Sample Material—please do not cite or circulate without author’s permission
If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Happy?
© 2015 Raj Raghunathan
INTRODUCTION:
WHAT LED ME TO TEACH HAPPINESS, AND HOW THIS BOOK IS STRUCTURED
Even till just a few decades back, if you happened to lose touch with a childhood
friend—because, for example, your family moved from one city to another—you had little hope
of reconnecting with that friend. That aspect of life has changed now, thanks mainly to
Facebook. And so it happened that I met a close friend after losing touch with him for nearly 30
years. As it turned out, although we had moved to different corners of India after we had last
met there, we were practically neighbors now. My friend lives in Houston, Texas, while I live in
Austin, Texas—a mere 170 miles separating us.
As we caught up over drinks, I got to do something that only those lucky enough to
meet a close friend after a significant passage of time can do: reconnect with my own past self.
Because the pace at which our interests, attitudes, and habits evolve is glacial, most of us don’t
get the opportunity to reflect on how much we have changed over the course of a few decades.
Even people with whom we routinely interact —parents, siblings, spouse, and children—cannot
notice these slow-paced changes; it is only those who once knew us well, and with whom we
haven’t interacted in a long time, that can help us recognize how far we have come.
My friend reminded me of how I was known, all those years back, for my easy-going and
lighthearted nature. He recalled the time when we had an important impending exam, one for
which my friends—and their mothers, literally—were planning to pull an all-nighter. As for me?
I went to bed at my regular time and got my full quota of 10 hours of sleep, thank you! He also
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reminded me of the time when we had a formal dinner party for which everyone else showed
up in a spiffy blue blazers and khaki slacks. I, on the other hand, sauntered in, unabashed, in a
parrot-green shirt and sunflower-yellow bellbottoms (it was the 70s, after all). My friend
recalled that everyone had made fun of me at the party, but I took the ribbing in good spirit. So
unflappable was I, recalled my friend, that I was definitely the “go to” person if anyone needed
cheering up.
Listening to these stories, I couldn’t help but feel wistful about my past self. I would like
to believe that I am a relatively easy-going person even today, but have to acknowledge that
I’ve become less “chilled out” with age.
What had become of the person I once was? When and how did I lose my “innocence”?
0.1 Happiness across the life span
As I thought about this question, I realized that the past might seem rosier than it
actually was. If you have maintained a journal for some length of time, you know that the past
wasn’t any more hunky dory than is the present. We remember the past as having been more
pleasant for two main reasons. First, we tend to cope better with the big negative events than
we expect to; so, the impact of a romantic break-up or of the failure to get a dream job seldom
lingers as long as we think it will.1 Second, we tend to give the negative events from our past a
positive spin over time; thus, the failure to get a prom-night date or the embarrassment from
failing an important exam become, in due course, stories that make our life more colorful than
ones that cast a dark shadow on it.2 It is precisely because past negative events become more
positive in our memory that women agree to go through a second childbirth and authors agree
to write a second book.3
That said, it does appear that most of us were happier as kids than we are as adults, as
graph below suggests.4
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Figure 1. Happiness across life-span5
The graph confirms, among other things, that one of the most trying periods in our lives
is as an adolescent: not only do we look and behave awkwardly then, we also feel our worst.
The graph also confirms the so-called “mid-life crisis”: our most miserable days as an adult
typically occur between the ages of 40 and 50.6
The fact that we were happier as kids than we are as adults raises an important
question: what did we know as kids that we forget as adults? Or, more to the point: what do we
know now, but did not as kids, that is hurting our happiness?
I got my first glimpse into the answer to this question in the Spring of 2009.
0.2. My course on happiness
By the Spring of 2009, I had been teaching at the McCombs School of Business at The
University of Texas at Austin for more than eight years. Over these years, I had begun to feel
increasingly uneasy about the usefulness and relevance of the courses I was teaching, such as
Customer Insights and Consumer Behavior. It’s not that I thought these courses weren’t helping
my students advance their careers or their organizations’ goals. Rather, my doubt was rooted in
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issues that were simultaneously more philosophical and practical: I wasn’t sure that I was
helping my students lead happier, more fulfilling, lives.
I knew that academic and career success don’t automatically translate into happiness
and fulfillment,7 and to me, it seemed obvious that the primary purpose of education ought to
be to help people lead happier, more fulfilling, lives.8 If our education system doesn’t ultimately
lead to better quality of life for all concerned, how good is it? I doubted that my courses—or for
that matter, most courses offered at business schools—were helping students lead happier and
more fulfilling lives, and this troubled me.9 (If you are wondering what happiness means and
whether it can be reliably measured, hold on to your horses. I’ll get to this topic towards the
end of the chapter.)
So, after wallowing in this worry for a few years (till I made tenure, basically), I decided
to do something about it. I put together a course with the objective of giving students the
opportunity to discuss one of life’s most important questions10: What are the determinants of a
fulfilling and happy life? I knew I didn’t have all the answers, but nevertheless felt that it would
be better to give the students an opportunity to discuss this question than do nothing.
When I first offered my course, I wasn’t sure how successful it would be. Many of my
colleagues felt business-school students are too hard-nosed, mercenary, and self-centered to
find the topic of happiness and fulfillment attractive. However, from the start, my course has
been oversubscribed. Indeed, the very first time I taught the course, I was honored with a
University-wide “professor of the month” award. The next year, I was nominated for the
“professor of the year” award and soon, I was getting the best ratings I had ever obtained for
any course I have taught. Once word got out about the course, I started getting invitations to
give talks at corporations. I am currently one of the faculty members at Whole Foods’ “academy
of conscious leadership.”
Till the summer of 2015, I had taught just over 1000 students from the McCombs School
of Business and the Indian School of Business, where I’ve been teaching as a visiting professor
since 2012. By the end of 2015, that number grew several orders of magnitude higher—
reaching an incredible 100,000 students on January 1st, 2016!11 The reason for this astronomical
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growth was the launch of an online version of the course on June 15 th, 2015, on the world’s
most popular MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) platform: Coursera12. The course has
consistently figure in the Top 10 list of Coursera courses13 since it was launched and, to this day,
I regularly get emails from students taking the course, thanking me for offering it.14 One
student recently wrote, “I started the course all over again last week. Not because the first time
around was difficult, but because there is so much information packed into the course that a
second round seems imperative,” and then went on to say, “To simply say ‘The course is very
useful’ is an understatement.” Another wrote, “The Happiness Course is possibly one of the
best things that happened to my life - and I kid you not! I was enthusiastic about life in general,
but after this course, I immediately started to feel so much difference in how I live every single
day of my life.” Yet another learner wrote that “the course is a “game-changer.”
One reason why the course has been so successful is because of the deep hunger for
figuring out the determinants of happiness and fulfillment, coupled with a better scientific
understanding of what it takes to lead a happy and fulfilling life—thanks in no small part to the
field of positive psychology.15 An equally important reason, I believe, is that many of the
students in my class have experienced an actual improvement in their happiness levels by
taking my class.
When I first offered my course, my objective wasn’t anything as lofty as improving
students’ happiness levels; as mentioned earlier, I merely wished to give them the opportunity
to discuss one of life’s big questions: what are the determinants of a happy and fulfilling life? In
the beginning, even this modest aim seemed out of reach since there was no standard textbook
on happiness. Indeed, I wasn’t even sure of what to include in the course.
It was with the aim of figuring out the course content that I decided to sit in on a class
along similar lines being offered by Prof. Srikumar Rao, who, at that time, was teaching at
Columbia University. (Srikumar allowed me to sit in on his class despite being fully aware of my
intention to “steal” his material, and for this, I am eternally grateful to him.) It was through one
of the exercises that Srikumar had us undertake—an exercise called “Mental Chatter”—that I
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got a glimpse into why I myself had become less easy-going over time. This, in turn, gave me
crucial insights into both course content and structure.
0.3 Insights from the mental chatter exercise
The mental chatter exercise calls for maintaining a brutally honest record, on a daily
basis for a period of two weeks, of one’s naturally occurring thoughts. (You can read the
instructions for the exercise on the book’s website:
www.happysmarts.com/exercises/mental_chatter). To successfully participate in the exercise,
it is important to not steer your thoughts in a more positive direction when recording them,
and to resist the tendency find closure or meaning in interpreting the day’s events.16 This
makes the mental chatter exercise very different from the more familiar practice of maintaining
a journal. The mental chatter exercise requires that you maintain a full record of your
negativity, because the spontaneously occurring negative thoughts are not meaningless,
irrelevant thoughts that are randomly produced by the mind. Rather, they are rooted in deepseated goals, desires, and values.17 Attempting to override negative chatter with positive
thinking is akin to popping peppermint to smother bad breath18: it may address the symptom
but will not address the cause. In other words, if one aspires to not just enhance one’s wellbeing but sustain this enhancement, it is necessary to gain a deeper understanding of the goals,
desires, and values that are responsible for the negative mental chatter.19
In the course of completing the mental chatter exercise, I discovered something quite
startling. I discovered that my mental chatter was far more negative than I had expected it to
be. I hadn’t realized that beneath my outward positivity lurked a cesspool of negativity.
Although this negativity—which manifested itself, among other things, as anxiety about
whether others respected me enough or as frustration with my inability to get my kids to
behave like I wanted them to—had always been there, it wasn’t until I did the mental chatter
exercise that I became aware of its scope and intensity.
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As I brooded about the negativity of my mental chatter (“Do I really feel so concerned
about what others think of me? Am I really that frustrated with my kids?”), I wondered if my
case was unique. Perhaps, I thought hopefully, I was so positive otherwise that my mental
chatter seemed particularly negative in contrast. But what if—God forbid—my mental chatter
was in fact more negative than that of others? (Being a normal human being, I naturally wanted
others to be just as miserable as I was.)20
I couldn’t wait for Prof. Rao’s next class, so that I could compare notes with other
students. To my relief, the other students were in the same boat: their mental chatter was just
as negative. Later, once I began teaching my own course on happiness, I got the opportunity to
inflict, if that’s the word, the mental chatter exercise on my students. And, as you may have
guessed, the theme that had emerged in Prof. Rao’s class was replicated among my students.
0.4 What ails the smart-and-the-successful
Over the past five years, I have had the privilege of subjecting close to 1,500—mostly
smart-and-the-successful—people to the mental chatter exercise. I decided to focus on the
unhappiness of the smart-and-the-successful (henceforth, the S-and-S) mainly because I find
their lack of happiness to be particularly intriguing. The S-and-S, by definition, have superior IQ,
greater drive, superior critical-thinking ability, better work ethic, and so on. As a result, one
would expect them to be better at achieving goals, especially important ones. Thus, given that
happiness is one of our most important goals, one would expect the S-and-S to be happier and
more fulfilled. And yet, as numerous findings show, the S-and-S aren’t any happier than their
less smart or successful counterparts. Those with a university degree, for example, are not
much happier than those without a degree; indeed, beyond a basic undergraduate degree, the
more educated you are, the less happy you are likely to be.21 Even the trait that one might
consider to be the quintessential one of the s-and-s, or at least the smart—intelligence—has
only a spotty relationship with happiness, leading some researchers to conclude that
intelligence is virtually unrelated to happiness.22 Likewise, although there is a small positive
relationship between wealth and happiness, it is not as significant as one might expect it to be,
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and after a point (about $75,000 per year for the average American household), has no effect
on happiness whatsoever.23 Fame too has little effect on happiness, findings show.24 . Why
aren’t the S-and-S as happy as they could—or should—be?
My colleagues, Hyunkyu Jang, a PhD student at UT Austin, and Robin Soster, a professor
of marketing at The University of Arkansas, obtained some important insights into this question
by administering the mental chatter exercise to a number of S-and-S students.25 We discovered
that, almost every student is surprised by how much more negative their mental chatter is than
they expect it to be. On average, somewhere between 50 – 70 percent of the average student’s
spontaneously occurring thoughts are negative. This is in sharp contrast to what they expect:
they expect 60 – 75% of their thoughts to be positive. (We are currently examining whether this
pattern holds true among the non-student population.) The fact that student’s mental chatter is
more negative than they expect it to be is, however, only part—and in my opinion, the less
interesting part—of the story. The more interesting part has to do with the content of
negativity.
Inferiority
Positive Chatter
Negative Chatter
Unloved
Lack of Control
Negative Chatter
Efficacy
Feeling loved
Negative Chatter
Perceived control
Figure 2. The positivity and negativity of mental chatter by categories of thoughts
The negative mental chatter of the students fall into three main categories:

Thoughts related to inferiority

Thoughts about lack of love and connectivity with others, and
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
Thoughts about lack of control
As I surveyed this list of reasons for the unhappiness of the students, I realized that no
existing book on happiness tackled them head on. And yet, there was a lot of research on these
topics. Much of this research explored the behaviors, goals and values in which the three
categories of mental chatter are rooted. Thoughts related to inferiority, for example, are rooted
in the tendency to engage in social comparisons (e.g., “keeping up with the Joneses”), which, in
turn, is rooted in the desire for superiority.26 Thoughts about lack of love and connectivity are,
likewise, rooted in insecurities about relationships, manifested through either “neediness” (or
relationship anxiety) or “avoidance.”27 Similarly, thoughts about lack of control are rooted in
the desire for control, and in the tendency to be, what’s called, a “maximizer”—someone who
has an irrepressible urge to make things better.28
Poring over these findings helped me gain a deeper understanding of why I myself had,
over the years, evolved into a less happier version of my former self.29 I realized that, although
the behaviors, goals, and values that produce the negative mental chatter are detrimental to
happiness, most of us, particularly the S-and-S among us, are unwilling to let go of them. Why?
Because we believe that they are critical determinants of something else that we value deeply:
success. Many of us believe, for example, that the need for superiority—the desire to be the
wealthiest, fastest, strongest, etc.—is a very important determinant of success.30 Likewise, we
believe that the ability to be an “island”—emotionally unaffected by others—is a defining
feature of strong leaders, and that success comes to those who seek to control others and the
environment.31 In fact, however, evidence does not support any of these beliefs. For example,
although the need for superiority can light a fire under our backside and motivate us to pursue
goals, it is, overall, more a hindrance than help when it comes to achieving goals.32 Likewise,
the world’s best leaders are not emotionally distant, but rather, are compassionate and kind.33
The need for control, too, has its limits, and being overly controlling is not the optimal way to
success.34
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So, in other words, I discovered that, it’s best to let go of the behaviors, goals and values
that were fueling our negative mental chatter and replace them the other behaviors, goals, and
values that are more productive. Doing so would not only improve our happiness levels, but
also improve our odds of success.
0.5 Structure of the book: The 7 “sins,” “habits,” and “exercises”
I refer to the behaviors, goals, and values that fuel our negative mental chatter and
deflate our happiness as the “deadly happiness sins.” I use the word “sin” not to connote a
moral transgression; rather, I use it in a tongue-in-cheek way to refer to the idea that our
unhappiness is often due to our own doing. One way to enhance happiness levels, then, is to
get rid of the seven deadly sins. A complementary way is to nurture, what I call, the “habits of
the highly happy.” There are seven such habits, one corresponding to each of the seven “sins.”
The book is thus structured along the seven pairs of “sins” and “habits,” as shown in the
table below. Each chapter consists of two parts—one (part “A”) that discusses a “sin” and
another (part “B”) that discusses the corresponding “habit.”
Chapter number
Chapter name
Content
Chapter 1A
Devaluing happiness
The 1st sin
Chapter 1B
Prioritizing—but not pursuing—happiness
The 1st habit and 1st exercise
Chapter 2A
Chasing superiority
The 2nd sin
Chapter 2B
Pursuing flow
The 2nd habit and exercise
Chapter 3A
Desperation for love
The 3rd sin
Chapter 3B
The need to love (and give)
The 3rd habit and exercise
Chapter 4A
Being overly controlling
The 4th sin
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Chapter 4B
Gaining internal control
The 4th habit and exercise
Chapter 5A
Distrusting others
The 5th sin
Chapter 5B
Exercising “smart trust”
The 5th habit and exercise
Chapter 6A
Passionate/indifferent pursuit of passion
The 6th sin
Chapter 6B
Dispassionate pursuit of passion
The 6th habit and exercise
Chapter 7A
Mind-addiction
The 7th sin
Chapter 7B
Mindfulness
The 7th habit and exercise
Table 1. Book chapters and their titles
In addition to the “sins” and “habits,” I also discuss seven “happiness exercises,” which
are discussed in conjunction with the habits, in “part B” of the chapters. These exercises are
designed to nurture the habits while mitigating the sins.
0.6 The importance of open-mindedness and diligence
If the experiences of my students are anything to go by, you will find that you are able
to relate, at an intuitive level, to all seven “sins” and “habits.” That is, you will find the
discussions of why the sins lower happiness levels and why the habits enhance it to be
instinctively appealing. That’s not to say that you won’t disagree with anything in the book.
Indeed, it’s very likely that you will not only disagree with at least some sections of the book,
but that they make you uncomfortable. The reason for this is that we are so deeply conditioned
to exhibit certain traits and behaviors (e.g., pursuit of superiority) that we find it disturbing if
their validity is questioned. When you experience such discomfort, I urge you to be as openminded as you can be. That is, in the event that you feel skeptical about a particular concept, I
ask that you do not immediately dismiss it. In particular, I request that you take the exercise
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associated with each “sin”/”habit” as seriously as you can. If it helps, imagine that you have
been ordered by your boss or your spouse (which can sometimes be the same thing) to
complete each exercise. Later, once you have completed the book, you will be in a better
position to assess the value of various concepts and exercises.
That said, I should mention that not all the concepts and exercises in this book will work
equally well for you. As Professor Sonja Lyubomirsky notes in her excellent book, The How of
Happiness, there is such a thing as a happiness strategy fit.35 Depending on your traits and
lifestyle, certain concepts and exercises are likely to be more relevant for you than others. To
help you figure out the concepts and exercises that are most relevant for you, I recommend
that you maintain a journal for the duration for which you read this book, starting today. Since
the book is structured along seven main topics, I recommend that you take seven weeks to
complete the exercises: at the rate of one exercise a week. On my website
(www.happysmarts.com/exercises/journal), you’ll find a link that takes you to a password
protected online journal template. One advantage of using this online journal is that you will
automatically receive a daily email reminder to make an entry. Of course, if you prefer to not
make entries online, but would still like to use the template I have created, you can download a
hardcopy from the website. Alternatively, if you prefer to maintain your journal elsewhere—for
example, in a notebook—that’s fine too.
Whichever avenue you choose, you can find the instructions for the journal on the
book’s website. The website also contains instructions for several other happiness exercises,
including the seven central to this book. If an important reason you are reading this book is to
experience a boost in happiness levels, I would urge you to complete the seven exercises
diligently. The combination of open-mindedness and diligence, I have discovered, is crucial for
experiencing a boost in happiness levels. In the classes that I’ve taught, over 70% of students
who attend all classes and complete all exercises show an improvement in happiness levels. By
contrast, among those who aren’t as diligent, only 25% show an improvement.
0.7 The 1st happiness measurement
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Even if your interest in this book is purely academic—that is, you aren’t necessarily
interested improving your happiness levels—I imagine that you would be curious about the
effect that exposure to the concepts in the book is having on your happiness. To help you in this
endeavor, I have included something called the “satisfaction with life scale” 1 which you can fill
out at three points in the book. The first point is now; you’ll find the scale on the next page. The
second point is at the end of the Chapter 3B—close to the middle of the book. The final point is
at the end of the book, after the last chapter. As you will see, this scale isn’t designed to
measure ephemeral mood; rather, it’s designed to measure how well your life is going, all—or
at least most—things considered. As it turns out, the type of happiness measured by this scale36
relates significantly, and in the expected direction, to: a) neurological correlates (like serotonin
and cortisol levels), b) others’ assessments of the respondent’s happiness levels, and c) other
behavioral measures, including stability of marital relationships. Thus, the satisfaction with life
scale seems quite reliable and, as a testament to this, the paper in which this scale originally
appeared has been cited over 10,000 times!
Hopefully, you’ll find that your happiness levels have improved because of this book.
And not just that; I hope that you discover something else that I find to be one of the most
gratifying aspects of seeking a life of happiness and fulfillment: the things lead to happiness and
fulfillment are also the things that make us not just better—more kind and compassionate—but
also more successful. That is, the recipe for happiness is also a “win-win-win” recipe, a topic
that I will revisit in the concluding chapter.
With that uplifting thought, allow me to wish that you have as enjoyable a time reading
this book as I had writing it.
Happy reading!
Raj Raghunathan
January 1st, 2016, Austin, TX
1
Developed by Prof. Ed Diener and his colleagues; see Diener, E. D., Emmons, R. A., Larsen, R. J., & Griffin, S.
(1985). The satisfaction with life scale. Journal of personality assessment, 49(1), 71-75.
13
Satisfaction with life scale37
Note: This scale was developed by Prof. Ed Diener—aka “Dr. Happiness”—and his
colleagues. Since paper in which the scale appeared was first published (in 1985), it has been
cited over 10,000 times, attesting to the scale’s reliability. One reason the scale is so reliable is
because it doesn’t just measure momentary swings in mood, but rather, measures your overall
satisfaction with life (hence, the name for the scale). Note that you may find that you are
dissatisfied with some of the items in the scale (particularly the last item), and you may even
feel that you aren’t 100% sure about how to interpret some items. If this happens, set your
dissatisfaction aside and try to interpret the items in the way that makes most sense to you,
keeping in mind that the scale is trying to measure how satisfied—or happy and fulfilled—you
are with your life, overall.
For each of the five items below, circle a number from 1 through 7, where 1 = “strongly
disagree” and 7 = “strong agree.” You can also fill out the scale online by going to:
www.happysmarts.com/scales/satisfaction_with_life_scale. Once you have responded to all
five items, total up your rating for each item to come up with your overall satisfaction with life
score. On the next page, you’ll find an explanation of what your score means.
Strongly disagree
Strongly agree
In most ways, my life is close to my ideal
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
I am satisfied with my life
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
14
The conditions of my life are excellent
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
So far, I have gotten the important things I want in life
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
15
Interpreting your satisfaction with life score38:
If your score
You are…
Which means…
is…
32 - 35
Extremely happy
This book may not improve your happiness levels any
further, but it can help you understand why you are as
happy as you are
28 – 31
Very happy
This book can help you sustain your already high
happiness levels
23 - 27
Happy
This book can help definitely help you increase your
happiness levels even further
18 - 22
Not-so-happy
There is definitely scope for improvement in your
happiness levels and this book can definitely help
13 - 17
Unhappy
Your happiness levels can do with a big improvement
and this book can definitely help
12 and below
Depressed
This book can help, but you may also wish to get some
professional help (e.g., by seeing a therapist).
Table 2. Interpreting your “satisfaction with life” score
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1
000 We…cope better…than we expect to; see Wilson, T. D., Wheatley, T., Meyers, J. M., Gilbert, D. T., & Axsom,
D. (2000). Focalism: a source of durability bias in affective forecasting. Journal of personality and social psychology,
78(5), 821, and Gilbert, D. T., Pinel, E. C., Wilson, T. D., Blumberg, S. J., & Wheatley, T. P. (1998). Immune neglect: a
source of durability bias in affective forecasting. Journal of personality and social psychology, 75(3), 617. For misforecasting in consumer contexts, see Patrick, V. M., MacInnis, D. J., & Park, C. W. (2007). Not as happy as I
thought I'd be? Affective misforecasting and product evaluations. Journal of Consumer Research, 33(4), 479-489.
For a more reader-friendly version, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affective_forecasting
2
000: we…give…negative events from…past a positive spin; See Keinan, A., & Kivetz, R. (2011). Productivity
orientation and the consumption of collectable experiences. Journal of Consumer Research, 37(6), 935-950.
3
000: It is precisely because; For how women are far less willing to have another child during childbirth, but
change their mind later, see Christensen-Szalanski, J. J. (1983). Discount functions and the measurement of
patients' values. Women's decisions during childbirth. Medical decision making: an international journal of the
Society for Medical Decision Making,4(1), 47-58. For findings on empathy gaps in decisions regard sexual acts (and
how people are more willing to engage in risky sexual behavior in the “heat of the moment”), see Ariely, D., &
Loewenstein, G. (2006). The heat of the moment: The effect of sexual arousal on sexual decision making. Journal of
Behavioral Decision Making, 19(2), 87. For a review of the literature on “empathy gap,” see Van Boven, L.,
Loewenstein, G., Dunning, D., & Nordgren, L. F. (2013). Changing places: A dual judgment model of empathy gaps
in emotional perspective taking. Advances in experimental social psychology, 47, 117-171.
4
000: as the graph below suggests; The graph is from Robins et al. (2002), who measured self-esteem across life
span. Since self-esteem is highly correlated with happiness, the findings can be interpreted as suggesting that, like
self-esteem, happiness levels too reach a nadir at two points in the typical humans life span: during the teenage
years and during mid life (mid 40s – early 50s). Source: Robins, R. W., Trzesniewski, K. H., Tracy, J. L., Gosling, S. D.,
& Potter, J. (2002). Global self-esteem across the life span. Psychology and aging, 17(3), 423. For a perspective on
how and why happiness levels improve after the “mid-life crisis,” see Carstensen, L. L., Pasupathi, M., Mayr, U., &
Nesselroade, J. R. (2000). Emotional experience in everyday life across the adult life span. Journal of personality
and social psychology, 79(4), 644. For a more reader-friendly version of the Cartensen et al. (2000) article, see
http://www.economist.com/node/17722567.
5
000: Happiness across life-span; Graph from Robins, R. W., Trzesniewski, K. H., Tracy, J. L., Gosling, S. D., &
Potter, J. (2002). Global self-esteem across the life span. Psychology and aging, 17(3), 423.
6
000: our most miserable days; Happiness levels seem to improve after the “mid-life crisis,” however; see
Carstensen, L. L., Pasupathi, M., Mayr, U., & Nesselroade, J. R. (2000). Emotional experience in everyday life across
the adult life span. Journal of personality and social psychology, 79(4), 644. For a more reader-friendly version, see
http://www.economist.com/node/17722567.
7
000: success [doesn’t] automatically translate into happiness; See Vaillant, G. E. (2012). Triumphs of experience.
Harvard University Press.
8
000 the primary purpose of education: In line with my vision for what the purpose of education ought to be, The
University of Texas’s core purpose reads: To Transform Lives for the Benefit of Society. .
9
Several scholars have noted the apparent “paradox,” namely, that despite incredible technological progress, and
despite vastly higher standards of living in many parts of the word, happiness levels haven’t improved
commensurately; see Myers, D. G. (2000). The American paradox: Spiritual hunger in an age of plenty. Yale
University Press; Easterbrook, G. (2003). The progress paradox: How life gets better while people feel worse.
Random House Trade Paperbacks; For a discussion of related topics, including how a degradation of societal values
may be contributing to the stagnating happiness-levels, see Kasser, T. (2003). The high price of materialism. MIT
Press, Frank, R. H. (2001). Luxury fever: Why money fails to satisfy in an era of excess. Simon and Schuster, and
Vaillant, G. E. (2012). Triumphs of experience. Harvard University Press.
10
000 Life’s most important questions: Among the other “life’s important questions” that interest me are: 1) Why
is there anything (the Universe, life, etc.) at all, as opposed to nothing?, and 2) How did consciousness emerge
from seemingly non-conscious matter? For an excellent discussion of each topic, see, respectively, Holt, J.
17
(2012). Why does the world exist?: an existential detective story. WW Norton & Company, and Schwartz, J. M., &
Begley, S. (2009). The mind and the brain. Springer Science & Business Media.
11
000: 100,000 students on January 1st, 2016; Projection based on expected growth in number of enrolled
learners in the course.
12
000: the world’s most popular MOOC…: Coursera; Coursera is an initiative of Stanford University to democratize
education. You can learn more about it by going to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coursera
13
000: Top 10 list of Coursera courses; In terms of number of “active learners” (which refers to the number of
students who have watched at least one lecture).
14
000: I regularly get emails from students; You can read many of the reviews for the course by going here:
https://www.class-central.com/mooc/2860/coursera-a-life-of-happiness-and-fulfillment#course-all-reviews
15
000: the field of positive psychology; For more on the origins of positive psychology, see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_psychology
16
000: the tendency find closure or meaning; Work by Pennebaker and others suggests that the attempt to find
meaning and closure for events, even negative ones, helps improve happiness levels. See Pennebaker, J. W. (1993).
Putting stress into words: Health, linguistic, and therapeutic implications. Behaviour research and therapy, 31(6),
539-548. For related research, see Pennebaker, J. W. (1997). Writing about emotional experiences as a therapeutic
process. Psychological science, 8(3), 162-166, and Pennebaker, J. W., Mayne, T. J., & Francis, M. E. (1997).
Linguistic predictors of adaptive bereavement. Journal of personality and social psychology, 72(4), 863. For a nice
summary of the research on how writing about emotional experiences can be therapeutic, see Pennebaker, J. W.
(1997). Opening up: The healing power of emotional expression. New York: Guilford.
17
000: they are rooted in deep-seated goals, desires, and values; the idea that motivations, cognitions, and
emotions are intertwined is well-accepted in psychology. As an example of the interlinkages among these three
aspects, see Lazarus, R. S. (1991). Cognition and motivation in emotion. American psychologist, 46(4), 352. See
also, for a compatible view, Frijda, N. H., Kuipers, P., & Ter Schure, E. (1989). Relations among emotion, appraisal,
and emotional action readiness. Journal of personality and social psychology, 57(2), 212.
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000: akin to popping peppermint to smother bad breath; I thank my friend, Neelesh Marik for suggesting this
analogy.
19
000: if one aspires to…enhance…well-being; Work from a variety of fields, including Cognitive Behavioral
Therapy, group dynamics, and PTSD reveals that it is better to confront problems head-on than to “brush them
under the carpet”. For example, for patients with PTSD, prolonged exposure therapy, which involves telling,
revisiting the trauma causing event multiple times—rather than avoiding it—has been found to eventually alleviate
the condition. For example, one study showed that, among rape victims, PTSD was alleviated to a greater extent
for those who underwent prolonged exposure therapy than for those who were asked to pay “minimal attention”
to the traumatic incident. See, for a review of the literature, Foa, E., Hembree, E., & Rothbaum, B. O.
(2007). Prolonged exposure therapy for PTSD: Emotional processing of traumatic experiences therapist guide.
Oxford University Press.
20
000: I wanted others to be just as miserable; Work by Abraham Tesser and his colleagues suggests that our selfview depends on how we perceive to stack up with to others, particularly those whom we consider closest to us
(our colleagues, siblings, etc.); see Tesser, A., & Campbell, J. (1982). Self‐evaluation maintenance and the
perception of friends and strangers. Journal of Personality, 50(3), 261-279, and Campbell, J. D., & Tesser, A. (1985).
Self-evaluation maintenance processes in relationships. This tendency is prevalent even among children: Tesser, A.,
Campbell, J., & Smith, M. (1984). Friendship choice and performance: Self-evaluation maintenance in
children. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46(3), 561. For a review of the literature, see: Tesser, A.
(2988) Toward a self-evaluation maintenance model of social behavior. Advances in experimental social
psychology, 21(181-228).
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000: the more educated…the less happy; See Michalos (2008), who probably conducted the most
comprehensive study on the topic. He refers to his finding that higher levels of education lower satisfaction levels
as the “connoisseur effect” (Michalos (2008), p. 363); See also Frey and Stutzer (2002), who suggest that education
has only an indirect effect on happiness—through increasing income; Sources: Frey, B. S., & Stutzer, A. (2002).
What can economists learn from happiness research?. Journal of Economic literature, 402-435; Michalos, A. C.
(2008). Education, happiness and wellbeing. Social Indicators Research, 87(3), 347-366.
18
22
000: intelligence is virtually unrelated to happiness; See Watten, Syversen, and Myhrer (1995), Quality of life,
intelligence, and mood. Social Indicators Research, 36, 287 – 299. The specific quote (on p. 296) is, “Intelligence is
virtually unrelated to QOL [Quality of Life]. Thus, we find IQ to be a variable of minor interest for future QOL
studies.”
23
000 after a point…[money] has no effect on happiness; Kahneman, D., & Deaton, A. (2010). High income
improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being. Proceedings of the national academy of sciences,107(38),
16489-16493. Indeed, it appears that even being among the wealthiest in the world (with a net worth of over $25
million) doesn’t mean lack of perceived financial insecurity! See Secret fears of the super-rich, Atlantic Monthly,
April 2011, accessed on Sept 15th, 2015 at http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/04/secret-fears-ofthe-super-rich/308419/?single_page=true; For a more general review of the relationship between wealth and
happiness, see Dunn, E., & Norton, M. (2013). Happy money: The science of smarter spending. Simon and Schuster.
24
000: Fame too, has little effect: Niemiec, C. P., Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2009). The path taken: Consequences
of attaining intrinsic and extrinsic aspirations in post-college life. Journal of research in personality, 43(3), 291-306.
For a more reader-friendly summary of this paper, see abcnews.go.com/Health/Healthday/story?id=7658253
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000: My colleagues, Hyunkyu Jang; Raghunathan, Rajagopal, Hyunkyu Jang, and Robin Soster (2015). Negativity
dominance: The paradoxical co-existence of positive self-views and negative ‘mental chatter.’ Working paper, The
University of Texas at Austin.
26
000: Thoughts related to inferiority; The idea that one’s self-assessments (e.g., how positive one feels about
oneself) is dependent on how one stacks up to others has a long tradition of research in psychology, starting with
Festinger’s (1954) theory if social comparisons. More recent research suggests that such social comparisons, which
are often spurred by the desire to feel good about oneself and therefore, rooted in the desire to be superior to
others, typically deflate, rather than enhance happiness levels; e.g., see Lyubomirsky, S., & Ross, L. (1997). Hedonic
consequences of social comparison: a contrast of happy and unhappy people. Journal of personality and social
psychology, 73(6), 1141. For a perspective on how social comparisons in consumption contexts affects self-worth,
see also Richins, M. L. (1995). Social comparison, advertising, and consumer discontent. American Behavioral
Scientist, 38(4), 593-607. For a more general review of the literature on “keeping up with the Joneses” and how it
influences judgments and decisions, see Frank, R. H. (2001). Luxury fever: Why money fails to satisfy in an era of
excess. Simon and Schuster. In Chapter 2A of this book, I discuss the various reasons why “chasing superiority”
lowers happiness levels.
27
000: Thoughts about lack of love and connectivity; The idea that thoughts related to lack of love and
connectivity are rooted in insecurities about relationships is perhaps the most important theme of an area of
research called “attachment theory.” I will review much of this literature in Chapter 3A.
28
000: thoughts about lack of control; I discuss the relationship between desire for control and, among other
things, the “maximizer mindset” in Chapter 4A.
29
You can read a full blown account of my negativity in an article titled “When the bottom fell out,” available on
the book’s website: www.happysmarts.com/about_me
30
000: Many of us believe; Among my students, a vast majority (typically more than 75% of the class) believe that
“the desire to be better than others” is an important determinant of success.
31
000: the ability to be an “island”; Many of us seem to believe that the kind and compassionate people aren’t
effective leaders and vice versa; see Fiske, S. T., Cuddy, A. J., & Glick, P. (2007). Universal dimensions of social
cognition: Warmth and competence. Trends in cognitive sciences, 11(2), 77-83, and Aaker, J., Vohs, K. D., &
Mogilner, C. (2010). Nonprofits are seen as warm and for-profits as competent: Firm stereotypes matter. Journal of
Consumer Research, 37(2), 224-237. As part of this belief system, many of us also seem to subscribe to the notion
that being a good leader calls for a certain level of “cold-heartedness” and perhaps even the propensity to act in
unethical ways. My colleagues, Michael Luchs, Rebecca Naylor (nor Reczek) and Julie Irwin examined the perceived
negative correlation between ethicality and efficacy in the context of evaluating products; see Luchs, M. G., Naylor,
R. W., Irwin, J. R., & Raghunathan, R. (2010). The sustainability liability: Potential negative effects of ethicality on
product preference. Journal of Marketing, 74(5), 18-31.
32
000: although the need for superiority; I discuss how the need for superiority comes in the way of success in
Chapters 2A and 2B.
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33
000: the world’s best leaders; I discuss how leaders who are “loving and giving” are more likely to succeed in
Chapter 3B.
34
000: the need for control; the relationship between need for control and success is discussed in Chapters 4A and
4B.
35
000 Happinss strategy fit: Lyubomirsky, S. (2008). The how of happiness: A scientific approach to getting the life
you want. Penguin. See p. 70 – 73.
36
000 Happiness measured by this scale: Diener, E., Inglehart, R., & Tay, L. (2013). Theory and validity of life
satisfaction scales. Social Indicators Research, 112(3), 497-527. An online version of this article can be accessed at:
http://stat.psych.uiuc.edu/~ediener/Documents/Diener-Inglehart-Tay_Validity%20of%20ls%20measures.pdf; see
also, Diener, E. (Ed.). (2009). Assessing well-being: The collected works of Ed Diener (Vol. 39). Springer Science &
Business Media.
37
000: satisfaction with life scale; Diener, E. D., Emmons, R. A., Larsen, R. J., & Griffin, S. (1985). The satisfaction
with life scale. Journal of personality assessment, 49(1), 71-75.
38
000 Interpreting your satisfaction with life score; based on interview with Ed Diener.
20