The best research-based books on living a fulfilling life

Sonja Lyubomirsky is one of the stars of the field of positive psychology, a social psychologist who has done research comparing people who are happy and unhappy.

In this book, she presents a number of research-based recommendations about how to live a happier and more fulfilling life.

One of the key things I took away from her book is that the research suggests that one of the best ways to make yourself happy is to do things for other people. In fact, there is research suggesting that thinking too much about making yourself happy actually backfires, and makes you more depressed and anxious.

Some of her other (research-backed) recommendations involve cultivating an optimistic outlook on life, avoiding social comparisons with others, and enjoying your work.

Despite being 75 years old and having studied to be a behavioral therapist in my younger days, I’m always struggling to change one or another bad habit – to exercise more, to consume fewer carbs, less cerveza, and more fruits and vegetables, etc.

Although Milkman is trained as an engineer and works in a business college, she has done research on behavior change, and does an amazing job summarizing the behavioral research on how to change.

This book is chock full of practical advice – such as bundling temptations with virtuous activities (listen to an audiobook or some great music while you wash the dishes, for example), and gamifying your work tasks (give yourself points for accomplishing something you’d otherwise not want to do, and store up the points for some big reward at the end of two weeks, for example). 

Victor Frankl was a neurologist and psychologist who had been imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp, and lost his bride to the gas chambers.

Frankl argued that, even faced with dreadful situations, we can still choose how to act, think, and feel. He described a dying woman choosing to spend her final hours not fearing death but admiring a budding tree outside her sickroom window, which she saw as a sign of immortal life.

Frankl developed the idea of self-transcendence, emphasizing that the more you can devote yourself to another person or an important cause, the more you can transcend the miseries and anxieties of everyday life. Research by my team has found that meaning in life is in fact closely related to the fundamental human goals of caring for family members and friends.

This book is a classic for understanding how to think about human nature in evolutionary perspective.

But in later editions, Dawkins lamented that many critics did not even read past the title – presuming that the book recommended being as selfish as you possibly could.

Although our genes are selfish, our ancestors survived by frequently being very cooperative with one another, and people who always put themselves first often end up being rejected by others (ironically, decreasing the success of their selfish genes).

Dawkins even added an extra chapter to later editions arguing that nice guys finish first. So although it might seem like a funny choice for a book on living a fulfilling life, The Selfish Gene in fact reinforces one of the central premises of positive psychologists such as Lyubomirsky, if you want to serve yourself well, serve others.  

Reading the daily news might make you think that the world is falling apart, and that it’s futile to even try to move forward. But in this book, Pinker provides a data-based antidote for everyday pessimism, and the perennial tendency to think that the world is going to hell in a handbasket.

He reviews substantial evidence to show that, in contrast to the lives lived by our ancestors in the “good old days,” our lives in the modern world are better in many many ways – we live longer, healthier lives, we are literate, we are less likely to be the victims of homicidal bad guys coming over the hill to burn our village.

People used to accuse evolutionary psychologists of focusing on the negative aspects of human nature, on sex and aggression, for example. Ironically, Pinker has been accused of being overly optimistic and positive in this book. But he’s not saying there are no problems in the modern world, only that, looked at in the bigger historical perspective, there is reason to hope for the future. 

And without hope, it’s hard to muster the energy to work for improvement.