What are Tal Ben Shahar’s key points for a Happier life?

From Tal Ben Shahar’s “Happier”

What are Tal Ben Shahar’s Key Points For a Happier Life?

Don’t Prioritize Wealth!

• “Those for whom making money is the primary objective are less likely to actualize themselves and reach their full potential. They generally experience more distress and are more likely to be depressed and anxious. Moreover, given the mind-body connection, they are less healthy, less vital.” (p. 72)
  
  
• “The belief that high income is associated with good mood is widespread but mostly illusory. People with above-average income are relatively satisfied with their lives but are barely happier than others in moment-to-moment experience, tend to be more tense, and do not spend more time in particularly enjoyable activities.” (p. 56)
  
  
• “Having sufficient money to provide for food, shelter, education, and other basic needs is essential to our well-being. However, beyond providing these basic needs, money or prestige need not—and, if happiness is accepted as the ultimate currency, should not—be our central pursuits.” (p. 73)
  
  
• “Today, with the prevalence of material perception, too many people are asking the wrong questions. Students mostly wonder how college can help them make more money; when choosing work, they have questions primarily about prestige and progress. No wonder levels of depression are on the rise.” (p. 159)
  
  
• “Money—beyond the bare minimum necessary for food and shelter (and I am not talking caviar and castles)—is nothing more than a means to an end. Yet so often we confuse means with ends and sacrifice happiness (end) for money (means).” (p. 55)
  
  
  
  
  

Social Relationships is a Huge Factor for Happiness.

• “Ed Diener and Martin Seligman, two of the leading positive psychologists, studied “very happy people” and compared them to those who were less happy. The only external factor that distinguished the two groups was the presence of “rich and satisfying social relationships.” Spending meaningful time with friends, family, or romantic partners was necessary (though not by itself sufficient) for happiness.” (p. 111)
  
  
• “While relationships in general are important for the ultimate currency, romantic relationships reign supreme. Summarizing the research on well-being, David Myers acknowledges that “there are few stronger predictions of happiness than a close, nurturing, equitable, intimate, lifelong companionship with one’s best friend.” (p. 112)
  
  
  
  
  

Strive for Goals with Meaning.

• “Different people find meaning in different things. We may find our calling in starting up a business, working in a homeless shelter, raising children, practicing medicine, or making furniture. The important thing is that we choose our purpose in accordance with our own values and passions rather than conforming to others’ expectations. An investment banker who finds meaning and pleasure in her work—who is in it for the right reasons—leads a more spiritual and fulfilling life than a monk who is in his field for the wrong reasons.” (p. 39)
  
  
• “What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.” (p. 44)
  
  
• “In order to be happy, having meaning in life is not enough. We need the experience of meaning and the experience of positive emotions; we need present and future benefit.” (p. 43)
  
  
• “We often enhance our happiness to the greatest extent when we pursue activities that provide us with meaning and pleasure and that help others. When making choices, we first need to ask ourselves what would make us happy independent of how much it might contribute to the happiness of others. We must then ask ourselves whether what we want to do would deprive others of their ability to pursue their own happiness—because if it would, we would be undermining our happiness.
  
  
  
  
  

Don’t Just Look for a Job, Look for your Calling.

• “For a person experiencing his work as a calling, work is an end in itself. While the paycheck is certainly important and advancement is, too, he primarily works because he wants to. He is motivated by intrinsic reasons and experiences a sense of personal fulfillment; his goals are self-concordant. He is passionate about what he does and derives personal fulfillment from his work; he perceives it as a privilege rather than a chore.” (p. 101)
  
  
• “To experience a sense of purpose, the goals we set for ourselves need to be intrinsically meaningful. To live a meaningful life, we must have a self-generated purpose that possesses personal significance rather than one that is dictated by society’s standards and expectations. When we do experience this sense of purpose, we often feel as though we have found our calling.”
  
  
• “Generally, for goals to be self-concordant, the person has to feel that she chose them rather than that they were imposed on her, that they stem from a desire to express part of herself rather than from the need to impress others. We pursue these goals not because others think we should or because we feel obligated to, but because we really want to—because we find them significant and enjoyable.”
  
  
• “the most beautiful fate, the most wonderful good fortune that can happen to any human being, is to be paid for doing that which he passionately loves to do.” (p. 101)
  
  
• “Finding the right work—work that corresponds to both our passions and our strengths—can be challenging. We can begin the process by asking these three crucial questions—”What gives me meaning?” “What gives me pleasure?” “What are my strengths?” — and noting the trends that emerge. Looking at the answers and identifying areas of overlap can help us determine what kind of work would make us happiest.” (p. 103)
  
  
• “Teaching gave her life meaning that she believed no other profession could give her; teaching gave her the emotional gratification that no amount of money could buy. She felt that she was “the wealthiest woman in the world” and that her experiences as a teacher were worth more to her than “all of the gold in Fort Knox” because happiness, not gold or prestige, is the ultimate currency.” (p. 53)
  
  
  
  
  
  

Try to Achieve More Flow.

• “Flow, according to Csikszentmihalyi, is a state in which one is immersed in an experience that is rewarding in and of itself, a state in which we feel we are one with the experience, in which “action and awareness are merged.” (p. 86)
  
  
• “We all know what it feels like to be so absorbed in reading a book or writing a paper that we fail to hear our name being called. Or while cooking a meal or talking to a friend or playing basketball in the neighborhood park, we discover that hours have gone by when it seemed that only minutes had passed. These are experiences of flow.” (p. 86)
  
  
• “When in a state of flow we enjoy both peak experience and peak performance: we experience pleasure and perform at our best. Athletes often refer to this experience as being in the zone. Whatever we do in a state of flow—whether kicking a ball, carving wood, writing a poem, or studying for an exam—we are completely focused on our activity; nothing distracts us or competes for our attention. Performing at our best, we learn, grow, improve, and advance toward our future purpose.” (p. 86)
  
  
• You can only experience Flow when the task is neither too easy, nor too difficult.
  
  
• “people actually have more flow experiences at work than they do at home.” (p. 92)
  
  
• “work by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi illustrates how a challenging task that is neither too difficult nor too easy leads to higher levels of engagement; a manager who is mindful of the benefits of engagement—for both the employee and the organization—will more likely assign work that challenges the employee to the right degree.” (p. 99)
  
  
  
  
  

Striving For Goals is More Important Than Reaching Your Goals.

• “Contemporary researchers emphasize that it is the process of striving after goals—rather than goal attainment per se—that is crucial for happiness and positive affectivity.” The primary purpose of having a goal—a future purpose—is to enhance enjoyment of the present.” (p, 70)
  
  
  
  
  

Express Gratitude.

• “In research done by Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough, those who kept a daily gratitude journal—writing down at least five things for which they were grateful—enjoyed higher levels of emotional and physical well-being.” (p. 10)
  
  
• “Each night before going to sleep, write down at least five things that made or make you happy—things for which you are grateful. These can be little or big: from a meal that you enjoyed to a meaningful conversation you had with a friend, from a project at work to God.” (p. 12)
  
  
• “In his positive psychology class, Martin Seligman encourages his students to write gratitude letters and make gratitude visits to people they care about. This simple exercise, which I used in my class, often has profound effects on both the writer and the receiver—and on the relationship.” (p. 121)

Meditate.

• “Research by the likes of Herbert Benson, Jon Kabat-Zinn, and Richard Davidson reveals the profound effects of regular meditation. Meditate!” (p. 28)
  
  
  
• “Find a quiet spot. Sit down on a chair or the floor with your legs crossed. Make sure you are comfortable, with your back and neck straight. You can close your eyes or keep them open. Enter a state of calm by breathing deeply through your nose or mouth, filling up the space of your stomach with each breath, and slowly releasing the air through your nose or mouth. Mentally scan your body. If any particular part feels tense, direct your breath into that area to relax it. Then, for at least five minutes— or for as long as twenty—focus on your deep, slow breathing. If you lose your concentration and your mind wanders, simply and gently bring it back to your breathing.” (p. 28)
  
  
  
  
  

Simplify Your Life and Prioritize Time.

• “time affluence is a consistent predictor of well-being, whereas material affluence is not. Time affluence is the feeling that one has sufficient time to pursue activities that are personally meaningful, to reflect, to engage in leisure. Time affluence is the feeling that one has sufficient time to pursue activities that are personally meaningful, to reflect, to engage in leisure. Time poverty is the feeling that one is constantly stressed, rushed, overworked, behind. All we need to do is look around us—and often within ourselves—to realize the pervasiveness of time poverty in our culture.” (p. 154)
  
  
• “This means safeguarding our time, learning to say “no” more often—to people as well as opportunities—which is not easy.” (p. 154)
  
  
• “It means prioritizing, choosing activities that we really, really want to do, while letting go of others. Fortunately, though, doing less does not necessarily entail compromising on our success.” (p. 154)
  
  
• “We must simplify our lives; we must slow down. The good news is that simplifying our lives, doing less rather than more, does not have to come at the expense of success.” (p. 153)
  
  
  
  
  

Create Rituals

• “What rituals would make you happier? What would you like to introduce to your life? It could be working out three times a week, meditating for fifteen minutes every morning, watching two movies a month, going on a date with your spouse on Tuesdays, pleasure reading for an hour every other day, and so on. Introduce no more than one or two rituals at a time, and make sure they become habits before you introduce new ones. As Tony Schwartz says, “Incremental change is better than ambitious failure. . . .Success feeds on itself.” (p. 9)
  
  
  
• “However, if we do not ritualize activities— whether working out in the gym, spending time with our family, or reading for pleasure—we often don’t get to them, and rather than being spontaneous, we become reactive (to others’ demands on our time and energy).” (p. 10)
  
  
  
  
  

Other Good Quotes About Happiness.

“The best method of maximizing our levels of happiness is trial and error, paying attention to the quality of our inner experiences. Yet most of us do not take the time to ask ourselves the question of questions—because we are too busy. As Thoreau says, however, “Life is too short to be in a hurry.” If we are always on the go, we are reacting to the exigencies of day-to-day life rather than allowing ourselves the space to create a happy life.” (p. 45)

“We often enhance our happiness to the greatest extent when we pursue activities that provide us with meaning and pleasure and that help others. When making choices, we first need to ask ourselves what would make us happy independent of how much it might contribute to the happiness of others.” (p. 127)

“Happiness is not about sacrifice, about a trade-off between present and future benefit, between meaning and pleasure, between helping ourselves and helping others. It is about synthesis, about creating a life in which all of the elements essential to happiness are in harmony.” (p. 128)

“If instead of doing nothing when we come home from work we turn to our hobbies or other activities that challenge us, that we enjoy and that we care about, we are more likely to get a second wind and replenish our emotional bank. As the educator Maria Montessori has written, “To devote oneself to an agreeable task is restful.” Happiness boosters, rather than enervating us, lead to ascending levels of energy.” (p. 134)

“When thinking about the most meaningful life for ourselves, we must also consider our potential and how to make full use of our capacities.” (p. 41)

“We are living a happy life when we derive pleasure and meaning while spending time with our loved ones, or learning something new, or engaging in a project at work. The more our days are filled with these experiences, the happier we become.” (p. 168)