Books |
Happier
Tal Ben-Shahar
By
Published: Jan 01, 2007
Category:
Self Help
Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment
Tal Ben-Shahar
The first year Tal Ben Shahar offered a course in “positive psychology” to Harvard undergraduates, eight students signed up. (Two dropped out.)
The second year, 380 students enrolled.
The third year, 855 Harvard students took the class, making it the college’s most popular course.
“Happier” is the best explanation for the sudden interest of Ivy League students — who are famed for their focus on such practical concerns as achievement and power — in a subject that’s warm and fuzzy and, at bottom, abstract. For one thing, “Happier” isn’t a self-help book as most of us have experienced self-help books. That is, unlike The Secret, it doesn’t present you with the “answer” and then refuse to provide a roadmap to help you get there; it’s specific and organized and suggests lots of exercises you might do to move faster toward your goal. For another, “Happer” is rich in academic quotation and citation; it’s not dumbed-down for a mass audience.
Ben-Sharar did not invent positive psychology; that distinction belongs to Martin Seligman, author of The Optimistic Child. But he’s the poster child for the field, in part because his own experience is so vivid. At 16, he won the Israeli national squash championship. That achievement was years in the making; he believed it would deliver happiness on the grand scale. But after the initial elation had passed, so did his happiness.
What about “no pain, no gain”? What about the old-fashioned formula for success: “sacrifice present enjoyment in order to be happy in the future”? There are many who enjoy 80-hour weeks, Ben-Sharar notes, and God bless them. It’s the “rat racers” who concern him. Their lives, he says, will be an endless cycle of wishing, working, attaining — and “a few pleasant moments which come from being relieved of a burden.”
Anyone who has spent five minutes reading Buddhism or Viktor Frankl knows where Ben-Sharar is going. You think money matters? Happiness is “the ultimate currency”. The short term is nothing, it’s “the overall experience of pleasure and meaning” that matters. And so it’s the journey — the life of purpose — that is the source of our joy.
Here’s the curious thing: The path to happiness is very much like the traditional road to success. That is, you need a goal. And a plan. And then — and this is vital — small tasks you can do every day that bring you closer to your goal. Do them regularly, Ben-Sharar says, and they become rituals. And, as everyone knows, a ritual trumps a habit every time.
“Happier” tells us that happiness is our right, our destiny, our life’s obligation. That it is a light in the world, encouraging others to find their own happiness. And that, most urgently, that “this is it” — that this mishmash of trips to the dry cleaners and making love and paying bills is all there is. It’s a short ride. And the responsibility for finding happiness is all ours.
Never has such a sobering report made Harvard kids so cheerful. Maybe they’re smarties after all.
To buy ‘Happier” from Amazon.com, click here.
