The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

me feel more sophisticated and intelligent—and in fact, studies show that people who are critical are often perceived to be more discerning. In one study, for example, people judged the writers of negative book reviews as more expert and competent than the writers of positive reviews, even when the content of both reviews was deemed to be of high quality. Another study showed that people tend to think that someone who criticizes them is smarter than they are. Also, when a person disrupts a group’s unanimity, he or she lessens its social power. I’ve seen people exploit this phenomenon; when a group is cheerfully unanimous on a topic like “The teacher is doing a great job” or “This restaurant is terrific,” such a person takes the opposite position to deflate the group’s mood. Being critical has its advantages, and what’s more, it’s much easier to be hard to please. Although enthusiasm seems easy and undiscriminating, in fact, it’s much harder to embrace something than to disdain it. It’s riskier.
    When I examined my reactions to other people, I realized that I do often view people who make critical remarks as more perceptive and more discriminating. At the same time, though, it’s hard to find pleasure in the company of someone who finds nothing pleasing. I prefer the company of the more enthusiastic types, who seem less judgmental, more vital, more fun.
    For example, one evening, as part of a surprise birthday party for a close friend, we went to a Barry Manilow concert, because my friend loves Barry Manilow. Afterward, I reflected that it showed considerable strength of character to be such an avowed Barry Manilow fan. After all, Barry Manilow is…well, Barry Manilow. It would be so much safer to mock his music, or to enjoy it in an ironic, campy way, than to admire it wholeheartedly as she did. Enthusiasm is a form of social courage. What’s more, people’s assessments are very influenced by other people’s assessments. So when my friend said, “This is terrific music, this is a great concert,” her enthusiasm lifted me up.
    I wanted to embrace this kind of zest. I steeled myself to stop making certain kinds of unnecessarily negative statements: “I really don’t feel like going,” “The food was too rich,” “There’s nothing worth reading in the paper.” Instead, I tried to look for ways to be sincerely enthusiastic.
    For example, one afternoon, at Jamie’s suggestion, we left the girls with his parents while we went to a movie. When we came back to pick them up, my mother-in-law asked, “How was the movie?”
    Instead of following my inclination to say, “Well, not bad,” I answered, “It was such a treat to go see a movie in the afternoon.” That’s a response that’s much more likely to boost happiness—not only in her but also in me.
    Giving positive reviews requires humility. I have to admit, I missed the feelings of superiority that I got from using puncturing humor, sarcasm, ironic asides, cynical comments, and cutting remarks. A willingness to be pleased requires modesty and even innocence—easy to deride as mawkish and sentimental.
    For the first time, I appreciated the people I knew who were unfailingly ready to be pleased. A prayer attributed to Saint Augustine of Hippo includes the line “shield your joyous ones”:
     
    Tend your sick ones, O Lord Jesus Christ;
    rest your weary ones; bless your dying ones;
    soothe your suffering ones; pity your afflicted ones;
    shield your joyous ones.
    And all for your love’s sake.
     
    At first, it struck me as odd that among prayers for the “dying” and “suffering” is a prayer for the “joyous.” Why worry about the joyous ones?
    Once I started trying to give positive reviews, though, I began to understand how much happiness I took from the joyous ones in my life—and how much effort it must take for them to be consistently good-tempered and positive. It is easy to be heavy; hard to be light. We nonjoyous types suck energy and cheer from the joyous ones; we rely on them to buoy us with their good spirit and to cushion our agitation and anxiety. At the same time, because of a dark element in human nature, we’re sometimes provoked to try to shake the enthusiastic, cheery folk out of their fog of illusion—to make them see that the play was stupid, the money was wasted, the meeting was pointless. Instead of shielding their joy, we blast it. Why is this? I have no idea. But that impulse is there.
    I wrote