Professor Sonja Lyubomirsky of the University of California (author of The How of Happiness) has conducted happiness research with thousands of men and women.
By measuring the smiles in the photographs the researchers were able to predict: how fulfilling and long lasting their marriages would be, how highly they would score on standardized tests of well-being and general happiness, and how inspiring they would be to others.
Beyond that, the effect of money on happiness depends on how happiness is defined.
That physical display of how you're feeling - for example, if you're feeling happy, the physical display of happiness on your face and, perhaps even in your gestures, increases the feeling of happiness, just as the physical display of sadness increases your feelings of sadness.
It is hard to gauge the pain of relative poverty because no one knows how to measure happiness.
Once we get a lot of data onto maps, we can really begin to understand reality in much different ways, like where to build a house to increase the happiness of the people inside it, how to make routes that avoid accidents, and how to design better urban systems.
Focusing on how money can improve our time, rather than on how money can swell our coffers, offers the possibility of much more happiness.
Or how about what is known in sociology as "the paradox of declining female happiness"?
WSJ: Has the Sexual Revolution Been Good for Women? Mary Eberstadt: No
Adapted from Life 2.0: How People Across America Are Transforming Their Lives by Finding the Where of Their Happiness, by Rich Karlgaard (Crown Business, July 2004).
The point is to stop thinking we have to maximise anything - whether it's some measure of "happiness" or GDP - and start focussing on how to live.
Brooks misleads us about the value of freedom to happiness by omitting to mention the literature about just how awesome freedom really is.
This is the heart of mind over money: understanding that your financial happiness rests on what you make of your dollars, not how many dollars you make .
"Finding out the feelings of people I realised how much I'd done, the hundreds of people that I've taught and the great happiness that it's brought, so I'm thrilled to bits that it's having its revival, " she added.
Respondents valued each of these things on a 5-point scale, and indicated how important each was to their overall happiness at work.
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The problem with many smart technologies is that their designers, in the quest to root out the imperfections of the human condition, seldom stop to ask how much frustration, failure and regret is required for happiness and achievement to retain any meaning.
On the other hand, if Netanyahu sits on his laurels, he will be surprised to see how quickly Obama - desperate for a foreign policy achievement after being laughed out of Teheran and Pyongyang - forgets his happiness at Netanyahu's address.
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