Elena Perova read for us Sonya Lubomirski’s book The Psychology of Happiness.
“Immediately after the release of the book, readers were outraged that Lubomirsky and his colleagues received a grant of a million dollars to study the phenomenon of happiness, and as a result did not discover anything revolutionary. This indignation was reminiscent of the widespread reaction to Malevich’s Black Square painting: “What’s wrong with that? Anyone can draw this!
So what did Sonya Lubomirski and her colleagues do? For several years, they have studied various strategies that help people become happier (for example, cultivate gratitude, do good deeds, strengthen friendships), and tested whether their effectiveness is supported by scientific data. The result was a science-based theory of happiness, which Lubomirski herself calls the “forty percent theory.”
The level of happiness (or the subjective feeling of one’s well-being) is a stable characteristic, to a large extent genetically predetermined. Each of us has acquaintances about whom we can say that life is favorable to them. However, they do not seem happy at all: on the contrary, they often say that they seem to have everything, but there is no happiness.
And we all know people of a different type – optimistic and satisfied with life, in spite of any hardships. We tend to hope that something wonderful will happen in life, everything will change and absolute happiness will come. However, research by Sonia Lubomirsky has shown that significant events, not only positive (big win), but also negative (vision loss, death of a loved one), change our level of happiness only for a while. The forty percent that Lubomirsky writes about is that part of an individual’s sense of happiness that is not predetermined by heredity and is not related to circumstances; that part of happiness that we can influence. It depends on the upbringing, the events of our lives and the actions that we ourselves take.
Sonja Lyubomirsky, one of the world’s leading positive psychologists, professor of psychology at the University of California at Riverside (USA). She is the author of several books, most recently The Myths of Happiness (Penguin Press, 2013).
The psychology of happiness. New Approach»Translation from English by Anna Stativka. Peter, 352 p.
Unfortunately, the Russian-speaking reader was not lucky: the translation of the book leaves much to be desired, and on page 40, where we are invited to independently assess our level of well-being, the third scale turned out to be distorted (score 7 should correspond to the highest level of happiness, and not vice versa, as it is written in Russian edition – be careful when counting!).
Nevertheless, the book is worth reading to realize that happiness is not a goal that can be achieved once and for all. Happiness is our attitude to life, the result of our work on ourselves. Forty percent, subject to our influence, is a lot. You can, of course, consider the book trivial, or you can use Lubomirski’s discoveries and improve your sense of life. This is a choice that everyone makes on their own.