The Myth of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsky

Have you ever wanted a thing so much but after you actually bought the thing the happiness of owning it only last maybe a week? Or have you ever though of leaving your current job & think you’d be much happier if you get that particular job? This book from Sonja Lyubomirsky covers a lot of similar worries & concerns in life & how to tackle them.

Not like other happiness themes books that usually come from subjective opinion, The Myth of Happiness derrives its content from positive psychology stand point. Every single advice to a specific problem is a result from actual research from either the Sonja herself, or from other researchers. And the advice is not some vague action, it is actionable steps such as how we move on from a sad period of life: “write your deepest trauma on a letter, put it in an envelope, then seal the envelope”, or like how to think about our past “Relive your happy moment & don’t analize it, But do the opposite for sad/traumatic moment, you should analize & don’t relive it”

The author divide the book into 3 chapters: Connections, Work & Money, & Looking Back. Each chapter consists of happyness myths that are going to be busted such as “i’ll be happy when i have a children”, “i’ll be happy if i’m rich”, “i can’t be happy if the best years of my life are over”. The interesting part is when a specific myth is being busted, Sonja will bring a specific research regarding the myth, she explains a little bit how the researcher counducted the experiment & then the result. She gives us a glimpse of how the researcher in positive psychology works. The way of her explaining the myths is really casual, easy to understand, make us reflect on our behaviour. Just like what she mentions in the acknowledgement, her editor said “The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thingkin”.

Overall the book give us a deeper understanding how we, human, think & feel & what actually will make us happy. It makes us understand human better & gives a hint what to do in a specific situation, in order to get the most happiness. And the better we understand human, our user, the better we can create something that actually works for them.

Enjoy Reading!