The Surprising Relationship Between Happiness and Intelligence
This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
When you watch an actor accepting an Oscar, or read about a brilliant scientist receiving a huge prize, you might imagine that they’ve found the key to happiness. Who wouldn’t be happy, living life with so much talent or smarts? But the relationship between intelligence and happiness is complicated, Arthur C. Brooks wrote in 2023. “The gifts you possess can lift you up or pull you down; it all depends on how you use them,” he explained. Today’s newsletter explores how to utilize your skills and smarts to add joy to your life, rather than letting them chip away at what actually makes the days meaningful.
On Happiness and Intelligence
How Smart People Can Stop Being Miserable
By Arthur C. Brooks
Intelligence can make you happier, but only if you see it as more than a tool to get ahead. (From 2023)
How to Want Less
By Arthur C. Brooks
The secret to satisfaction has nothing to do with achievement, money, or stuff. (From 2022)
A New Understanding of Human Beings’ Most Basic Desire
By John Kaag
The philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein’s latest book looks beyond happiness as the goal of a well-lived life.
Still Curious?
- Why so many smart people aren’t happy: It’s a paradox, Joe Pinsker wrote in 2016: Shouldn’t the most accomplished be well equipped to make choices that maximize life satisfaction?
- A new formula for happiness: The happiness we seek may require investing earlier than we think—and may help us align our expectations and reality at the end of life. (From 2022)
Other Diversions
- The bots that women use in a world of unsatisfying men
- High January was bound to happen.
- An apocalypse film that will prompt wild cheering
PS
Every week, I ask readers to share a photo of something that sparks their sense of awe in the world. “A driver unknowingly leaves behind a thing of beauty in fresh snow,” Jane P., 60, from Portland, Oregon, writes.
I’ll continue to feature your responses in the coming weeks.
— Isabel