Strategies for Happiness

Over at Get Rich Slowly, J.D. Roth has a nice review of the book Happier by Tal Ben-Shahar. Roth says he used to be unhappy, and thought that the reason was because he was in debt. But after he got out of debt, he still wasn't happy. He started thinking that the root of his unhappiness might be his job. But when he quit his job, he still wasn't happy.

After reading Ben-Shahar's book, Roth realized that the cause of his unhappiness was the way he was framing his decisions. He used to think it was always better to sacrifice happiness in the present for potential happiness in the future. But Ben-Shahar says it's important to live your life in a way that offers happiness "now and in the future."

In Happiness, Ben-Shahar writes:

The shift from being a rat racer to pursuing happiness is not about working less or with less fervor but about working as hard or harder at the right activities — those that are a source of both present and future benefit.

That's good advice. I consider myself a fairly happy person, and I think the reason is that I pursue my interests. As a child, I enjoyed writing, drawing, comic books, painting, science, science fiction, and music from the 1960s. As an adult, I make a living doing these things. When I was an engineer for about five years in the 1980s, I didn't like my job and I wasn't nearly as happy as I am now.

Roth goes on to list several "happiness boosters" from the book, which offer equally valuable advice. They include: scheduling time every day to do the things that make you happy; counting your blessings; playing to your strengths instead of your weaknesses; and not being afraid to say "no" more often.

I highly recommend that you go read Roth's post now. It's worth bookmarking and re-reading once a year.

Mark Frauenfelder – Editor-in-chief of MAKE magazine and the founder of the popular Boing Boing weblog, Mark was an editor at Wired from 1993-1998 and is the founding editor of Wired Online.

Comments

[David]

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