taking their seats in the pews.
In her very first lecture, Santos emphasizes to her class that she wants to teach them not just the science of happiness but the practice of happiness. And happiness, it turns out, does take practice. But first you have to learn what exactly happiness is.
Luckily, after taking the quiz, we have Professor Santos’s course to look forward to — 21 lectures of up-to-date findings and proven methods to increase your well-being. You can take a version of her course online for free . But be prepared: Before we get happiness right, we have to understand why we typically get it so wrong. The first nine lectures on the Yale course syllabus feature titles like “What Doesn’t Lead to Happiness I,” “What Doesn’t Lead to Happiness II,” and “Why Your Mind Sucks.
So this is where the course starts: Our minds, it turns out, are very good at persuading us to follow intuitions about happiness that turn out to be entirely wrong. To illustrate, Santos cites a test that often comes up in first-year business school: If a baseball and a bat together cost $1.10, and the bat costs a dollar more than the ball, how much does the ball cost? For most people, the intuitive answer is ten cents. The real answer is five cents.
The takeaway is simply this: We are inclined to assume that circumstances play the biggest role in our happiness, when research suggests they play the smallest role. What’s more, we grossly underestimate the extent to which changing our behaviors, rather than our circumstances, can significantly increase our well-being.
You might think that means there is no set monetary amount that brings happiness, but that’s not entirely true, either. There is a set amount, and it’s $75,000. At least, that’s what the Nobel Prize–winning economists Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton found when they studied 1,000 American households. Reported well-being rises with income until you hit $75,000, at which point it levels off. Beyond that, there’s no observable increase in happiness with higher income.
With the money, chances are you’d be inclined to use it on a treat — to buy something you did not budget for otherwise, rather than paying off an existing debt. With time, it’s the opposite: There’s a good chance you’d use that hour to catch up on work, rather than go for a walk or visit a museum you’d otherwise not have time to do.
By that reasoning, an hour should be much more valuable than a dollar — yet we consistently behave as if the opposite were true. For example: Would you accept a new job with a 20 percent higher salary if it meant a 25 percent longer workweek or a 50 percent longer commute? If so, you are valuing your monetary affluence over your time affluence.
Lectures Nos. 13 to 20 Synthetic Happiness If Santos originally front-loaded her course with information debunking our notions of happiness, the back end is packed with scientifically tested methods to actively improve your well-being — ways to “rewire” your brain toward happiness. She calls these “course rewirements,” a pun so egregious that she acknowledges it in the syllabus with a self-conscious groan.
Gilbert cites a famous study in which people who recently won the lottery or suffered permanent paralysis were asked to rate their own happiness, and then compared to a control group. The lottery winners, on average, were slightly happier than the control group, and the recently disabled were slightly less happy — but neither group diverged from the norm as drastically as would be expected.
Like her students, she took the survey again when the course concluded. She found that her happiness, as measured on a scale of one to five, had increased over the year by a full point. Her students experienced a similar benefit. “I didn’t realize how challenging it would be to better myself,” one says. “I’m glad the class was difficult — it made me work harder to get more sleep, meditate, and practice gratitude more.
Think Small “One thing people get wrong about happiness is they focus on the extraordinary instead of the ordinary. We think that happiness comes from big or transformative experiences, but we neglect how we can spend moments in happier ways on a daily basis. All my research says that the best way people can be happier is to spend $40 on a time-saving service. Instead of fighting with your spouse over who should do the laundry, hire a laundry service.
Meditate Researchers have conclusively linked increased happiness with a meditation practice of even as little as ten minutes per day.
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