The Science of Happiness: A Practical Workbook

Some of the most-returned-to writing on this blog has always been about happiness — the science-backed ways to be happy, the twenty-eight actionable ideas to choose happiness now, the vital keys to success and happiness. Perhaps that is because the question underneath them is the one we all keep asking, in one form or another: what makes you happy? And perhaps it is because happiness, for all the attention we give it, so often remains elusive. As I wrote when I first began gathering the research: you may be relatively happy in your life, but you may still have small annoyances and issues that take away from experiencing enhanced and sustained happiness. What are some of the small tweaks, the little changes in direction, that allow you to experience the joy and radiance of life?

That writing has now become a book — the most honest one I have made from this material.

The Science of Happiness gathers those essays into one system and completes them as a workbook. The system is my own, and it was hiding in the essays all along. I call it Choose Happiness Now: happiness as a daily experiment, run in four movements. The name comes from the 2014 post itself — “28 Actionable Ideas To Choose Happiness Now!” — whose title was always the thesis. And the experiment is the essays’ own instruction: test the assumption for yourself, by becoming the scientist in your life.

The four movements form a circle, not a ladder. Savor — “This Moment, Fully.” Two of the studies I once rounded up turned out to be about the same endangered skill: savoring. Abundance dulls it; adversity, once survived, sharpens it. Savor is the movement of attention, because an experiment begins with observation, and a happy life begins by noticing the life that is actually here. Choose — “The Power to Choose.” After noticing comes the inner work: what to think, what to release, where to return. Optimism is a choice of explanation. Resistance is a choice to argue with what cannot be controlled. The center is the place the choice is made from. Connect — “Links in a Chain.” Writing about the study of giving and happiness, I found myself wondering whether giving and happiness are related like links in a chain, each one holding the next. The research kept confirming the chain: spend on others and happiness rises; greet the barista and belonging rises; listen with your heart, support the dreams of others, and stay open to receiving — because a chain has to be taken up at both ends. Act — “Run the Experiment.” Move the body and measure the mood. Practice at the edge and watch what grows. Complete things and feel the energy return. And when an experiment fails, do what startups do — pivot or persevere — rather than declaring yourself a failed hypothesis. Then the circle closes the way experiments close: by observing the results. Which is Savor, again.

Twenty-seven chapters walk that circle — beginning with a guest. Chapter 1 visits PERMA, Martin Seligman’s map of well-being, which I wrote about in 2014 because it liberated happiness from the tyranny of the cheerful mood. It is a good map. It is also his, and the book says so plainly: PERMA is credited to Seligman wherever it appears, and then respectfully left in its owner’s hands while the book walks its own circle.

Because this is a workbook, reading is only half of it. Every chapter pairs the essay with five Questions to Consider, five Action Tips, a Try This Today exercise, and a Reflections page with guided prompts and room to write. And because this book carries the word “science” in its title, it carries a responsibility the blog posts never had. The studies in these chapters were exciting when I wrote about them, and most of them have held up well. But happiness research has also corrected itself over the past decade. A famous positivity ratio was shown to rest on invalid mathematics and declared entirely unfounded. A famous income plateau was revised by the very researchers who proposed it. A percentage in one of my own essays was mis-stated — the very active had 52% higher odds of happiness, not 59%. So every study claim in this book was checked against the original published research, and ten chapters carry a box called What the Research Actually Says: what the original study found, and what we know now. I would rather hand you the honest version than the tidy one.

Halfway through, the book turns around. The Interlude reproduces, in full, a presentation I once made: 24 Quick and Easy Ways to Be Unhappy — twenty-four ways to run the four movements in reverse, each answered by a voice from wiser company. Read it as a field guide to what to stop doing, and notice how many of the twenty-four are, at heart, choices. And at the end, a Printable Workbook of ten worksheets turns the whole system into a daily practice — from My Happiness Map and the Happiness Experiment Log to the Chain of Kindness, the 28 Ideas Checklist, and your own Weekly Choose-Happiness Check-In.

Read the chapters in order the first time. After that, let the book become a laboratory you keep, and let your own state choose the movement. Flat and hurried? Savor — slow down and let one ordinary moment be met on its own terms. Mind looping, mood sinking? Choose — return to your center and pick the thought you will dwell in. Lonely, or holding back? Connect — take up one link of the chain: a conversation, a kindness, an act of receiving. Inspired but stuck? Act — run the smallest experiment available to you today, and write down what it teaches. The circle has no wrong door; it only asks that you enter it.

Happiness is not a mood you wait to be issued. It is an experiment you are already running, every day, whether you record the results or not. This book simply asks you to run it kindly, honestly, and on purpose.

The Science of Happiness is a 163-page instant-download PDF, available now at the launch price of $3.99 (regular price $7.99).

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You may also like the rest of the Launch Your Genius collection — Unshakable Self-Esteem, 42 Ways To Be More Creative & Brilliant, Let Go of Limiting Beliefs, 8 Keys to Master Your Inner Game, Beyond Perfectionism, Unshakable Confidence, 25 Cognitive Biases and How to Get Beyond Them, Be Relentlessly Creative, and The Gratitude Practice — all in the same shop.

Savor one small thing. Choose one better thought. Give one link of kindness. Take one small action. Choose happiness now.