The Happiness Hypothesis

Buddha4 said, “Our life is the creation of our mind.”)

why do people keep doing such stupid things? Why do they fail to control themselves and continue to do what they know is not good for them? I, for one, can easily muster the willpower to ignore all the desserts on the menu. But if dessert is placed on the table, I can’t resist it. I can resolve to focus on a task and not get up until it is done, ye

Children who were able to overcome stimulus control and delay gratification for a few extra minutes in 1970 were better able to resist temptation as teenagers, to focus on their studies, and to control themselves when things didn’t go the way they wanted.27

Buddhism, for example, in an effort to break people’s carnal attachment to their own (and others’) flesh, developed methods of meditating on decaying corpses.31

three biggest decisions most of us make—what to do with our lives, where to live, and whom to marry—can all be influenced (even if only slightly) by something as trivial as the sound of a name. Life is indeed what we deem it, but the deeming happens quickly and unconsciously. The elephant reacts instinctively and steers the rider toward a new desti

psychologists find that the human mind reacts to bad things more quickly, strongly, and persistently than to equivalent good things.

Happiness can only be found within, by breaking attachments to external things and cultivating an attitude of acceptance.

Because whatever happens, you’re likely to adapt to it, but you don’t realize up front that you will. We are bad at “affective forecasting,” 5 that is, predicting how we’ll feel in the future.

Studies that have assigned people to perform a random act of kindness every week, or to count their blessings regularly for several weeks, find small but sustained increases in happiness.54

Good relationships make people happy, and happy people enjoy more and better relationships than unhappy people.44