The Happiness Cure – by Dr. Anders Hansen

The author, a psychiatrist, makes the argument that we should, and could, be happier—not all the time, and certainly not always “dialled up to eleven”, but definitely more than we are. This book explains how.

After an introductory couple of chapters about evolutionary psychology (illustrating where our fundamental emotions came from), he tackles the biggest enemies of happiness: anxiety and depression, each in a chapter of their own, before taking on a third beast, loneliness.

By offering reframes and new perspectives (because often we place too much or too little weight on the wrong things, due to an array of dysfunctional cognitive biases), he looks to help us to allow ourselves to feel the things we need to feel, and then continue being, most of the time, happy.

For Dr. Hansen, moderate happiness should be our default condition, punctuated by moments of greater happiness, and also by moments of unhappiness (e.g. anxiety, sadness, etc). He makes the argument that too many people spend a lot of time either wildly oscillating between emotional states, or else digging oneself further into an increasingly overwhelming state (usually: anxiety or depression), that can then be tricky to get out of, especially if trying the wrong way, e.g. by pursing happiness single-mindedly.

He also recommends the usual things that you might expect; exercise, getting good rest, and so forth, but mostly this book is not about that.

The style is very light and educational, clearly written for maximum comprehension, at the expense of precision (there are many small factual errors that do not detract from the actual thrust of the advice).

Bottom line: if you’d like to be happier, this book may help—especially by making it easier to identify why you’re not happy, since the obvious reasons are often not the fundamental reasons.

Click here to check out The Happiness Cure, and increase your happiness!