--- title: Psychology: 7 Ways You're Thwarting Your Own Happiness description: 'If happiness is important to you, you need to give it priority' canonical: https://time.com/4305128/overcome-deadly-sins-of-happiness/ author: Raj Raghunathan article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-04-26T13:46:22.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:55:45.565Z article:section: Ideas og:title: 7 Ways You're Thwarting Your Own Happiness og:description: 'If happiness is important to you, you need to give it priority' og:url: https://time.com/4305128/overcome-deadly-sins-of-happiness/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt27f6a272b3f1f7df/6988905f5f570f0cfdb209b7/smarthappy.jpg?branch=production&width=1120&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1120 og:image:height: 630 og:image:alt: smarthappy.jpg og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 7 Ways You're Thwarting Your Own Happiness twitter:description: 'If happiness is important to you, you need to give it priority' twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt27f6a272b3f1f7df/6988905f5f570f0cfdb209b7/smarthappy.jpg?branch=production&width=1120&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # 7 Ways You're Thwarting Your Own Happiness > Sponsored content. 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It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ## Video: How to Maximize Happiness With Your Spending: An Economist Explains [Watch (HLS stream): How to Maximize Happiness With Your Spending: An Economist Explains](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Ypg3UoAM.m3u8) (1:29)  _Published 2014-06-09. University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers explains how best to spend your money to maximize happiness._ by [Raj Raghunathan](https://time.com/author/raj-raghunathan/) ## Raj Raghunathan Apr 26, 2016 1:46 PM UTC  Portfolio/Penguin by [Raj Raghunathan](https://time.com/author/raj-raghunathan/) ## Raj Raghunathan Apr 26, 2016 1:46 PM UTC Most people around the world agree that “being happy” is one of their most important goals. So, you would think that the smarter and more successful you are, the happier you would be, right? Wrong! As it turns out, the smart-and-the-successful aren’t that much happier than their not-so-smart-or-successful counterparts. For example, by most accounts, [wealth doesn’t contribute to happiness](http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2019628,00.html) beyond a point. Fame, too, doesn’t bring [lasting happiness](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2736104/). And if you thought being better educated will make you happier, [think again](http://www.oecd.org/site/worldforum06/38303200.pdf). In summarizing these results, Sonja Lyubomirsky, one of the world’s happiness researchers, concludes that [it’s a myth](http://themythsofhappiness.org/) to believe that happiness can be changed by changing life circumstances—how well-educated you are, your net-worth, etc. Life circumstances contribute to only about 10% of happiness. So, back to the conundrum, why is it that the smart-and-successful aren’t as happy as they could—or should—be? The answer, it turns out, is that the smart-and-successful commit some of the very “happiness sins” that the not-so-smart-or-successful do. Indeed, the smarter and more successful you are, the greater the chance that you commit these sins. One sin is **devaluing happiness**: not giving happiness much priority. Here’s a quick demonstration of this sin: Imagine that a genie—similar to the one in Aladdin’s story—appears before you and grants you three wishes. What wishes would you make? If happiness is one of your top goals, it should figure on their wish-list. But chances are, it didn’t. In the studies I have conducted, only about 6% ask for happiness. This suggests that people forget all about happiness as they go about their daily lives, which is in fact what we find. Another sin is **chasing superiority**, which translates to wanting to be better than others at something. This desire results in social comparisons, the tendency to judge oneself relative to others, typically on wealth, power, attractiveness and fame. [Findings](http://sonjalyubomirsky.com/wp-content/themes/sonjalyubomirsky/papers/LR1997.pdf) show that such a tendency is one of the biggest happiness killers. Yet another sin is wanting to be the center of attention—the **desperation for love** and adulation. Again, [findings show](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042810025036) that this desire deflates happiness levels because it leads to either neediness or to avoidance in relationships. A fourth—and perhaps most important—sin is the desire to control others or outcomes. Although such a desire [can be a good thing](https://www.scu.edu/media/college-of-arts-and-sciences/psychology/documents/Burger-JPSP-1985.pdf) up to a point, **being** **overly controlling** of others and outcomes is [guaranteed](http://psywb.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/2211-1522-2-1) to lower happiness. Other happiness sins include **distrusting others**, having an **indifferent pursuit of happiness**, and **mind addiction**, ignoring or underestimating the important of gut instincts and feelings. How can one overcome these happiness sins? Clearly, if happiness is important to you, you need to give it priority. You can do this by figuring out the answer to two important questions: 1) what does happiness mean to me?, and 2) what activities reliably make me happy? To most of us, happiness is a feeling of joy or love, and we feel these emotions when we are among friends and family. Merely giving happiness a higher priority, findings show, will improve your happiness levels. In addition to giving happiness higher priority, here are a few more things you could do: **1\. Maintain a gratitude journal.** Simply making a note of three good things that happened to you each day (e.g., “a stranger smiled at me,” “I found $1 bill on the way from the garage to work”) for a mere 15 days can boost your happiness. In fact, it can even lift you out of depression! Why does expressing gratitude have this effect? There are many reasons, but one major reason is that it mitigates the desire for superiority. It makes you realize that [other people—and luck](http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10663.html)—played an important role in your successes, thereby making you less prone to social comparisons. **2\. Do random acts of kindness.** Being nice to others, it turns out, is a surprisingly [reliable happiness-booster](https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/11189976/dunn,%20aknin,%20norton%5Fprosocial%5Fcdips.pdf?sequence=1). Of course, you shouldn’t feel obligated to be nice. So, don’t volunteer for the soup kitchen if waking up at 5 am and being in a hot, sticky kitchen isn’t your cup of tea. But if you can figure out a way to have fun (e.g., by paying the toll for the car behind you, leaving a box of chocolate outside your neighbor’s house) while making others happy—again, it doesn’t have to be anything big—you’ll almost certainly enjoy an increase in happiness. How? By making you develop stronger—more intimate and meaningful—bonds with others, thereby enabling you to experience the sense of connection with others that you seek. **3\. Gain “internal control.”** Make it your goal to retain the keys to your happiness in your own two hands. This means never blaming others or the circumstances for your unhappiness. There are several ways to gain internal control, but one of the most powerful—and seemingly non-obvious—ways is to lead a healthier lifestyle. A healthier lifestyle involves three things: eating right, moving more and sleeping better. Leading a healthier lifestyle makes you feel good from the inside out, making it [easier to exercise internal control](https://hbr.org/2005/01/overloaded-circuits-why-smart-people-underperform). As it turns out, even minor adjustments to your lifestyle—such as, starting your meals with the healthiest items, installing a pedometer app on your smart phone, and not checking email after 9 p.m.—can significantly increase the amount of internal control you have. And the greater the internal control you have, the less the external control you will seek. If you can put even just one or two of these practices in place, you’ll experience a significant boost in happiness levels. _Adapted from_ [If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Happy?](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1101980737/?tag=timecom-20)_, copyright © 2016 by Raj Raghunathan. First hardcover edition published April 26, 2015, by Portfolio/Penguin. All rights reserved._ ## Transcript Other ways you can better use your money to get more happiness bang for your buck. The research seems to suggest there are ways in which you can. The first would be to say, focus on experiences rather than goods. Right now you might covet a new car, and you might think that one of your next get to sit in a fancy new sports car, that you'll be so much happier. The truth is you'll be sitting in traffic. You'll be thinking about the day you just had at work. We think about other things and the fact that you're in a shiny new car won't be that salient you won't get that much joy out of it. Think instead about a, a great vacation. You can probably remember the last great great vacation you had. And you can still enjoy dining out on those memories. And that's the sensing in which it makes sense to focus on spending. On experiences rather than things. And then there are actually techniques we can use to do a even better job of that. I remember when I went to the World Series. I didn't just go to the World Series. I bought a, a baseball cap, that always reminds me of the fact that I went to the World Series with my stepfather. That elongates the experience. Like I get to relive having been at the World Series many, many more times. And then there's research from Mike Norton at Harvard who says that, giving money can actually yield greater happiness. And it's an instinct that's within many of us. And I, the way I interpret Mike's research is don't let the inner, inner economist or the inner Grinch within you squash that impulse. 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