Nevarez 1

Gabriela Nevarez

Professor Ditch

English 115

29 September 2020

Project Space Essay

In the novel Pursuing Happiness there are many ways to interpret happiness, many might

think it's just one emotion, but it is not. Howard Cutler, Dalai Lama, Sonja Lyubomirsky, and

Graham Hill all found different ways to understand and explain effective ways to be happy and

explain what happiness is. When using ethos, logos, and pathos in their articles, they reflect off

of their own stories and examples to show what their definitions of happiness are. Dalai Lama

and Howard Cutler presented the best argument by persuading their audience with ethos, logos,

and pathos with their personal stories, and they connected their argument with self-love, growth

mindset, and happiness throughout their article.

The theme throughout Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler's article was that happiness is

determined more by someone’s perspective being good or bad. They did some experiments and

came to the conclusion that we can increase or decrease our life satisfaction by changing our

perspective, clearly point to the control of someone’s mental outlook in living a happy life. Lama

and Cutler state “In an experiment at the state of New York at Buffalo, subjects were asked to

complete the sentence I'm glad I'm not a ... After five times doing the exercise, the subjects

experienced a distinct evaluation and their feelings of life satisfaction. Another group of subjects

were asked I wish I were a ... This time, the experiment left the subjects feeling dissatisfied with
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their lives.” (Lama and Cutler 17) The authors in the beginning of the text tried to back up their

argument by telling some peoples personal stories. Lama’s friend, for example she quit her job as

a nurse to go to work for two friends who were starting a small health care company. The

company made dramatic success, and within the 18 months they were bought out by a large

company for a huge entirety. Her friend ended up getting stock options enough to be able to

retire at the age of thirty-two, she said with all of that money she is not much happier than she

was before. (Lama and Cutler 15) The argument that Howard Cutler and Dalai lama build is on

how you can determine happiness by changing your perspective on things. Lama and Cutler are

able to make a connection with the readers by telling personal stories, giving credible evidence,

and they make a connection with self-worth, growth mind set, and happiness, they give the best

argument because they made that connection between meaning and their argument. I’ve talked

about Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler and how happiness depends on your mindset now, I am

going to talk about Sonja Lyubomirsky and how she believes that you can take steps to increase

happiness.

Sonja Lyubomirsky argues that there is a wide range of scientific research to consider the

steps that individuals can take to increase their level of happiness. In the author's experiments she

concludes that human happiness like height or temperature or IQ lies on the continuum, a

numerical scale that ranges from very low to very high. In her research with human participants,

she has used popular simple for item measure of overall happiness that she developed and calls

these subjective Happiness Scale. Sonja Lyubomirsky says in the article “In my interviews in

experiments with very happy people, I've even found a few who remain happy nor are able to

recover their happiness fairly quickly after tragedies or major setbacks.” (Lyubomirsky 141)
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Sonja shows her own research and data and she is able to back it up with her own background.

Lyubomirsky connects with the readers by telling them personal stories about some of her

experiments. Angela for example, she is a thirty-four-year-old single mother who is struggling

financially her ex-husband doesn't pay child support she has had several careers she finally

thought that she found her dream job but she was fired unexpectedly she filed for bankruptcy and

went on welfare for a while, as of right now, she's back in college full-time working toward a

degree in nursing, still with all that has happened to her she considers herself a very happy

person. (Lyubomirsky 142) The author connects with readers through personal stories and

credible evidence, but she didn’t go into detail with her argument by providing why and what

makes her argument so important like Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler did in their article. I went

over Sonja Lyubomirsky and how she believes that you can take steps to increase happiness now,

I am going to talk about Graham Hill his opinion conflicts with Sonja’s.

In Graham Hills text, he argues living with less stuff really might be more. In Hills

experiments, he has concluded that people are happier living with less materialistic items only

the things they need. In his article he states, “In a study published last year titled Life at Home in

the 21st century, researchers at UCLA observed 32 middle class Los Angeles families and found

that all of the mothers stress hormones spiked during the time they spent dealing with their

belongings.” (Hill 256) Graham Hill states “In a recent study, the Northwestern University

psychologist Galen V Bodenhausen has and found that irrespective of personality, in situations

that activated consumer mindset, People show the same sorts of problematic patterns and well-

being, including negative effect and social December disengagement. Though Americans

consumer activity has increased substantially since the 1950s happiness levels have flatlined.”
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(Hill 257) Hill backs his argument up by connecting with the audience through his own personal

stories. For example, hill says he is still a serial entrepreneur, and his latest project is to design

thoughtfully constructed small houses that support our lives. Like the 420 square foot space he

lives in the houses he designs contain less stuff and make it easier for owners to live within their

incomes and to control their environmental footprint. His apartment sleeps 4 people comfortably,

his space is built very well, affordable price, and as functional as two story living spaces, he says

he sleeps better knowing he is not using more resources than he needs to he enjoys a lot more

that way. (Hill 257) He uses pathos because the article is based on his own experiences. Hill

connects with the readers through his own personal stories and credible evidence like all the

authors, but he did not further his argument by connecting it all with self-love like Dalai Lama

and Howard Cutler did in their article which made his argument weaker than it could have been.

The author could’ve gone more into detail with his argument by connecting it with inner

happiness that would’ve made his argument stronger. I’ve discussed Graham Hill and now I’m

going to choose between the three articles and see which one has the best argument.

In conclusion, all the authors have a different way of explaining and understanding

happiness. All the authors use ethos, logos, and pathos by connecting with the audience through

personal and individual stories. Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler use ethos, logos, and pathos to

persuade the audience into believing that happiness is all in the mindset by giving good

examples, connecting with the readers through personal stories, and connecting their article with

why and what makes their article so important. Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler present the best

argument by connecting their argument with an inner meaning, providing credible evidence, and

telling personal stories. Sonja Lyubomirsky uses ethos, logos, and pathos by giving more of the
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scientifical research, she is persuading her audience with reliable resources. Lyubomirsky

presented her argument with personal stories and credible information but she didn’t make any

connections in her argument which made it weaker. Finally, Graham Hill uses ethos, logos, and

pathos to persuade his audience into considering that maybe less is really more, and he does that

by using reliable resources and connecting with the readers through personal stories. Hill

presents his argument by providing reliable sources and telling his own personal stories, he

doesn’t make any connections with the argument and an inner meaning like Lama and Cutler did

in their article, that made his argument not as strong as it could’ve been. What made Dalai lama

and Howard Cutlers argument the best was that they connected their argument with a meaning

none of the other authors did that.

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Works Cited
Lama, Dalai and Cutler, Howard. “The Sources of Happiness: His Holiness the Dalai Lama and
Howard Cutler.” Pursuing Happiness, by Matthew Parfitt and Dawn Skorezewski, pp. 15-
23

Lyubomirsky, Sonja. “How happy are you and Why?” Pursuing Happiness, by Matthew Parfitt
and Dawn Skorezewski, pp. 141-156

Hill, Graham. “Living with Less. A Lot Less…” Pursuing Happiness, by Matthew Parfitt and
Dawn Skorezewski, pp. 254-257