Things Your Mom Should Have Told You

Things Your Mom Should Have Told You

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Build the Life You Want

Book of the Month: Built the Life You Want by Arthur C. Brooks and Oprah Winfrey
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"America is in a happiness slump. Just over the past decade, the percentage of Americans saying they are ‘not too happy’ rose from 10% to 24%. The percentage of Americans suffering from depression is increasing dramatically, especially among young adults. Meanwhile, the percentage saying they are ‘very happy’ has fallen from 36% to 19%...People disagree about why this slump is happening on such a mass scale–blaming technology, or a polarized culture, or culture change, or the economy, or even politics–but we all know that it is happening," said Arthur C. Brooks.
"If you are coming to this book because you are not as happy as you want to be–whether because you are suffering from something in particular, or you have a good life ‘on paper’ but always find yourself struggling–you are the kind of person I relate to best. We are kindred spirits," said Arthur C. Brooks.
"I started studying happiness 25 years ago as a PhD student…for a long time, my knowledge didn’t help me very much. It was just observations about who the happiest people were–and the unhappiest. A decade ago during a particularly dark and stormy time in my life, my wife asked a question that changed my thinking–'Why don’t you use all that complicated research to see if there are ways you can change your own habits?'" said Arthur C. Brooks.
"I started spending more time observing my well-being levels to pick out patterns. I studied the nature of my suffering and the benefits I likely derived from it. I set up a series of experiments based on the data, trying things like making a gratitude list, praying more, and pursuing the opposite behavior of my inclination when I was sad and angry (which was pretty often). And I saw results.," said Arthur C. Brooks.
"It worked so well that in my spare time from my job, I started writing about happiness and real-life applications…I changed careers at the age of 55 to write, speak, and teach about the science of happiness…I accepted a professorship at Harvard University and created a class on the science of happiness, which quickly became oversubscribed," said Arthur C. Brooks.
"I observed how my brain was processing negative emotions and learned how to manage these emotions without trying to get rid of them. I began to see relationships as an interplay between hearts and brains, and not some inscrutable mystery. I started adopting the habits of the happiest people that I saw in the data, and whom I knew in my real life…In the years since I made this life change, my own well-being has risen a lot," said Arthur C. Brooks.
"In plain language, we seek to help you see that you are not helpless against the tides of life, but that with a greater understanding of how your mind and brain work, you can build the life you want, starting inside with your emotions, and then turning outward to your family, friendships, work, and spiritual life. It worked for us, and it can work for you too," said Arthur C. Brroks and Oprah Winfrey.
"Unlike other books you may have read, this one is not going to exhort you to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. This isn’t a book about willpower–it’s about knowledge, and how to use it. If you couldn’t figure out something about your car, you wouldn’t solve the problem with extreme willpower–you’d look at an owner’s manual. Similarly, when something isn’t right in your happiness, you need clear, science-based information about how your happiness works before anything else, and then instructions on how to use this information in your life. That’s what this book is.," said Arthur C. Brooks and Oprah Winfrey.
"This also isn’t another book about minimizing or eliminating pain–yours or anyone else’s. Life can be hard–much harder for some people than for others, through no fault of their own. If you’re in pain, this book won’t tell you to wait it out or extinguish it. Rather, it will show you how to decide to deal with it, learn from it, and grow through it," said Arthur C. Brooks and Oprah Winfrey.
"You, too, can become the boss of your own life, not an observer. You can learn to choose how you react to negative circumstances and select emotions that make you happier even when you get a bad hand. You can focus your energy not on trivial distractions, but on the basic pillars of happiness that bring enduring satisfaction and meaning. You will learn how to manage your life in new ways," said Arthiur C. Brooks and Oprah Winfrey.
"I write, speak, and teach about happiness precisely because it’s naturally hard for me, and I want more of it. My baseline well-being level–the level where I would sit if I didn’t study it and work on it every day–is significantly lower than average. It’s not as if I have had huge trauma or unusual suffering. No one should feel sorry for me. It just runs in the family…So my work as a social scientist isn’t research–it’s me-search," said Arthur C. Brooks.
"Our mission in this book is to open up the amazing science of happiness to people in all walks of life, who can use it to live better and lift up others...With a greater understanding of how your mind and brain work, you can build the life you want, starting inside with your emotions, and then turning outward to your family, friendships, work, and spiritual life," said Arthur C. Brooks and Oprah Winfrey.
What is happiness? “Happiness is a combination of enjoyment, satisfaction, and purpose. To get happier is to get more of these elements, in a balanced way–not all of one and none of another. One funny thing about all three: they all have some unhappiness within them. Enjoyment takes work and forgoing pleasures; satisfaction requires sacrifice and doesn’t last; purpose almost always entails suffering. Getting happier, in other words, requires that we accept unhappiness in our lives as well, and understanding it isn’t an obstacle to our happiness,” said Arthur C. Brooks.
Why negative feelings are helpful “We are better suited to processing unhappy feelings than happy ones, to keep us safe and alert to danger. This is called negativity bias. Negative emotions also help us to learn valuable lessons so we don’t make mistakes again and again…Negative feelings can be a helpful response to problems in the environment, leading us to pay appropriate attention and come up with solutions. In other words, when we are sad or angry about something, we may be more likely to fix it. And that, of course, leads us to be happier in the long run,” said Athur C. Brooks.
Feeling frantic? Make a list “If you are feeling frantic about all the things you need to do, without metacognition there is no way to organize the problem in your mind. Your limbic system is designed to send alarms, not make lists. On a busy day, start with your coffee and calmly make a list of the things you need to do, in order of importance. Your prefrontal cortex is now in charge and you will feel much more in control. You will also have the presence of mind to decide which things get done today, which you will leave until tomorrow, and which you might even decide to do…never,” said Arthur C. Brooks.
How to resolve painful memories “In your journal, reserve a section for painful experiences, writing them down right afterward. Leave two lines below each entry. After 1 month, return to the journal and write in the first blank line what you learned from that bad experience in the intervening period. After 6 months, fill in the second line with the positives that ultimately came from it. You will be amazed at how this exercise changes your perspective on your past,” said Arthur C. Brooks.
Gratitude helps turn down the noise “The single best way to grasp the reality of good things in life and turn down the noise that makes real threats to distinguish it from petty ones is to occupy some of the negative emotion receptors with a different, positive feeling. The most effective of these positive feelings is gratitude,” said Arthur C. Brooks.
Focusing less on yourself improves well-being “Adopting more of an outward focus on life–observing the world and caring for other people without making so much of life about yourself–is one of the best ways to increase your own well-being..This means being good to others as selflessly as possible, but more subtly, it means deflecting your own constant attention from yourself and your desires. Focusing on ourselves is the most normal thing in the world. Yet this doesn’t help us get happier…Working against this natural tendency gives us relief from the sitcom on loop in our heads that is our daily me-focused lives,” said Arthur C. Brooks.
Stop caring what others think about you “You especially care about others’ opinion of you, and evolution explains why: For virtually all of human history, humans’ survival depended on membership in close-knit clans and tribes…The instinct to want the approval of others is woefully maladapted to modern life. Where once you would have justifiably felt the terror of being expelled into the forest alone, today you might suffer acute anxiety that strangers online will ‘cancel’ you for an ill-considered remark, or passerby will snap a photo of a poor fashion choice and mock it on Instagram for all to see…” said Arthur C. Brooks.
Stop caring what others think about you “This tendency may be natural, but it can drive you around the bend if you let it…Remind yourself that no one cares. The ironic thing about feeling bad about yourself because of what people might think of you is that others have many fewer opinions about you–positive or negative–than you might imagine. Studies show that we all consistently overestimate how much people think about us and our failings, leading us to undue inhibition and worse quality of life. Perhaps your followers or neighbors would have a lower opinion of you if they were thinking about you–but they probably aren’t,” said Arthur C. Brooks.
© 2025 Joanne McHugh
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