Each quarter I post a review of a leadership/motivational book I recommend to colleagues and friends. Some may be old favorites, others are hot off the press. I am always open to suggestions for books to review. If you have a favorite you'd like to share with others, please contact me.

“Happiness is the whole aim and end of human existence.” – Aristotle

What Happy People Know is not for the faint of heart. While Dan Baker asks the reader to contemplate happiness, he maintains that this cannot be done without exploring fear.

While I didn’t agree with everything Baker proposes (some of his outcomes seem a little too quick and a little too pat to someone grounded in “cynical psychology”), his quick and at times sarcastic, writing style, held my interest, even through lengthy explanations of human brain anatomy.

What Happy People Know is a combination psychology, anatomy, motivation and “story” book. Baker weaves his theories with those of Emotional Intelligence and Appreciative Inquiry—sometimes giving credit to those theories, sometimes not. It is in his research references that I found fault with the book. The fact that few works were cited made me question the credibility of what I was reading. While he cites research studies done by Fredrickson and Seligman—pioneers in the field of the psychology of happiness, more citations, endnotes or footnotes would have gone a long way to build his credibility with me as a reader.

So…what is happiness?

Happiness is a state of mind on the decline in modern America. It is scarcer now than in less affluent times. Research shows happiness on the decline in the U.S. since the early 80s. It appears the more we’ve attained, the emptier we’ve become.

Not entirely our fault, Baker tells us. As humans we are “hardwired for hard times.”

What allowed us to survive in the times of saber-toothed tigers was our hair-trigger capacity to spring into action at the slightest hint of threat. Fear allowed us to survive.

Today, we have the same neurological network of fear. Fear is the greatest enemy of happiness. Fear, as Baker describes it, is not nail-biting, cold feet terror, but manifests more as anger, perfectionism, depression, and feelings of isolation.

He spends quite a few pages on the biology of the fear system, beginning with the brainstem (the reptilian brain), which cannot process higher emotions such as love. The amygdala (the mammalian brain), which stores all painful and threatening experiences, connects directly to the endocrine glands, which produce hormones. These hormones create the physical symptoms of fear (jitters, heart palpitations, etc).

The antidote to all this is the neocortex, our primary area of intellect. Located in the cerebellum, it is the creative, intuitive, intellectual and spiritual center. The physical site of happiness. To achieve happiness, we must learn to help our neocortical brain functions dominate our lower brain functions, which are focused solely on survival. Baker calls this the “dance of the spirit and the reptile.

Contemporary fear comes in two categories:

• Fear of not having enough
• Fear of not being enough

We often seek to soothe our souls with the very things that feed our fears and cause happiness to recede.

Baker says there are FIVE HAPPINESS TRAPS. These apply across age groups, nationalities, and culture. They are trying to:

• Buy Happiness (money)
• Find Happiness through Pleasure
• Be Happy by Resolving the Past
• Overcoming Weaknesses
• Force Happiness

Buying Happiness

An entire chapter is given to the trap of MONEY. No one, says Baker, ever thinks they have enough. Scarcity is burned into our brains.

People believe money will bring them leisure, status, possessions, financial security or worldly power. Ironically, the vast majorities of American millionaires are self-made and have sacrificed leisure and freedom for wealth.

Leisure, he says, is a state of mind—the relaxation and sense of freedom, which comes from being free of worry. You can be very busy, but if free of worry you experience a sense of leisure.

If status brought happiness, he argues, white-collar workers would be happier than blue-collar workers. Research does not support this.

Happiness depends to a significant degree on expectations. If you inflate your expectations, you’re begging to be unhappy. Happy people keep their expectations open.

Happiness Through Pleasure

People have been using pleasure as a force against fear since the beginning of civilization. Pleasure was scarce when threats were everywhere and life was short. Pleasure became associated with celebration (i.e. a good harvest or hunt) and security.

Happy people still reserve pleasure for celebrations. They ritualize pleasure and draw contentment from the entire experience. For example enjoying a happy hour with friends vs. consuming all the booze you can. Unhappy people stay too long at the party and indulge robotically. When they emerge from their “pleasure” they are worse off—hang over, guilt—then use hair of the dog therapy to “fix it.”

Benign pleasures are the most seductive (ex: sitting on the couch watching a movie with some chips). More than 250,000 people die each year from overeating and being sedentary.

Resolve the Past

Every life has unhappy memories and the amygdala stores them. Memories stay forever. There is no healthy way to erase them. Freud’s premise, says Baker, of emptying the unconscious through talk therapy is faulty from the start. He dubs clinical psychology “cynical psychology.” He says we must use our intellect and spirit to create new meaning out of old memories. Use our memories to motivate and be a source of wisdom.

Overcoming Weaknesses

A focus on weakness reinforces fear and limits our options to flight, fight or freeze. Socially approved weaknesses, such as workaholism, stoicism, and perfectionism, are the hardest to deal with. They are destroyers of the cardio-vascular system.

Focusing on strengths works because it feels better (and we are more likely to follow through). Skinner’s research proved that positive conditioning was more powerful than negative conditioning. Baker cites his own work with anorexics. He focused their time together on what they were good at and what they loved. He never focused on eating.

Forcing Happiness

You cannot just decide to be happy. Happiness is not a finite entity unto itself. Happiness is hard work—harder for some because there is a genetic component.

What is the antidote to these Happiness Traps?

Baker says courage is one of the pre-requisites for happiness. He defines courage as the ability to take action in spite of fear. What gives us courage?

Love. Humans have two primal feelings: fear and love. Fear lives in the reptilian brain and love in the neocortex. The love he speaks of is not romantic love, but appreciation, one of the tools for happiness.

Baker uses the bulk of the book to talk about these tools and the physiological brain-body connection that results when we use them. He uses case studies to show how these can play out in a person’s life.

HAPPINESS TOOLS

• Appreciation
• Choice
• Personal Power
• Leading from Your strengths
• Power of Language

Tool #1: APPRECIATION

Appreciation is the antidote to fear. It is the most important of the happiness tools.

The purest, highest form of love. Can blossom even if it is not returned. During active appreciation, the brain, heart and endocrine system are working in synchrony. Messages from the amygdala are cut off.

FACT:  It is physiologically impossible to be in a state of fear and appreciation at the same time. (Try it. I did and was amazed. You cannot fear and appreciate at the same time!)

Happy people realize that life is not a smooth road. Loss is inevitable. Happiness is not the art of building a trouble-free life; it is the art of responding well when trouble strikes.

Appreciation he says, has unparalleled healing force for the mind and body.

How to trigger appreciation in your life? Baker suggests doing an Appreciation Audit to bring appreciation to the forefront of spirit and intelligence. This creates a perceptual shift. It doesn’t change the facts of your life, but it changes how you view those facts.

AUDIT: For 3-5 minutes 3x per day, think about something you deeply appreciate. Anything from chocolate chip cookies to the wonder of your first kiss to the smells of a spring day.

The effects last longer than the exercise.

Ask yourself questions.

We often ask ourselves negative based questions. Instead of “what’s wrong?” as “what’s right?” Negative has its place, but nothing gets fixed until someone thinks of a positive solution. Keep your questions constructive.

How to find the love within us?

• Realize hate is fear and most of the time it is fear of being hurt.
• Realize forgiveness is not forgetting. It doesn’t alter what happened, but gives us new eyes to see the hurt in a different way. It is not an easy road. Forgiveness must be practiced.
• Forgive yourself. What causes self-hate? Fear of not being enough.

Tool #2:  CHOICE

Choice is the voice of the heart. Possibilities exist for all of us. Happy people know this. Fear can blind us to the possibilities. It makes us believe we can only flee, fight or freeze. Choice is power.

Believing you have no options leads to depression, anxiety and learned helplessness. Happy people know they always have a choice. Studies show that what brings people the greatest sense of self-satisfaction is when they can make their own choices. One of these choices is how you perceive things. You can choose a perspective on reality that will enrich rather than diminish you.

Tool #3: PERSONAL POWER

Personal power is about doing: taking responsibility and taking action.

It consists of realizing your life belongs to you and then doing something about it. When you have personal power, you feel secure. It keeps you from being a victim.

There are four deadly beliefs to personal power. They at first seem comforting, but they are not:

V.E.R.B.s: being a victim, feeling entitled, believing you’ll be rescued, blaming someone else.

These cripple the personal power you need to seize happiness.

Truths: Other people can hurt you, but only you can victimize yourself.

Truth: Just as muscle thrives on exercise, so do the human mind, body and spirit thrive on struggle and challenge. Satisfaction increases when there is effort. Satisfaction without struggle doesn’t lead to happiness--only leads to boredom.

Truth: For rescue, men look to money and women to relationships. The truth is we rescue ourselves. In therapy, the client is the primary healing force. Deciding to DO is what rescues us (for example, reading self help books means nothing until you decide to put the concepts into action. Nothing happens till you make it happen).

Truth: Blame reinforces fear. Blaming gives power to the other person. Most people blame themselves, thinking they are taking responsibility. But responsibility is about using personal power to make changes. Blame is a call to anger and staying frozen in place.

Being you requires courage. It means living up to your values. Values are the individualized beliefs that make you who you are.

Baker asks the reader take some time to identify their values. People who live up to their values have a sense of purpose, peace of mind and fulfillment—all are needed for happiness. When not living up to values, there is a sense of disappointment. Most people try to muffle this sense with money, a search for pleasure, wielding power over others—Happiness traps.

Tool #4: LEADING FROM YOUR STRENGTHS

Giving in to the automatic fear response makes you focus on your weaknesses. Fixing weaknesses is painful. Leading with strengths feels good and that is why it works. Baker relates an incredible story of a man who lost his wife, then later both his business and his son in the World Trade Center attacks. Depressed almost to the point of non-functioning, he began to improve in therapy only when focus shifted from reconciling his pain to getting in touch with when he was happiest in his life. Using those feelings, buried deep within him, gave him the strength to go on.

Despite our suffering, says Baker, we stay strong. We must stay in touch with that. Remember it. Call on it to help us though.

Tool #5: POWER OF LANGUAGE AND STORIES

Nothing beats words for awakening the neocortex which puts our problems into perspective and helps us find the possibilities. The question is, what words? Changing our language can change our life.

We talk to ourselves all the time. Self-talk helps us make sense of our thoughts and gain access to our wisdom. We are often brutal in our self-talk. We would never talk to someone else the way we talk to ourselves.

Tune into your self-talk, Baker urges. Do you hear lots of “can’t, don’t, should, won’t?”

Language has the power to alter perception. The stories we tell ourselves about our own lives eventually become our lives. We can tell healthy stories or horror stories. Readers are encouraged to stop reading and tell a nutshell version of their lives so far. What words do you use?

What Happy People Know was a satisfying read. Baker makes intriguing connections that can be interesting discussion starters at work and at home. The case studies he shares made the points he was making more real. The author’s “voice” is what makes this book even more enjoyable. Baker comes across as a man of more than a little ego and his slightly irreverent, sometime cocky tone adds life to sometimes dry but important information.

Bottom line: Being miserable is easy. Being happy is hard.

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