10 Insights from the Yale Happiness Class

Introduction: Do You Know How to Be Happy?

The title of this could also be, “I Took This Long Coursera Class so That You Don’t Have To,” but I don’t know if I entirely agree with that. There’s so much information in the course that I believe can resonate with so many of us, that I really do recommend it for most people. You might know Dr. Laurie Santos from the podcast “The Happiness Lab.” I used to listen to it a lot more some years ago and I found her very engaging as a host. The podcast isn’t all she does. Her day job is as a Professor of Psychology at Yale. This course compiles decades of important social science research on what we really know about how happiness and life satisfaction work. The information contained in this course provides a bit of a roadmap for “hacking” happiness, if you will. Another way to think about it is that the course does a lot of myth-busting about assumptions the average person makes about happiness that turn out to be fallacious.

The following 10 insights are the takeaways from the course that I found most useful. I’ve already begun sharing some of these with clients in my practice and they’ve generated meaningful, productive dialogue in the therapy space.

10 Helpful Insights From the Yale Happiness Class

1) The things that we think will make us very happy actually only make us happy a little bit and only temporarily.

The course starts with a module about how bad we are at predicting what will make us happy. People typically think that money, stuff, getting married, and weight loss will make them happy. The research suggests something really different, however. For instance, with money, once we earn the income level that we think is good, our goal posts move and we start to believe that a higher income threshold will be the thing that we need or would make us happier. Also, it seems that higher income generally does not correlate with greater emotional well-being. In this now famous study by Daniel Kahneman, we can see that as annual income rises up to $75,000, emotional well-being also goes up. But after $75,000, there are no significant changes in emotional well-being. By the way, $75,000 in 2010, which is when the study was published would the equivalent to about $100,000 today. What about having nice stuff? Well, there’s evidence that when people are focused on financial and material success, they tend to have lower life satisfaction. What about getting married to someone you love? After the initial excitement of getting married, people return to whatever their baseline level of happiness was before they got married. What about dramatic weight loss that leads to a nicer body? People aren’t necessarily happier after weight loss.

2) What we think and what we do have a much greater impact on happiness than our life circumstances.

One the most profound statements in this course is as follows:

“10% of a person’s overall level of happiness can be attributed to life circumstances.”

According Sonja Lyubomirsky’s work, the things we can’t control in life end up not impacting our subjective happiness that much. This means that we tend to overestimate the effects of life circumstances and underestimate the effects of the deliberate actions we can take to make ourselves happier. She estimates that 40% of a person’s overall level of happiness can be attributed to a person's thoughts and actions. 40%!!!! That’s huge. An example of this would be a person might think that it’s hard to be relaxed and happy because they have student loan debt that they’ll be paying off for a very long time (a life circumstance outside of their control) but they also don’t engage in things like meditation, exercise, meaningful and pleasurable hobbies, making an intentional effort to connect with the people in their lives because they don’t understand how those are the things that can make them much happier.

3) Our “reference points” determine how much we value our lives.

Dr. Laurie Santos explains that reference points are standards or benchmarks we use as the basis for comparing ourselves and it turns out their play a significant role in a person’s happiness. As highly social beings, we are constantly evaluating who we are and what we have relative to what we see others being and having. She ties this in to the Ebbinghaus illusion (hello Psych 101!), a classic optical illusion that demonstrates how context influences our perception of size. In this illusion, two identical circles appear to be different sizes because of what surrounds them. The point of this illusion is that our brains can’t process visual information without also interpreting the context. As it applies to the science of happiness, it’s difficult for us to appreciate the good things in our lives because we cannot see them as absolutely “good,” especially when we engage in social comparison. We tend to focus more on what we could have gotten if only we were luckier, richer, more attractive, etc.

A really interesting study from O’Guinn and Shchrum (1998) suggests that watching TV makes you estimate your own wealth as low and others’ wealth as high, regardless of actual level of wealth. The study connects to a broader observation that when we are exposed to reference points that are unreaslitic, even if we know intellectually that “those are celebrities with make-up and their whole career is based on their appearance, etc.,” just by being exposed to them, they become our reference point! Other studies support this finding as well. Another study I made note of was by Kendrick, et al. (1993), which demonstrated that looking at photos of attractive models lowered people’s happiness ratings.

The problem with this, of course, is that we are now flooded with reference points because of social media and the internet. Vogel et al (2014) found that the higher the Facebook use, the lower the individual’s self-esteem. There have been many studies that demonstrate similar effects. Jonathan Haidt wrote a whole book about it.

Two things we can do to counteract the effects of unhelpful reference points: 1. Curate what you consume/exposure yourself to and 2. Stop using social media completely

4) Hedonic adaptation works both ways: we get used to good things and we get used to bad things.

I think this doesn’t need too much elaboration. This construct is often called “the hedonic treadmill.” Basically, it means we can bounce back from bad things that happen to us, because there’s a baseline we return to. And it means that when good things happen to us, like getting a higher income or getting married, we return to our baseline.

5) Investing your resources in experiences rather than material things will make you happier.

Cool life experiences seem to be a bit more impervious to hedonic adaptation (discussed above). Perhaps because it’s fleeting, you can’t really “adapt” to it as your new normal. A study discussed in this module suggests that people report greater happiness when they reflect on experiences they had in the past rather than material purchases and this held true across income levels. I think this is why travel makes people so happy!

6) People are happier when they can use their natural strengths and experience flow states in their job.

Martin Seligman’s research on “signature strengths” suggests that we’re much more satisfied with careers or jobs that help us make use of our natural strengths. He defines strengths as characteristics that matter most to us or are most central to who we are. Here’s a more detailed explanation of Signature Strengths, with lots of examples. His team developed the VIA Character Strengths Survey, which you can take for free.

Also, flow is important. Flow states happen when we are sufficiently challenged but not so challenged that we have anxiety that takes us out of the moment. It’s a state of deep focus when we lose track of time and feel fulfilled and engaged. I often find myself in a flow state when I engage in therapy and when I write.

7) Leisurely activities that challenge us will make us happier than passive activities like watching TV.

This is the second item on my list that is kind of anti-TV, which is a radical stance for me given my devotion to K-dramas. So we talked about flow, the state of deep focus that challenges us but not too much and makes us feel engaged and fulfilled. The other facet of flow I didn’t mention before is that when we do things that make us apathetic and bored like watching TV, we don’t actually experience positive emotions.

Some examples of leisurely activities that are a bit more challenging and less passive:

• Learning, like taking a language class for fun or teaching oneself a new hobby, like knitting

• Physical activities, like hiking, running, doing yoga

• Artistic pursuits, like painting, drawing, woodworking

I would also add that scrolling one’s phone is a passive activity similar to watching TV that evokes apathy more than positive emotions.

8) A growth mindset will make us happier than a fixed mindset.

The course distinguishes between a “growth mindset” which is focus on continuous learning and a “fixed mindset” which focuses on outcomes. People with fixed mindsets tend to believe that their efforts do not make a huge difference and that they either have what it takes to accomplish something or they don’t. It’s a pretty black-and-white mentality that seems limiting and discouraging. People with growth mindsets believe that they can always improve in some way with new information, practices, and opportunities. When it comes to a common concern such as anxiety, you can see how this might play out in drastically different ways. A person with a fixed mindset might say, “I don’t know why I have so much anxiety. It’s something I’ve always hated about my life.” A person with a growth mindset might say, “I have a lot of anxiety but I’m always learning new ways to manage it better and it’s nice to make progress with that.”

9) Being kind to others has a huge impact on happiness.

This was a fascinating part of the course because time and time again, people in studies do not predict that they will be made happier by being kind and generous with others, including total strangers. Despite their preconceived notions, they end up reporting much greater happiness when they give to others. This has such as powerful effect that one of the earliest assignments in the class is to practice “Random Acts of Kindness” which I did, begrudgingly. Although I did not measure the changes in my overall happiness level, I did notice I felt really good, like ridiculously good, after holding the door open for someone, complimenting someone, donating to a charity I care about, and emailing a few other therapists a “kudos” about the work they do or the population they serve.

10) Mind-wandering tends to make us unhappy and being more present makes us happier.

I think it’s well known by now that a regular meditation practice makes people a lot happier and it has become a pretty popular way for people to manage their stress and anxiety. This course highlights some research that explains that meditation might be so helpful to mental health because it interrupts mind-wandering. Apparently, when our minds wander, they tend to repeat quite negative thoughts and memories that are associated with negative emotions. So when we engage in an activity like meditation that stops the mind-wandering and we are more present, we feel a lot better. Makes sense, right? The other benefit of being more present rather than letting our minds run amok is that it boosts our cognitive performance.

Conclusion: You’re Bad at Predicting What Will Make You Happy

There’s a lot to learn here and I recommend this class for anyone who needs the skills and perspectives to be happier (I guess that’s everyone). I personally am hoping to keep practicing deliberate acts of kindness because kindness is a value of mine and during this course, I could really see how powerfully it made me feel good. This class also helped to revamp the gratitude practice I abandoned a couple of years ago and it’s felt good to go back to that. In some ways, I feel like I was more in touch with what made me happier before the pandemic, and I’ve heard a similar sentiment from clients and fellow therapists. Just having this as a free resource I can access at any time from Yale University makes me feel grateful. Unlike many other things that exist on the internet, this course actually improved my capacity to be happier and I hope it gives you the same benefit.