Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier

“It’s not my fault, and I won’t take this personally.”

Happiness is a combination of enjoyment, satisfaction, and purpose. To get happier is to get more of these elements, in a balanced way—not all of one and none of another. But if you were reading closely, you noticed one funny thing about all three: they all have some unhappiness within them. Enjoyment takes work and forgoing pleasures; satisfaction

Reframe “This coffee is terrible” as “This coffee has a bitter flavor.”

Enjoyment takes an urge for pleasure and adds two important things: communion and consciousness.

The macronutrients of happiness are enjoyment, satisfaction, and purpose.

Enjoyment takes work and forgoing pleasures; satisfaction requires sacrifice and doesn’t last; purpose almost always entails suffering. Getting happier, in other words, requires that we accept unhappiness in our lives as well, and understanding it isn’t an obstacle to our happiness.

The first is enjoyment. This might sound like pleasure—“feeling good.” However, this isn’t correct. Pleasure is animal; enjoyment is completely human. Pleasure emanates from parts of the brain dedicated to rewarding us for certain activities, like eating and sex, that in earlier times would help keep us alive and passing on our genes. (Today the th

you can’t choose your feelings, but you can choose your reaction to your feelings.

Write down different ways you might react constructively, based on different possible responses from the other person.