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Amelie Hananel
Professor Beadle
English 115
How many of your friends are genuinely happy? Are you genuinely happy? With many
people, this emotion is almost a life challenge to be able to achieve it. People are always
searching and grasping for the feeling of positivity and good energy, and it’s so close yet feels so
far. In three different articles by Hill, Lyubomirsky, and Brooks, the authors share their influence
on happiness through external or internal space hoping for those who want to be happy can learn
from them and eventually experience the great feeling from it. External space is physical space
such as an environment, the outside world and an internal space is psychological space, what
goes on in one’s head. Happiness can be shown and brought in many different ways, such as Hill
who argues his values of happiness through external space and downsizing his living space. In
contrast Lyubomirsky argues her values of happiness through internal space with scientific
research and Brooks argues his values of suffering to happiness through internal space by
Graham Hill is a man who, before his thirties, became wealthy from an Internet startup
sale. As his wealth grew, he began buying more and more items that he didn’t need, but he soon
discovered that after he bought two homes and then decided to change his external space to
lighten the weight off of his shoulders. After realizing how exhausting and how much busier he
was because of the upkeep of the houses, Hill took a step back to look at where he was in life,
“‘Somehow this stuff ended up running my life, or a lot of it; the things I consumed ended up
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consuming me”’ (Hill, 308). Just like the saying “money can’t buy happiness”, Hill uses his
personal story to argue that materialistic items cannot give people happiness and rather fewer
items will make people happier. Hill had much to do aside from work and that was because he
had to do unnecessary upkeep which was taking over his time during the day. Once Hill moved
into a 420-square-foot studio and minimized his materialistic items, he was finally able to say
that he felt free and that his life was full of love and adventure. Some people may not take a
personal story as a credible source, so Hill showed the research and found that researchers have
proven that the more materialistic items, the more stress one will have. In a study from
researchers at U.C.L.A titled “Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century” researchers 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. Seventy five-percent of the families
involved in the study couldn’t park their cars in their garages because they were too jammed with
things” (Hill, 310). With more and more items piling up, stress levels increased as well.
Professional researchers have proven scientific research stating the more clutter one had, the
more stress one obtained because of having to organize it, clean it up every so often, and have to
dig through piles of items just to get one task done. Hill has proven and strongly believes from
his own experience and research that with the change of external space, one’s life is much easier
On the other hand, Sonja Lyubomirsky argues that happiness is made from genetics and
can be changed with internal space. Lyubomirsky, a professor in psychology who earned a Ph.D.
in social psychology from Stanford University, researched and discovered the scientific way of
how to become happy. Lyubomirsky discovered that genetics play a big role in someone’s
happiness and found that there is a “set point” of happiness or sadness, “It appears that each of us
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is born with a happiness set point, a characteristic potential for happiness throughout our lives”
(Lyubomirsky, 190). This set point is the baseline of one’s happiness. Lyubomirsky uses an
example of somebody getting married and during this event, one’s happiness may increase,
however, the happiness will then eventually decrease and return to the happiness level set from
an individual’s genes. Lyubomirsky states that, “One’s happiness is fifty-percent made from
genes, there’s still forty-percent that can be changed from intentional activity and ten-percent
from circumstances” (184). She then continues, that although humans have a set point for
happiness, that doesn’t mean humans are fixed with that level of happiness, “We can rise above
our happiness set points, just as we can rise above our set points for weight or cholesterol… Our
genes do not determine our life experiences and behavior” (190). Just like altering the insides of
our bodies with medication or with assistance, one can adjust, change, and adapt their happiness
level. An individual can rise above their set point if they want to, the set point does not define
their happiness for their whole life. One can change their experience of happiness with a fitting
environment, meaning an environment that can bring the best out of one psychologically.
Lyubomirsky has finalized her research for now, finding that one’s happiness can be altered with
setting specific goals that someone will look forward to and can boost their motivation.
compared to Hill and Lyubomirsky. Brooks argues that people expect happiness to come fairly
easy, however, when in reality many attempt to aim for happiness and have to go through
suffering to obtain it. Suffering causes people to come out differently and to see the different
layers inside of one’s self. Brooks states, “Often, physical or social suffering can give people an
outsider’s perspective… suffering vies people a more accurate sense of their own limitations,
what they can control and cannot control” (284 and 286). Suffering gives people the view
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they’ve never had before, the view that lets them look inside of their own skin and realize who
they are and what they’re truly feeling. To make happiness out of suffering, people can learn
how to bring good out from the bad. Brooks then leads the audience into a solution for how to
make good from the bad, “The right response to this sort of pain is not pleasure. It’s holiness… it
means seeing life as a moral drama, placing the hard experiences in a moral context and trying to
redeem something bad by turning it into something sacred” (286). Brooks wants the audience to
make lessons out of suffering experiences and then grow from those lessons to become happy.
Just like Lyubomirsky, Brooks wants those who are suffering to find their motivation to get out
of suffering and hopefully become happier. Brooks has shown the audience that happiness is not
easy since it comes from the rough roots of suffering, but happiness can be obtained if one is
Whether it was internal or external space, all the authors focused on how to obtain
happiness while each one had their own values and approach to make someone’s life better.
Graham Hill shared his own experience of dealing with happiness through external space and
changing his surroundings. As for Lyubomirsky, she shared the scientific research of happiness
through internal space and teaching the audience about how genetics have impact on one’s
happiness. Lastly, Brooks argues that happiness is made from those who suffer and turn that
suffering into a learning lesson through internal space and changing one’s mindset. Although the
authors had a different approach and different theories on obtaining happiness, each author
wanted their audience to know that they are able to be happier if they wanted to be. An
individual is not stuck with one emotion or one level of happiness forever. Happiness is an
emotion that can be obtained in many different ways depending on the person, the person’s
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situation, and the person’s needs. Happiness has no certain definition path to obtain it and every
Works Cited
Brooks, David. “What Suffering Does.” Pursuing Happiness, edited by Matthew Parfitt and
Hill, Graham. “Living with Less. A Lot Less.” Pursuing Happiness, edited by Matthew Parfitt
Lyubomirsky, Sonja. “How Happy Are You and Why?” Pursuing Happiness, edited by Matthew