So changing behavior and enhancing happiness is as much about withdrawing attention from the negative as it is about attending to the positive.

Uncertainty grabs your attention, just as noises that occur at random (car horns, say) will attract your attention more than noises that are predictable (a ticking clock).

The idea that you are what you attend to has been around for more than a century.

To be truly happy, then, you need to feel both pleasure and purpose. You can be just as happy or sad as I am but with very different combinations of pleasure and purpose. And you may require each to different degrees at different times. But you do need to feel both. I call this the pleasure-purpose principle—the PPP.

The message from this research is that if you care a lot about money, you better make sure you get it. If you do not become rich, then being motivated by money will, unsurprisingly, lead to disappointment.4

The ways in which you can reallocate your attention to be happier are best understood from three separate but related perspectives: deciding, designing, and doing.

Those who are high in the personality trait “openness to new experiences” report being more satisfied with their lives and experience more positive emotions.

current income relative to previous income is a significant predictor of life satisfaction and mental health, whether people move up or down.66 There is also evidence, again using reports of life satisfaction and mental health, that the gains from increases in income can be completely offset if your expectations about gains in income rise faster

Messenger We are heavily influenced by who communicates information. Incentives Our responses to incentives are shaped by mental shortcuts. Norms We are strongly influenced by what others do. Defaults We “go with the flow” of preset options. Salience Our attention is drawn to what is novel and seems relevant to us. Priming Our acts are often