Myth Busting and the Key to Happiness
7 Feb
“The key to happiness and health (and to all their auspicious by-products) is not how intensely happy we feel, but how often we feel positive or happy.” – Sonja Lyubomirsky
You know those times in life that rock your foundation?
In her book The Myths of Happiness, Sonja Lyubomirsky calls them crisis points.
They’re the kind of events that leave you feeling like things will never be the same. And love them or hate them, they happen to everyone.
These crisis points can be times of renewal and growth, but let’s keep it real – we rarely seem to view them as such when we’re going through them.
Therein lies the key – how do you deal with them.
Myths is about identifying the steps that will work for you, and as in any area of life, there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
I recently asked,
If happiness is a choice, why don’t we always choose it?
I wasn’t surprised to find that most people believe it is a choice, but the question remains. . .
Why don’t we always choose it?
That’s the question I had in mind as I began reading the book.
Back to those crisis points, what we’d consider major turning points in adult life. Some (marriage, children, professional satisfaction and wealth) are considered more positive than others (being single, divorce, financial issues, and illness) but they all have their challenges.
Lyubomirsky argues that we’ve been given false promises – myths that lead us to thinking lifelong happiness will be met when we hit these culturally confirmed markers of adult success.
Consider the following:
The woman who is successful in ways the rest of us would consider amazing, but she isn’t happy because at 45 she’s still single and childless.
Or how about the young couple who have a great life, love their work and lifestyle, but can’t be happy because they’ll never be able to afford a house in their city of choice.
Examples of the “I’ll be happy when…” syndrome.
You can’t win in any scenario that follows this formula.
This reliance on the external circumstances can wreak havoc on your happiness, and longterm well-being.
It’s a restricted view that keeps us from growing when life throws us a curveball. And if we can’t learn from it, we can’t move past it and so, the vicious cycle begins.
Mindset Matters More Than Circumstances
Lyubormirsky asks us to look beyond our first response to an event, to look deeper into our mindset instead of our circumstances. She invites us to begin the practice of making wiser choices in life. And it is an ongoing practice.
“When we practice optimism, we become more confident, more motivated, and more energetically engaged with our goals, we take more proactive steps toward achieving them, and we are more committed, persistent, and task focused.” – S.L.
“When we practice optimism, we become more confident, more motivated, and more energetically engaged with our goals, we take more proactive steps toward achieving them, and we are more committed, persistent, and task focused.” – S.L.
The book is broken down into three main sections:
- Connections (relationships)
- Work and money
- Looking back (your past and future)
For each area, she gives practical advice based in research, but with a personal perspective that constantly reminds us of our humanity.
We all go through this.
The main crisis point in my own life knocked me out at 30. My first longterm relationship ended suddenly, without warning, and life as I knew it was gone in an instance. Grief beyond anything I’d ever experienced turned into depression, and the days turned into months. I had no idea how to deal with it, and I thought I’d never be happy again.
Independant and strong, I thought I could deal with it alone, which led to my greatest breakthrough and learning.
It was the worst time of my life but it also put on the path of personal growth, and ultimately, becoming a coach and writer – an outcome I’d never have predicted given how my life was going before this crisis point.
Lyubomirsky reminds us to live life in the flow of have-do-be, which is the opposite of what we mostly see if we look around. Myths offers its greatest gift in reminding us that nothing in life outside of you can make you happy in and of itself.
You might be able to fool yourself for a while, but it will catch up with you. That knowledge opens the door to making better choices in life.
The good news is that practicing the recommendations in this book can help us get through the crisis points with more grace and ease, transforming them into rich life experiences.
I’m up for that, aren’t you?
Over to you:
- Think back to a crisis point in your life. What got you through it?
Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ph.D., is Professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside. She received her B.A. from Harvard University and her Ph.D. in social psychology from Stanford University. She lives in Santa Monica, California, with her family.
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