Stumbling on Happiness
Editorial Review
We treat our future selves as though they were our children, spending most of the hours of most of our days constructing tomorrows that we hope will make them happy. Rather than indulging in whatever strikes our momentary fancy, we take responsibility for the welfare of our future selves. In fact, just about any time we want something—a promotion, a marriage, an automobile, a cheeseburger—we are expecting that if we get it, then the person who has our fingerprints a second, minute, day, or decade from now will enjoy the world they inherit from us, honoring our sacrifices as they reap the harvest of our shrewd investment decisions and dietary forbearance. Like our own offspring, our temporal progeny are often thankless. They may recognize our good intentions and begrudgingly acknowledge that we did the best we could, but they will inevitably whine about how our best just wasn't good enough for them.
Book Reviews
Books on Related Topics
Attaining lasting happiness requires that we enjoy the journey on our way toward a destination we deem valuable. Happiness is not about making it to the peak of the mountain nor is it about climbing aimless around the mountain; happiness is the experience of climbing toward the peak.
Happiness is not something that happens. It is not the result of good fortune or random chance. It is not something that money can buy or power command. It does not depend on outside events, but rather, on how we interpret them. Happiness, thus, is a condition that must be prepared
Achieving ultimate happiness means owning it. Too often we allow other people or situations to control our quest for happiness; a disobedient son, a losing battle against weight gain or feelings of loneliness. But the key is how well you control the impact of those disappointments have on your overall happiness.
It includes wisdom from supercentenarians (age 110 and over) throughout the world. García and Miralles deliver clear, succinct information about diet, exercise, stress, sleep, and meditation. While little here is new, the authors have skillfully compiled key ideas related to physical and mental well-being into an engaging, easily accessible format with
Most people living normal lives are unaware of what’s coming – how extreme changes and trends may disrupt every aspect of our world and lives. Most people are not prepared for the drastic changes on the horizon that will change work, business, health, or population. They have not run the scenarios,
Wisdom to Share
When we imagine future circumstances, we fill in details that won’t really come to pass and leave out details that will.
Perhaps we should give up on remembering and imagining entirely and use other people as surrogates for our future selves.
It is only when we cannot change the experience that we look for ways to change our view of the experience.
We are more likely to look for and find a positive view of the things we are stuck with than of the things we are not.
Most of us have ways of making other people confirm our favored conclusions without ever engaging them in conversation.
Our tendency to expose ourselves to information that supports our favored conclusions is especially powerful when it comes to choosing the company we keep.
If we were to experience the world exactly as it is, we’d be too depressed to get out of bed in the morning.
Future events may request access to the emotional areas of your brains, but current events almost always get the right of way.
Pre-feeling often allows us to predict our emotions better than logical thinking does; yet it has limits.
When the brain imagines, it enlists the aid of its sensory areas when it wants to imagine the sensible features of the world.
Imagination’s products are, well, which is why the imagined future often looks so much like the actual present.
When people being asked to imagine the future, there is a whole lot missing, and the things that are missing matter.
Emotional happiness is the feeling common to the feelings we have when we see our new granddaughter smile for the first time.
Unlike the child who can only think about how things are, the adult is able to think about how things will be.
Adults love to ask children idiotic questions so that we can chuckle when they give us idiotic answers.
The mistakes we make when we try to imagine our personal futures are like the errors optical illusions induce in our perceptions.
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