Boehm, J. K., & Lyubomirsky, S. (in press). The promise of sustainable happiness. In S. J. Lopez (Ed.), Handbook of positive psychology (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University PressThe article suggests that, despite several barriers withholding people to increase their well-being, less happy people can successfully strive to be happier by learning a variety of effortful strategies and practicing these with determination and commitment. They use the sustainable happiness model (by Lyubomirsky, Sheldon and Schkade, 2005) as theoretical framework. According to the model, three factors contribute to an individual’s happiness level:The set pointLife circumstancesIntentional activities/effortful acts that are episodic and naturally variableThe journey to happiness has always and still is of great interest, there is empirical evidence that it even leads to positive life outcomes such as a higher income and stronger relationships. The question, however, is whether people can actually attain a level of sustainable happiness.To answer this question, we first we look at what happy and unhappy people are like:The first thing that comes to mind is the difference between their ‘objective’ circumstances that could cause a difference in their level of happiness. Some examples include: marital status, age, sex, culture, income etc. It is shown, however, that these factors do not explain the variation in people’s level of well-being.The article proposes that happiness and unhappiness is due to the subjective experience and construal of the world by people. They interpret their environment differently, leading the authors to explore an individual thoughts, behaviors and motivations. Happier people see the world in a more positive, and thus happiness-promoting, way. Research suggests that happy people are this way because of multiple adaptive strategies: Research that involved having...