Venegas 1

Elizabeth Venegas Hernandez

Professor Ditch

English 114A

28 February 2019

Altering Happiness

Everyone experiences many events happening throughout their day that can alter their

emotions from happiness, to sadness, to frustration and possibly back to happiness. Many people

have worries and excitement that they carry with them that alters their emotional state based on

these events. In the articles, “What Suffering Does,” by David Brooks, “How Happy Are You

and Why?,” by Sonja Lyubomirsky, and “Living with Less. A Lot Less,” by Graham Hill, they

discuss the aspects one needs to achieve the happiness they are looking for. These authors all

discuss the effects some challenges have that alter one’s happiness. Although these authors all

focus on the aspect of happiness, they each differ in their form of rhetoric, by different research

and from what they think alters someone’s happiness, these changes can be about emotional,

mental, or materialistic problems while still talking about the impact that emotions can have on

one's life.

Happiness is a major part of our lives, while someone may say that they feel that

depression is a bigger aspect they are not completely wrong. In Brooks article “What Suffering

Does,” he discusses how suffering can bring out a different perspective in life that one did not

have before their initial suffrage. Through suffering, there is a chance that people can become

more involved with suffering rather than becoming healed and will eventually become a prisoner

of your own depression, as Brooks says people who are changed through suffering can “double
 Venegas 2

down on vulnerability (Brooks 287)” which talks about how people usually focus more on the

suffering and allow themselves to be engulfed in the feeling of depression. While Brooks

discusses this feeling about suffering, Lyubomirsky similarly discusses the topic of happiness by

discussing how peoples overall attitude affects their outlook in their everyday life. Lyubomirsky

makes the point that sadness seems to overrule the feeling of happiness. Some people usually

have negative perspectives rather than positive ones, which leads them to become more negative

about life and complain more than those with the positive mindset, this ties into Brooks point

because both are talking how a negative mindset can lead to a negative feeling about life or an

experience that can impact the happiness that one is seeking.

While both Lyubomirsky and Brooks talk about the effect that negative emotions or

attitude, have on people’s happiness, they both show the contradicting side and the positive side

of the argument. In Lyubomirsky’s article, “How Happy Are You and Why?” she claims people

who are usually happier, regardless of the situation, tend to be happier than people who are

serious and not very happy. She begins her article by showing two people's stories, Angela and

Randy, both of whom have had bad past experiences with their families mental and physical

abuse, loss of loved ones, financial instability and relationship problems. Even after all the

hardships that both Angela and Randy went through, they are happy with their life because their

overall personalities are not negative, but rather positive and they consider themselves happy

people overall. As Lyubomirsky describes, the overall attitude of these people as “uplifting,

optimistic perspective when you feel distrustful and beaten down (179),” she compares the

overall happy people’s view points compared to most people who are usually sad and depressed.

While Brooks discusses how after the process of suffering is over, most people have a different

outlook on what they can and cannot do. As Brooks states in his article, “recovering from
 Venegas 3

suffering is not like recovering from a disease. Many people don’t come out healed; they come

out different (Brooks 287).” He says this because after you suffer from a family member passing

away, you will not have the same happiness or understanding as you did when that family

member was still alive. Brooks and Lyubomirsky talk about both the negative and positive

aspects that influence our state of minds. These mental and emotional aspects alter one's

happiness and their overall attitude towards life.

While both Brooks and Lyubomirsky have qualities in common they tie into Hill’s

argument about how having too much stuff can lead to a person becoming stressed. In Hill’s

article, “Living with Less. A Lot Less” he talks about how having and buying many products can

put stress on someone’s life. Hill supports his argument by using a study done at UCLA called,

Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century ,which says that women tend to stress more when they

must deal with their belongings at home. Hill connects this study to his own experience of

comparing his happiness from when he owned a four-story house and would go online shopping

every day, to his life now with just a condo and a few basic necessities. Hill backs up his claim

by saying that our minds have worked on adaptation and the things that excite us may not give us

the pleasure they once did, so as humans we buy something that can replace the happiness we

wanted from that other product and it becomes an endless cycle with multiple products. The

more stuff you have the more time you have to set aside for that product as Hill states, “there

were lawns to mow, gutters to clear, floors to vacuum, roommates to manage... a car to insure,

wash, refuel, repair and register. (Hill 309)” However, having many products can lead to stress

and an unhappy feeling from having nowhere to put the stuff. Hill’s argument is similar to

Brooks and Lyubomirsky’s claims because of a snowball effect; if you have to many possessions

you can become stressed as, Brooks writes about, which will lead you to suffer, therefore having
 Venegas 4

a rather negative and unpleasant experience as Lyubomirsky has stated in her articles. This

snowball effect is important due to the fact that something as little as having too much stuff can

cause unhappiness.

Lyubomirsky and Brooks can be considered as different although being two intangible

claims about attitude and suffering that ultimately defines someone’s certain happiness.

Lyubomirsky is more personal and does not really need a catalyst unlike Brooks’ argument that

requires something to happen for the suffering to take place, while Lyubomirsky is a fixed

mindset that does not need to be taught since it is how the individual perceives certain situations.

Lyubomirsky’s article is more research and knowledge based than Brooks’ article since

Lyubomirsky’s article includes graphs and charts about what determines happiness and the

average happiness recorded during the past generations as well as being written by a professor of

psychology herself. Whereas Brooks is more cause and effect based since most of the time

suffering requires a catalyst in order to be shown and he uses the example of Franklin

Roosevelt’s suffering after being diagnosed with Polio giving him a more empathetic look

towards people. Brooks backs up his claim by saying that Roosevelt was changed after suffering

through the illness and that “physical and social suffering can give people an outsider’s

perspective (Brooks 284)” which Brooks says can be positive due to suffering bringing out a

more empathetic and selfless personality. These two authors bring unique styles to their writing

which contain both similarities and differences. They cover the subject of both negative and

positive mindsets and impacts which can be involved in the altering of perception of happiness.

While these three authors made excellent points on all the different components that can

alter one’s overall happiness, such as the mindset changing after one has gone through a drastic

emotional phase, their attitude towards life, or even being overwhelmed by objects. Brooks, Hill
 Venegas 5

and Lyubomirsky each taught their readers how their life view can be altered without them even

knowing by using graphs, charts, personal experiences, research and other's life stories to back

up their own claims. Their claims covered an overall basis of happiness while also demonstrating

how each was connected by even a small emotion or thought. The authors created a very good

foundation for the understanding of the perceptions of life and the emotions that it impacts.

Although there were some similarities in these articles, they are still very different

compared to each other. Brooks and Lyubomirsky talk about the situations happening inside of

one's persona, while Hill goes completely off that subject and suggests that the reason for your

unhappiness is due to the excess materialistic objects you own. Hill discussed how we stress

ourselves by having more objects to organize and store just from what we impulsively buy. Hill

differed from both Brooks and Lyubomirsky by adding the reason why people become more

stressed in their life is due to their obsessive buying of tangible items, while Brooks connects his

claim with the loss of a family member and Lyubomirsky connects her claim to the overall

attitude people have about their personalities. While very different based on tangible and

intangible perspectives, these articles still connect to the idea of happiness being altered by

negative materialistic and mindset views.

 Venegas 6

Works Cited

Brook, David. “What Suffering Does.” Pursuing Happiness, edited by Mathew Partiff and Dawn

Skorczewski, Bedford/ St. Martins, 2016, pp. 284-287.

Lyubomirsky, Sonja. “How Happy Are You and Why?” Pursuing Happiness, edited by Mathew

Partiff and Dawn Skorczewski, Bedford/ St. Martins, 2016, pp. 179-197.

Graham, Hill. “Living with Less. A Lot Less” Pursuing Happiness, edited by Mathew Partiff and

Dawn Skorczewski, Bedford/ St. Martins, 2016, pp. 308-313.