Category Archives: Self-Development

The How Of Happiness (1)

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Currently I’m reading “The How Of Happiness – A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want” from Sonja Lyubomirsky a Ph. D. from the Stanford University. This post is part 1 of the review.

It is the first how-to-become-happier book authored by someone who has actually conducted research revealing how people can achieve a greater sense of happiness in their lives. The book starts with a very interesting question and a surprising answer.

What do you think would make you happier ?
- A relationship?
- An extra bedroom ?
- A baby?
- More money?
- More Time ?

If your answer looks anything like these you’re in for a surprise. None of these things will make you substantially happier. We often look for happiness in the wrong places. What we believe would make a huge difference in our lives, actually makes only a small difference, while we overlook the true sources of personal happiness and well-being. Why is it so hard for us to believe that money really doesn’t make us happy? Because the truth is that money does make us happy. BUT our misunderstanding is that “we think money will bring lots of happiness for a long time, and actually it brings a little happiness for a short time.”

The 40 Percent Solution
50% of the factors which determine happiness are the genetically Set Points. They can’t be changed and therefore they shouldn’t be in the focus. The smallest part by 10 % are the circumstances we live in. So life circumstances like house, money, etc. are not the keys to happiness. That means that the remaining 40 % is within our ability to control, the 40% for opportunities to increase or decrease our happiness levels through what we do in our daily lives and how we think. This is the interesting part and it is the main focus of the book.

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The God Delusion (1)

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I recently bought the paperback edition of “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins. There is additional information about the topics and a discussion forum on his website RichardDawkins.net. The hardcover edition was described as the surprise bestseller of 2006.

Chapter 1 – A deeply religious non-believer
Great scientists of our time who sound religious usually turn out not to be so when you examine their beliefs more deeply. This is certainly true for Einstein and Hawking.

“An atheist in the sense of a philosophical naturalist is somebody who believes there is nothing beyond the natural, physical world, no supernatural creative intelligence lurking behind the observable universe, no soul that outlasts the body and no miracles – except in the sense of natural phenomena that we don’t yet understand.”

Especially Einstein says that he does not believe in a personal God. Further he mentions ” If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.” Einstein is a religious non-believer.

Theist, Deist and Pantheist
There are a few definitions which help to understand the different ideologies in the first chapter. For example is the difference between the theist and the deist important and interesting. It helps to find what kind of believer you are.

A theist believes in a supernatural intelligence who , in addition to his main work of creating the universe in the first place, is still around to oversee and influence the subsequent fate of his initial creation. A deist too, believes in a supernatural intelligence, but one whose activities were confined to setting up the laws the govern the universe in the first place. The deist God never intervenes thereafter, and certainly has no specific interest in human affairs. Pantheists don’t believe in a supernatural God at all, but use the word God a non-supernatural synonym for Nature, or for the Universe, or for the lawfulness the governs it’s workings. Pantheism is sexed-up atheism.

Einstein used the word “God” many times but it is clear today that he used “God” in a purely metaphorical, poetic sense.

The last part of the first chapter deals with the great amount of respect humans have for religion. For example it is normal to openly discuss ones political or economic interests but to have an opinion (and share it openly) of how the Universe began or about who created the Universe is much more difficult. We are used to not challenging religious ideas. The author gives much more examples to confirm this statement.

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Reclaiming Our Innate State of Happiness (4)

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The path to happiness
Everyone seeks happiness in his life and as the Dalai Lama mentioned it should be the primary goal or better the meaning of life.

The basic equipment to achieve complete happiness is just the right mental state. Ideally you shouldn’t be dependent on external things. One has to concentrate on the mind itself. There are thousands of different thoughts all day and therefore it is important to identify which of them are helpful, which are neutral and which are harmful. We should reduce negative thoughts and nourish the helpful ones.

So the first step in seeking happiness is to learn how negative emotions and behaviour are harmful to us and how positive thoughts are helpful. It lies within our own hands.
“Identify and culture positive mental states; identify and eliminate negative mental states”
This way of thinking – attracting positive thoughts and eliminating negative thoughts – is not a simple task. In fact, you can’t accomplish it by adopting a particular thought or practice once or twice.

Change takes time.
And transforming your mind takes even more time. It is a process of learning.
Through repeated practice we should try to achieve that disturbances of our mind only remain on the surface, like waves that may ripple on the surface of an ocean but don’t have much effect deep down. Negative disturbances of the mind should dissipate very quickly, there shouldn’t be an effect on the deeper mind. In daily life there will be always situations where you feel distracted, angry, jealous etc. but the art is, that these thoughts don’t have influence on your deeper mind. Sometimes you can be thrown off the track but ideally that shouldn’t last for long.

This art takes time, as the Dalai Lama was trained since he was four years old !

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Training the Mind for Happiness (3)

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This post is about inner worth and the difference between happiness and pleasure.

Inner Worth

A sense of inner worth is very important these days. Not just that you have a inner worth but also the source of it plays a major role. The best thing you can do is to gain strength from multiple sources and not just a single one.

For example building your inner worth just on material things is very risky because if you loose your fortune what else do you have ? If there is no second or third anchor you can count on there is nothing left but depression.

Happiness vs. Pleasure

Have you ever asked yourself what the difference between happiness and pleasure is? Most people are often confused about this.

One way to explain the difference is to describe the target of these states of mind. Happiness relates more to the heart and mind and pleasure more to the physical senses. “Happiness that depends mainly on physical pleasure is unstable; one day it’s there, the next day it may not be.”

Knowing this difference can be a great help making right decisions. Before you make the decision just ask yourself:  ”Will it bring me happiness (or just temporal pleasure) ? ” Depending on the answer you can make your decision much easier.

Living with this knowledge means that your achieved form of happiness will be much more stable and remains despite the up’s and down’s of life. This form of happiness should be part of your very being.

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The Sources of Happiness (2)

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It’s very difficult to get independent of external material things because western culture is mainly based on material acquisition. We are surrounded with ads, new cars to buy and so on.

Desire

There are two different types of desire. One is positive and one is negative. For example there is nothing wrong with the desire for happiness or the desire of peace. But if the desires are unreasonable then there might be some troubles.
” The demarcation between a positive and a negative desire or action is not wheter it gives you an immediate feeling of satifaction but wheter it ultimately results in positive or negative consequences.” So the feeling of self-satifaction is not enough to define a desire positiv. For example a murderer sometimes has the feeling of satisfaction at the time he is committing the murder, but that doesn’t justify the act.
Also the excessive desire of wanting more and more expensive things leads ultimately into troubles. Sooner or later you will reach a limit of what you can get and what you can’t get. Then you will sink down in depression and frustration when facing reality.

Inner contentment

So there are two methods to achieve inner contentment. One is to obtain everything that we want and desire. But you can imagine that this path will not make you happier in the long term. Buying all houses and cars we want is only a short and temporary satifaction. One day we will run against something that we can’t have. So the second and better method is not to have what we want but rather to want and appreciate what we have.

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The Right to Happiness (1)

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This is the first part of several entries I would like to make about the book “The Art of Happiness”. I will try to summarize the main ideas of the discussions between the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler and I will also try to add my own thoughts about certain topics.

Basic Idea

The purpose of our existence is to seek happiness.

The essential point is that happiness is determined more by one’s state of mind than by external events. It’s always better not to be dependent on external factors to be happy. Your happiness should be a result of your state of mind and attitude. So success may result in a temporary feeling of elation but sooner or later our overall level of happiness tends to migrate back to a certain baseline. After a appropriate time period we always fall back to our day-to-day level of happiness. The length of that period depends on the importance of that event.
The interesting question is: Is it possible to modify the level of this baseline so that our “normal” happiness is on a higher level ?

Comparing Thoughts

Comparing a present situation with the past or comparing ourselves to others is very often the main source of unhappiness. For example let’s take a look at the income of a person and let’s assume that this year it is about $20′000. And let’s further assume that the person is happy right now. After months or maybe a year (that depends on the person) that person normally isn’t happy anymore with his income because he got used to this specific amount. After a pay raise for example to $25′000 he will be happy again, but it will not last forever, so the absolute amount can’t be a factor to be happy. It’s the pay raise itself that makes the person happy, but unfortunately only for a short time period. I think that the more frequent one gets such pay raises the shorter the time will be that the person is happy.

The second comparison we make and which makes us unhappy is the comparison with others. Most people can’t be happy if the neighbor is making more money. The absolute amount is not important anymore even if it is way too much to spend in a life time, people can be unhappy if someone else earns more.

The key thing is to get independent of external factors.

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