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Happiness: The Owner's Manual
Happiness: The Owner's Manual
Happiness: The Owner's Manual
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Happiness: The Owner's Manual

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Cutting-edge, user-friendly, and comprehensive: the revolutionary guide to the brain, now fully revised and updated

At birth each of us is given the most powerful and complex tool of all time: the human brain. And yet, as we well know, it doesn't come with an owner's manual—until now. In this unsurpassed resource, Dr. Pierce J. Howard and his team distill the very latest research and clearly explain the practical, real-world applications to our daily lives. Drawing from the frontiers of psychology, neurobiology, and cognitive science, yet organized and written for maximum usability, The Owner's Manual for the Brain, Fourth Edition, is your comprehensive guide to optimum mental performance and well-being. It should be on every thinking person's bookshelf.

  • What are the ingredients of happiness?
  • Which are the best remedies for headaches and migraines?
  • How can we master creativity, focus, decision making, and willpower?
  • What are the best brain foods?
  • How is it possible to boost memory and intelligence?
  • What is the secret to getting a good night's sleep?
  • How can you positively manage depression, anxiety, addiction, and other disorders?
  • What is the impact of nutrition, stress, and exercise on the brain?
  • Is personality hard-wired or fluid?
  • What are the best strategies when recovering from trauma and loss?
  • How do moods and emotions interact?
  • What is the ideal learning environment for children?
  • How do love, humor, music, friendship, and nature contribute to well-being?
  • Are there ways of reducing negative traits such as aggression, short-temperedness, or irritability?
  • What is the recommended treatment for concussions?
  • Can you delay or prevent Alzheimer's and dementia?
  • What are the most important ingredients to a successful marriage and family?
  • What do the world's most effective managers know about leadership, motivation, and persuasion?
  • Plus 1,000s more topics!
LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperCollins
Release dateMay 6, 2014
ISBN9780062357595
Happiness: The Owner's Manual
Author

Pierce Howard

Pierce J. Howard, Ph.D., is director of research and development for the Center for Applied Cognitive Studies in Charlotte, North Carolina. Since the first edition of The Owner's Manual for the Brain was published in 1994, Dr. Howard has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and conducted countless seminars around the world. He is a member of the American Psychological Association, the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, and the International Test Commission.

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    Book preview

    Happiness - Pierce Howard

    Contents

    A Note to the Reader

    Happiness: The False God

    If I’m Not Naturally Happy, What’s in It (i.e., Life) for Me?

    1  Flow: Total Absorption in the Task at Hand

    2  Fit: Work That Builds on Your Strengths

    3  Goal Progress: En Route to Personally Meaningful Goals

    4  Relationships: Friends for Fellowship and Intimacy

    5  Altruism: Service to Others

    6  A Word About Pleasure: Finding Flavor

    7  Optimism vs. Helplessness

    8  Human Resource Optimization

    A Reminder: Happiness Is Not a Goal

    The Author

    Credits

    Copyright

    About the Publisher

    A Note to the Reader

    Please note that all topic numbers and cross-references refer to those in the larger work.

    Happiness

    In the closing days of the 20th century, Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, a University of Chicago philosopher now at Claremont Graduate University in California, wrote an article in American Psychologist (1999) posing the following question: If we’re so rich, why aren’t we happy? Citing statistics that showed dramatic rises in standard of living in the U.S., he pointed out that surveys of happiness over the last half of the 20th century failed to show an accompanying increase. Well, the article went on to attempt to explain why increases in wealth failed to affect levels of happiness, but I was unconvinced. The problem is with the way he asked the question.

    Let’s get it said from the very beginning: Happiness is not, should not, be a goal. The word comes from the Middle English hap and the Old Norse happ, both meaning good luck—the luck of the draw, an advantageous outcome from spinning the Wheel of Fortune. Currently psychologists define happiness as the sustained absence of negative emotions (anxiety, fear, depression) and the ongoing presence of positive emotions (joy and her many manifestations) (Costa and McCrae, 1992). Who are the folks who just happen to be lucky enough to be gifted with this combination of traits? Well, considering the Five-Factor Model of personality (see chapter 30), they comprise the folks who score low on Need for Stability and high on Extraversion. One in three scores low on N, and another one in three scores high on E, so the incidence of naturally happy folks in this world is statistically 1 in 9—the probability of scoring both low in N and high in E. That puts about 11 percent of the population in the category of continually happy. You’ve met them: the cheerleader who is never down, always bubbly; the salesperson who bounces back quickly from rejection and moves on to the next prospect.

    Happiness, then, is not a goal but rather a personality trait that is characteristic of about 11 percent of the population. Happiness is not something to achieve—it is a normally distributed matter of temperament. Our goal is not to increase happiness, but rather to ensure that we enjoy our innate degree of happiness, and not more. To the extent that traits are genetically based, this incidence of happiness is immutable—and for good reason, evolutionarily speaking. What if the world were composed only of bubbly cheerleaders and effervescent salespeople? Who would worry about the details? Who would churn out the production in solitary silence? The world is built—evolution has assured us—out of differing gifts, a splendor of personality diversity. All the world may be a stage, but every stage needs set crew, light and sound booth, writers, producers, and, let’s not forget, the essential audience. Oh, and critics!

    In a December 2004 poll conducted by Time, 17 percent reported that they were brimming with happiness just about all the time, with another 60 percent saying that they were frequently happy. Let’s analyze that statistic. That distribution is roughly consistent with our earlier analysis. The 17 percent who report themselves brimming happily most of the time represents my 11 percent who are in a constant state of happiness, plus some borderline folks. The 60 percent who are frequently happy represent that middle two-thirds of the population who have proportionately more negative emotions than the brimming 11 percent, yet who are still happy with some frequency, and at other times anxious, angry, or depressed. That leaves about ¼ of the population (60 percent plus 11–17 percent leaves about 25 percent) who do not report themselves as experiencing happiness. Those would be the people who score in the bottom third of E, plus the folks who score in the mid- to high ranges of N, thus having a predominance of negative emotion over positive emotion. The probability of scoring low on E and medium or high on N comes out around 22 percent.

    Happiness is good health and a bad memory.

    —Ingrid Bergman

    Here’s what this means to me:

      1. Happiness is distributed in the population primarily according to our genetics, with (of course) some influence from our environment.

      2. Happiness is

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