Henry Cloud - The Law of Happiness

Howard Books
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Copyright 2011 by Henry Cloud

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Howard Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Howard Books hardcover edition January 2011

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cloud, Henry.
The law of happiness : how spiritual wisdom and modern science can change your life / Henry Cloud.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.
1. HappinessReligious aspectsChristianity. 2. Happiness. I. Title.
BV4647.J68C56 2011
248.4dc22
2010014185
ISBN 978-1-4391-7699-3
ISBN 978-1-4391-8055-6 (ebook)

Unless otherwise indicated, scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version. NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked MSG are taken from The Message by Eugene H. Peterson. Copyright 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible. Copyright The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org). Scripture quotations marked NCV are taken from the New Century Version. Copyright 1987, 1988, 1991 by Thomas Nelson Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

To my daughters, Olivia and Lucy.
The happiness you bring cannot be measured.

Introduction: From the Law of Attraction to
the Law of Happiness

FROM THE LAW OF ATTRACTION
TO THE LAW OF HAPPINESS

A FEW YEARS ago, a book called The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne, took the world by storm with the claim that the real secret to life and happiness lies in a force called the Law of Attraction. In fact, the books premise, as you may recall, was that the entire universe is governed by that one principle. Byrnes claim was that the universe responds to your thoughts and that you attract happiness to yourself by the power of what you think. If you think positive thoughts, the universe responds to your thoughts by bringing positive outcomes to you, and if you think negative thoughts, your outcomes will be negative. People by the millions responded to the idea that this one law was the secret to happiness and all they desired in life. And, as a psychologist and performance coach, I can certainly tell you that people who think positively have much better outcomes than negative thinkers. For sure.

While Byrnes book deals with concepts that interface with spirituality, it also brings up a lot of questions about how the Law of Attraction interfaces with more traditional views of spirituality, God, and the like. The first book in this series, The Secret Things of God, examined where those principles agreed with traditional faith, where they disagreed, and also what clinical experience and research say about the same issues. It was a really meaningful project for me, personally, and many readers responded as well.

So that brought us to the question of what next? What other topics of personal well-being also interface with spirituality and spiritual wisdom? When my editor asked me that question and what I would like to write about, the answer was immediate. I want to write about happiness, I said.

Happiness? Why happiness? she asked.

I explained that the field of psychology in the last several years has been actively exploring what is referred to as positive psychology. A number of years ago, Martin Seligman (then president of the American Psychological Association) and others championed the message that while psychology had made great strides in its studies on the negative side of lifesuch as depression, trauma, anxietyit had spent relatively little time studying the up side of life. Topics such as happiness, well-being, strengths, etc., had not gained the same amount of attention, especially from scientific research. Researchers began to soundly answer that call.

The result has been an enormous amount of empirical studies that have shed substantial light on questions such as: Where does happiness come from? Can people increase their happiness? Is it under our control? And the good news is that research has actually produced a lot of answers. We now know, not just from experience, but also from scientific data, a lot about the sources of happiness and the lifestyles and practices that actually produce overall well-being.

I would have enjoyed writing about this happiness research and how it applies to life, but that has been done already by others. I did not feel the need to add to the list of good books out there. But I was drawn to writing a book on happiness for The Secret Things of God series because of what had happened to me as I was investigating the field of positive psychology.

As the profession was churning out more and more information on the positive side of life, learning was a lot of fun, and the data clearly resonated with my own experience, both professionally and personally. I had seen firsthand the truths that the research was revealing, so I loved what I was studying. But for me, it was much more than that.

It was a spiritual journey as well. As I was reading the research findings, I felt like I was reading the Bible. It was as if someone took the data and laid the Bible right on top of it and the fit was perfect. Basically, over and over, the robust findings of the research were the same as the ancient spiritual wisdom found in the Scriptures. I saw Moses, Solomon, Jesus, and Paul as I read study after study, which were proving that happiness and fulfillment is not found in our circumstances, our bank accounts, our material possessions, or achievements. Instead, what the research revealed was that happiness comes largely from how we live our lives and into which activities we decide to invest our hearts, minds, souls, and strength.

So that is why I wanted to write this book on happiness in a series of books about how faith integrates with life. Just as the Bible has a lot to say about positive thinking and the Law of Attraction, it has even more to say about happiness and fulfillment. In fact, one of my favorite words that we hear over and over in the Bible is the Hebrew word shalom, which among other things implies peace, happiness, well-being, wholeness, completeness, and welfaremost of what we mean when we say we want to be happy. In short, we can be assured that the Creator has always been interested in our happiness and well-being.

But further, he is also interested that we know how to find