I first learned about Positive Psychology when a class on this subject became the most popular course among undergraduate students at Harvard University seven years ago. Since then, this subject gained popularity in the media and there have been many books written about it due to its appeal to a wide audience.  I’ve been reading and learning more on this subject through the years because my goal in life is to be happy.  I found it interesting that this field in psychology only started 15 years ago, before then psychology focused on mental illnesses instead of finding ways to make normal life more fulfilling.

I came across a great journal article recently that summarizes research findings and gives actionable advice we can follow. I highly recommend reading the full article titled “If money doesn’t make you happy, then you probably aren’t spending it right”. These were the highlights for me:

Buy experiences instead of things
“Experiences are good; but why are they better than things? One reason is that we adapt to things so quickly … Another reason why people seem to get more happiness from experiences than things is that they anticipate and remember the former more often than the latter.”

Buy many small pleasures instead of few big ones
“If we inevitably adapt to the greatest delights that money can buy, then it may be better to indulge in a variety of frequent, small pleasures – double lattes, uptown pedicures, high thread-count socks – rather than pouring money into large purchases such as sports cars, dream vacations and front-row concert tickets. One reason why small frequent pleasures beat infrequent large ones is that we are less likely to adapt to the former. Happiness is more frequently associated with frequency than the intensity of people’s positive affective experiences. Eating two 6 oz cookies on different days may be better than eating a 12 oz cookie at a single sitting.”

Buy less insurance
“If the bad news is that we adapt to good things, the good news is that we adapt to bad things as well. Buying expensive extended warranties to guard against the loss of consumer goods may be unnecessary emotional protection.”

Pay now and consume later
“The shift toward immediate enjoyment and delayed payment eliminates anticipation and anticipation is a source of “free” happiness … Compared to those in the certainty condition, participants who were uncertain about which gifts they would receive spent more time looking at pictures of the gifts and experienced a more lasting boost in mood during the experiment session … Research shows that thinking about future events triggers stronger emotions than thinking about the same events in the past.”

Beware of comparison shopping
“When asked directly, first-year students in our study reported that the physical features of the houses would be less important for their happiness than the social features (sense of community, relationships with roommates etc.) But when students were asked to predict how happy they would be living in each of the houses, their attention gravitated to the features that differed most between the houses: their predictions were driven largely by the physical characteristics of each house. Comparison shopping may focus consumers’ attention on differences between available options, leading them to overestimate the hedonic impact of selecting a more versus less desirable option.”

Follow the heard instead of your head
“Research suggests that the best way to predict how much we will enjoy an experience is to see how much someone else enjoyed it.”