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I begin with a bit of self-disclosure.  I don't have a religious or spiritual bone in my body.  But this doesn't mean that I'm not open-minded about research on happiness and religion.  As I write in my book, The How of Happiness, just because (most) religious beliefs cannot be empirically tested or falsified doesn't mean that the consequences of having religious faith, participating in religious life, or searching for the sacred cannot be studied.  Indeed, a growing body of psychological science is suggesting that religious folks are happier, healthier, and recover better after traumas than nonreligious ones.

 Consider just two examples:

If you are having serious cardiac surgery and receive strength and comfort from your religious faith, you'll be almost 3 times more likely to be alive 6 months later.

47 percent of people who report attending religious services several times a week describe themselves as "very happy," versus 28 percent of those who attend less than once a month.

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This past year, Singapore Airlines has begun flying all-business-class flights across the Pacific - Newark to Singapore and Los Angeles to Singapore will start in September.  The demand for business class seats is apparently enormous, so this new venture sounds like it makes perfect business sense.  But the psychological scientist in me wonders whether, at the end of the day, this will prove to be such a good idea.

The reason for my hesitation is that, as growing research shows, people adapt quickly and easily to anything positive that ever happens to them.  When you move into a beautiful new apartment with a view, when you obtain 20/20 vision through LASIK, when you buy a hip new hybrid, and even when you tie the knot, you get an immediate boost of happiness from the new and improved circumstances, but unfortunately the thrill only lasts for a short time.  Over the coming days, weeks, and months, you find yourself taking your new apartment, eyesight, car, and marriage completely and utterly for granted.

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Author of Dead Certain Robert Draper paints a portrait of Mr. Bush as a staunch optimist, supremely confident in his views and judgments and heedless of bad news and disconfirming information.  Needless to say, a strong argument could be made that his dead certainty and abundant confidence have led him to make some policy errors with grave consequences for his administration, his party, and the country.  From assuming that we'd be happily welcomed as liberators in Iraq, to proclaiming "mission accomplished" in 2004, to spending the political capital he claimed to have earned with his 2004 election on such undeniably risky (and arguably ill-advised) propositions as the overhaul of social security and the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, Mr. Bush's compulsive confidence and optimism are partly responsible for his plummeting approval ratings, his party's loss of the House and Senate, and the nation's inchoate sense of unease.

As an experimental social psychologist, my job is not to analyze anyone's personality, let alone an individual whom I've never seen larger than in a 42-inch image.  However, Draper's characterizations of Bush lead me to ask, "How much optimism and confidence is good for world leaders and how much is too much?"

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I've been traveling so much lately that I've started to play a little game by guessing what reading material people tend to bring on airplanes.  One of the most frequently sighted books?  The Secret.  No surprise there.  Rhonda Byrne's book, which followed a popular DVD, will be celebrating its one-and-a-half-year anniversary atop the bestseller lists on May 28.  I've been told about it, gushingly, not only by my new agey crunchy granola friends (OK, I live in LA), but by my more ordinarily skeptical friends as well.

"OK," they say, "We know that the law of attraction [which argues that you can manifest or attract whatever your heart desires, from Prada bags to husbands] sounds ridiculous.  But it works!  It has truly, sincerely, and genuinely made me happier."

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I have two friends, Seth and Michael, and one of them is a lot happier than the other.

Seth is chronically unhappy.  He is often glum, frequently irritable, and sometimes hopeless, though he has never been clinically depressed.  By contrast, Michael is a remarkable happy person.  Although he has his low moments and periodic stress, he manages to find joy in his days and is quite content with the way his life is going.  To understand why these two men are so different, let me tell you a little bit about them.

Both are in their early 40s and doing well in their careers.  Michael is a professor of psychology at a prestigious university, who has reasonably bright students, a fair amount of autonomy in his work, and many opportunities for travel.  His research program has been successful, garnering attention from all over the U.S.  Seth is a deputy city attorney in a small but beautiful city right on the Pacific Ocean.  He specializes in landlord-tenant disputes and other civil matters, and his success as a litigator has led to occasional media appearances, in which he is asked to speak about his latest cases.  He gets a kick out of doing that.

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As an experimental social psychologist who has been doing research on happiness for 20 years, I can say with confidence that lasting happiness is attainable, if you are prepared to do the work. Much like with permanent weight loss and fitness, becoming lastingly happier demands making some permanent changes, requiring effort and commitment every day of your life.

How precisely can one go about doing this? Allow me to describe some of the happiness-increasing strategies that researchers have studied and concluded to be most successful. This list won't make any of you spill your evening tea, but take note that all the strategies have been supported by empirical research. (They are discussed in a lot more detail in The How of Happiness.) Also, as I argue in the book, you do not need to attempt the entire list of happiness activities, but should choose to focus only on the 1 to 4 strategies that "fit" you best - the ones that seem most natural and enjoyable to you

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Sonja Lyubomirsky is one of our guest bloggers during the week of January 19th. If you have any questions for Sonja Lyubomirsky, add a comment to any of her posts. Here is some more information about The How of Happiness:

A groundbreaking, practical guide to attaining happiness based on innovative scientific research, The How of Happiness is a powerful contribution to the field of positive psychology and a gift to people who have sought to take their happiness into their own hands. Drawing upon years of her own pioneering research with thousands of men and women, psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky reveals that much of our capacity for happiness is within our power. Detailing an easy-to- follow plan, including exercises in new ways of thinking and understanding our individual obstacles, The How of Happiness offers a positive and empowering way to sustain a new level of joy in our lives.