Today, I came upon this interview in The New York Times with Dr. Gilbert, author of “Stumbling on Happiness”. This particular part of the interview caught my eye :
Professor Happiness: The interview
by Claudia Dreifus The New York Times
(…)
Q. DO MOST OF US HARBOR UNREASONABLE NOTIONS OF WHAT HAPPINESS IS?
A. Inaccurate, flawed ideas. Few of us can accurately gauge how we will feel tomorrow or next week. That’s why when you go to the supermarket on an empty stomach, you’ll buy too much, and if you shop after a big meal, you’ll buy too little.
Another factor that makes it difficult to forecast our future happiness is that most of us are rationalizers. We expect to feel devastated if our spouse leaves us or if we get passed over for a big promotion at work.
But when things like that do happen, it’s soon, “She never was right for me,” or “I actually need more free time for my family.” People have remarkable talent for finding ways to soften the impact of negative events. Thus they mistakenly expect such blows to be much more devastating than they turn out to be.
Q. SO, IF WE DIDN’T HAVE THESE MECHANISMS, WOULD WE BE TOO DEPRESSED TO GO ON?
A. There may be something to that. People who are clinically depressed often seem to lack the ability to reframe events. That suggests that if the rest of us didn’t have this, we might be depressed as well.
(…)
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/23/healthscience/22conv.php
14 Responses to “Happiness … is a warm gun?”
Comment Page 1 of 11
hey people, whatever your happiness is…. i will support you of that ..everything that comes our way has happiness…no one in this world encounter life without it. now we are sad but tomorrow we are happy, that’s life.. you can never always be happy.
lets just accept the fact that true happiness can never be bought by anyone..it is a feeling that comes from within without any exchange ,it’s a great feeling..it comes from the heart..feel the essence of it and that happiness can make people better, it can even heal wounds and no one knows happiness can do great things..its just sometimes people try to ignore it and just leave it that way…they’re missing a lot of it….so please let us enjoy happiness, enjoy what is in store for us,let’s open our eyes, ears, mind,soul and most specially our heart… Godbless.
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Happiness as a concept…
We all can be drawned by sadness. We can all also follow the idea the worse is to come. And indeed, there’s a teaching in feeling fine, when we had not the habit. Indeed a lot of persons encountered many sorrows in their life, that got them blind for going forward a bit.
Unfortunately as you said, someone are deep drawned and could never see a light longer on. Even if we pray for they will.
Nowadays, there are tendancies to argue a test on 1000 persons could represent the world. We are put in cages with numbers and false names, to conduce ideas; a big part of them end to beliefs.
Statistics are followed, without asking if they are really right. How could say how would be my mood tomorrow, as it changes always? Even myself I couldn’t.
But that’s true happiness belongs to anyone of us. It is a gift we all have. We all can use it whenever we want. But what should we be always happy?
Some could say my tears are lost, and will never feed the desert. Right. But compassion can’t but put tears in my eyes sometimes. As long as inequity will reign.
Listening to music also: Is it sadness? A kind of maybe. But it is. Isn’t it a gift also? Why God created me with tears so?
How could I walk faster in my path, faster than my understanding? Do people in Afghanistan or Iran or in all other miserable places now, could attend such conferences?
Truth is that occidentals learn more and more how to be happy, while a big part of the world is living under sorrows, our tears could figure…
Of course their state could help me to be happier. In real, as for today, I’m more serious than happy or sad.
All this doesn’t avoid us to be happy in the bitter seat we could be. Faith could offer it.
And I really love to have fun, as maybe all of us. I don’t cut happy energy to come in me. I just can’t feel it sometimes, when I see how life is going around. Even more, when all of us tend to pretend now that we are all responsible.
No, I’m not responsible for wars and murders. I regret I have to say it. In my heart this is never my wish.
But I’m responsible as well, ok! Since I said it sometimes.
Yet, today, I believe persons on our dear planet have always been finding solutions of sharing, and well-being, while others were destroying them. Telling we are all responsible to care ok. But all responsible for the bad consequences of the destructors, I disagree. Though I can’t be sure to have the truth about that.
I could be a monster in another life, one who wish happiness now. Who knows?
Sometimes we disrespect some we loved, to be happy. Other time we dominate too. The big problem, as for me is that happiness don’t last that way. We have to be in happiness with ourselves. And then, knowing one has to be strong to stay in. As there are always someone that prefer seeing you cry than smile.
Maybe I was blind before, but I can see more and more of them.
Fortunately my heart is melt to believe again and again each time. My heart is melt to forgive. Maybe more others than myself… ;)
Love you all.
Happy monday dear Paulo.
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Interesante artículo y un hombre encantador el Dr. Happiness, la experiencia de la vida enseña.
Me encanta leer que la amistad y la familia son los que te dan mas felicicidad, compartir con los demas nuestros momentos libres y reir, reir mucho es lo que más aporta felicidad.
Desde luego que debemos estar deprimidos muchas veces y no ver nuestros horizontes sin darnos cuenta.
El dinero no hace la felicidad, es consenguir cosas poco a poco lo que hace feliz, tenerlo todo es como estar harto, no tienes hambre nunca. Ahora bien el artículo hace referencia al dinero que se tiene parado sin darle utilidad y dice que si lo gastas en un viaje, compartes experiencias es lo que siempre quedará, estoy de acuerdo, entiendo “Siempre quedará París”.
Me ha gustado el punto de vista del Dr. Gilbert.
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Or how about- “Happiness…a cold bullet?” IDK why I thought of that- just sort of popped into my head :-)
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For those interested in the topic, the entire edition of TED 2004 was dedicated to the pursuit of happiness.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLKfTgG_9Ok
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzOQLDwUAC8
My search for finding and understanding happiness is far from being completed. Strangely, my journey seems to travel trough pain rather than bliss. In the past weeks, I cry out of nowhere, many times a day. And equally often I enjoy sunshine, flowers, a person’s smile, getting a chance to get what I want and work towards it. I am amazed myself how fast my soul recovers after a low. But does that make me happier or in depression and denial? I feel better than ever, I just decided one day to stop being tough and feeling heavy in my heart and just to let pain flow trough me when it comes. I am surprised of how much it is, though, and that it does not seem to stop for a while now. But in this process I found that I can feel joy and even happiness the same way I feel pain. It just comes easier, and out of nowhere. If that’s normal or not, I don’t care anymore.
Best to watch the videos, they can explain their finding of happiness much better than I can.
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Hmm..I was listening to Annie Lenox, thinking how we let ourselves to be stuck in a moment, in life that always changes and….changes us; afraid of wrong steps, anticipating things that actually in real life might not be as bad as we think. But yes, we don’t want to be lost or hurt others, when actually, we may be hurting them even if we don’t do anything.
Life is…a puzzle; if we want to put all the pieces together we have to find them all and do not be afraid of seeing the whole picture. Who knows maybe, just maybe, it’ll be a picture of..love.?
“Miracle of love” by Annie Lenox
How many sorrows
Do you try to hide
In a world of illusions
That’s covering your mind?
I’ll show you something good
Oh, I’ll show you something good
When you open your mind
You’ll discover the sign
That there’s something
You’re longing to find..
The miracle of love
Will take away your pain
When the miracle of love
Comes your way again..
Cruel is the night
That covers up your fears
Tender is the one
That wipes away your tears
There must be a bitter breeze
To make you sting so viciously
They say the greatest coward
Can hurt the most ferociously
I’ll show you sth good
Oh, I’ll show you sth good..
The miracle of love
Will take away your pain
When the miracle of love
Comes your way again..
love
Agnieszka
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being always positive is the key .when we think positive the feedback will be positive and when we think negative the feedback will be negative. however , this is easy to say but not easy to do it.we have to practice and we have to find peace deep inside our soul, to find love and most important to find god.after that whatever are the sadness we face or the problems ,it will be so insignificant and have no impact on us with comparison of passion and happiness which is fulfilling our soul.
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but we are all different!
some will feel the blow harder than others… some will just shake off all the bad stuff that comes, like a wet dog and then carry on.
You could say it is a conscious choice, wether to dwell in negative feelings or to straight up and make a “rational” relativisation… but how the heart works is still mystierous. To get over a broken heart is totally different from person to person and although you sometimes meet someone who have made a similar experience and healed his or her heart in a similar way - it is still only that - similar - not the same.
I talk with a friend of mine these days. I listen. I try to not come with too many remarks - his pain is his and I can not take it away from him, neither heal it. I can only be there and give my support. With my existence and my own memories I show him there is a life further on and that it he is not alone.
He says it now - that he is alone. That in the end you are always alone… but I know it is not all true. I didn’t dare to mention God to him because it felt too religious for this friend, but I did tell him of friends and family and that he is reflected in all the people he meets - so how can he then ever be really alone?
I do understand him. I understand this feeling of being abandond and being left alone, this crystal clear thought that in the end you can only trust upon yourself.. but it is not the same as being alone forever and that you would never meet new people again.
Happiness is to wake up now and then during the day and realize that life is very good…
:-)
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Hi
This may be true for those who admit to not knowing themselves at all. Or it may just be a negative assumption on the journalist’s part; another case of the media telling us who we are, what we want, etc. Yeah, I suppose they know exactly what makes us happy? No.
Well done, Carina. x
LOVE
xxxx
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Once you face the truth and you are honest about it ,your perception on how you thought it was going to be changes ,once you shift your energy and clearly do it in a healthy functional way openly, the out come becomes positive for everyone involved .But I always know just as the sun rises or sets I will still want food …a girl has to eat ..
Blessings Tania
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Often I have chased happiness. A sparkingly clean house would make me happy I thought, as I cleaned and polished and dusted. But at the end, I was not happy, just tired. Then one day, late at night after I had finished a difficult piece of work, I sat down and put my feet up. My little daughter brought me a cup of hot coffee and snuggled up to me. The sweet fragrance of her newly washed hair and the strong smell of hot coffee made me relaise that I didn’t need to chase after happiness…..it comes to me…..when I least expect it.
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Funny how right you are.Really ,I experencied the both situations.I should add that not only one person may lack the ability to reframe,but even a certain age,or experience.That is why teenagers are the most eposed,they make a disaster by beig left by their lover or getting bad marks,so on.Unfortunately,sometimes they try suicide.If they did not die,they will arrive to reframe the thing after a time.
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Yes..we can recover from anything, more it’ll make us stronger, better. Our life can be really miserable sometimes; the closest to your heart pass away, there’s no light, no love, and yet…somehow…we go on living….go on loving again, and again, and again.
Nothing stops the river of life, nothing can. Love is our engine to go on, to survive the worst moments of our life, and….at the end there’s this….shining star which will always shine as long as you live.
So we shouldn’t be afraid to risk, to change, to follow the path whatever the path may be; the treacherous one or the simple one, there will always be somebody waiting to help you, when you least expect it, somebody with the heart full of love; the messanger of God.
love
Agnieszka
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I’m working for a big company and decisions which people have made, who don’t know what it’s all about, and are totally wrong and above all are affecting my work. Then I have developed a certain way of handling this. To remain sane and to be able to smile I’m always thinking the truth will win in the end and I can tell you it does. I got an award last year for being the most postive person in the company. And this is because I have these small tricks.
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