The Thinking Person’s Guide to a Happier Life

Many people—including successful executives—would like to be happier. No matter your age, you probably have worries that weigh you down, feelings and experiences you want more of, and gaps you want to fill. As a leader, you may also be concerned with the happiness of others—your employees, your colleagues, and of course, your family and friends.

But how can you foster greater happiness in yourself and in the people around you? A new book by co-authors Arthur C. Brooks, Harvard professor, and Oprah Winfrey, Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier, takes a new approach to this long-standing question.

Misconceptions Challenge Happiness

According to Brooks and Winfrey, myths often get in the way of happiness. The first myth: a magical end-state called “happiness.” In reality, there is no arrival or ending; building a happier life is a lifelong practice. Shortcuts can lead to pleasurable distractions that actually get in the way of becoming happier.

Another myth is that happiness is governed by circumstances outside ourselves over which we have little or no control. How many times have you thought something like, “If I could get that new job, that big raise, that new house, or win that award, then I would be happy”? Here is the paradox: you won’t succeed in becoming happier by waiting for external conditions to change, but you also won’t succeed by dwelling on your own failings or how you can change what other people think of you. Brooks and Winfrey call this the “inner-outer paradox.”.

Similarly, many people think of happiness and unhappiness as the two ends of a spectrum. However, happiness is not the absence of unhappiness; in fact, someone can be very happy and very unhappy at the same time. “Getting happier,” explain the authors, “requires that we accept unhappiness in our lives as well, and understand that it is not an obstacle to our happiness.”

Foundations of Happiness

As you start to contemplate the notion of happiness and how you can build a path toward greater happiness, it can help to understand its key components: enjoyment, satisfaction, and purpose.

• Enjoyment is not just pleasure. It includes being interested in people and things and experiencing joy on a regular basis.

• Satisfaction is the thrill of accomplishing a goal you’ve worked for. Satisfaction doesn’t just happen—it requires work and sacrifice. It’s also quite temporary; you have to keep generating it.

• Purpose is arguably the most important of the three. When we have a sense of meaning and purpose, we can deal with life’s dilemmas more easily and face life with hope and inner peace.

Bringing more enjoyment, satisfaction, and purpose into your life starts with being aware of your emotions and thought patterns and managing them more effectively. At their core, emotions are signals to your conscious brain that something is going on that requires your attention and action. Your conscious brain gets to decide how you will respond to these signals.

If you’re like most people, you probably feel overwhelmed by your emotions at times—it may seem that your feelings are driving and the best you can do is buckle up. The good news is that there are strategies you can use to take back the wheel. Emotions are a part of life, but you can engage in metacognition—conscious thinking about your feelings and thoughts—to help you decide how to respond to them.

To practice metacognition, you can:

• Observe your feelings. Try to step back and understand them consciously, as if they are happening to someone else.

• Journal your emotions. Reflect on them and translate them into specific thoughts you write down.

• Keep a database of positive memories. Bad memories lead to bad feelings. Focusing on a positive memory can create a positive feedback loop and prevent a “doom loop.”

• Look for meaning and learning in the hard parts of life. Make a note of difficult experiences. After some time has passed, go back to that note and record something constructive that you learned.

Changing Your Behavior

In addition, you can work to model these positive behaviors to benefit the people around you, both at work and at home.

• Practice gratitude. Once a week, make a note of five things for which you are truly grateful. Look at the list once each day, and then add one or two items at the end of each week.

• Find a reason to laugh. Reject the habit of grimness, even in the face of daunting challenges. You don’t need to be funny yourself—you just need to embrace humor on a regular basis.

• Embrace hope rather than optimism. Optimism focuses on a desired outside condition—for example, believing that the weather will improve. Hope, however, is believing you can make things better. To practice hope, envision a better future, dissect it into its component parts (specific things that will improve), and then get started doing what you have envisioned.

• Transform empathy into compassion. While your empathy can be helpful to others, too much empathy can get in the way of your own ability to help them. Compassion involves recognizing suffering, understanding it, and feeling empathy for the sufferer—but also tolerating the uncomfortable feelings that arise so you can take action to help alleviate the suffering.

• Focus less on yourself. Research has shown that focusing less on yourself and your desires will make you happier. Stop obsessing about what other people think. Remind yourself that no one cares. Reject your own sense of embarrassment and shame. Avoid envying others or wanting to have things that you think will make others envy you.

By working on changing your emotions, thought patterns, and actions, you will be less occupied by things that you thought would bring happiness, like money, power, pleasure, and prestige. You will also be less likely to seek unproductive distractions. “Retail therapy,” social media doom-scrolling, use of unhealthy substances, or binging escapist TV only make you feel good in the moment—they don’t get you any closer to lasting happiness.

Building a Better Life

If you are not going to pursue money, power, pleasure, and prestige, what should you pursue instead? According to Brooks and Winfrey, the answer is connection. The more you do to improve connections in your life, the happier you will be. But you can’t just experience these connections—you have to work continuously to build them.

• Family. Families can be a source of great happiness, even with challenging family dynamics.

• Friends. Research shows that no one can thrive without friends, but creating and sustaining friendship takes effort.

• Work. Probably a third of your life will be spent working. Hundreds of studies have shown that job satisfaction and life satisfaction are positively related.

• Faith. Brooks and Winfrey emphasize the benefits of metaphysical experiences—not any specific religion. Research has shown that spiritual, religious, and other metaphysical experiences affect your brain and give you access to new insights.

Building a better, happier life is a deliberate, ongoing endeavor, “Happiness is a direction, not a destination,” says Brooks. “For executives who have worked hard in the effort to achieve certain goals or job titles, it can be hard to redefine what happiness is.” The first step in taking control of your happiness is recognizing the importance of enjoyment, satisfaction, and purpose—and then acknowledging that you have the power to pursue them.