Happiness: The Science behind your smile by Daniel Nettle This is an excellent Book…

 Happiness:  The Science behind your smile by Daniel Nettle

This  is an excellent Book…

I have to repeat this: wonderful, excellent, life-changing book! Together with The Science of Happiness and perhaps Flourish, this is a book which can change your life. I hope it is already changing mine. By applying some of the Facts, Discoveries of Positive Psychology listed in the book, I may reach Bliss, Tranquility, and Nirvana.

 

My guess is that I will write in installments, because I have placed so many bookmarks in this fabulous book that every other page seems to have a bookmark and I intend to write here, in my “review „of the book, most if not all the principles, advice that I have underlined because this may improve my Happiness level and, why not, perhaps yours.

 

One happy thought: creating a “happy „club, or /and blog maybe even a party. All these would promote the rules, principles, secrets of happiness

 

 

Studies show that positive emotional tone is related to Better physical and mental health...677

What matters is what one has relative to what everyone else has got for life satisfaction…731

Marriage results in an increase in happiness…for two years…after which the hike melts away…807

It seems as if there is a set level of happiness to which we return more or less whatever we do…837

Lack of autonomy leads to unhappiness…income and material goods are quickly and completely adapted to…844

We are satisfied with our income or the size of our car in comparison with the incomes and cars around us…850

We evolved a psychology of looking at those around us who seemed to be doing best and trying to do even better…855

Health, autonomy, social embededness and the quality of the environment are real sources of happiness the one who will give up the rat race will probably be happier…865

Some people are cheerful and buoyant almost whatever bad things happen to them, whilst some are full of worry and anguish even in the best of circumstances...896

Happiness or unhappiness stem from how we address what happens in the world, not what actually happens…905

Neurotics are unhappy in general

Income at 25 is a good predictor of income at 55

Happiness stems not from the world itself, but from the way people address the world …1103

It is easier to change yourself...if you change yourself, the external world will follow suit 1106

there are techniques for neurotics

The Soma from Brave New World…1123

is serotonin the path to happiness?

There is a separation between wanting and liking…we will not be necessarily happy when we get something we want 1227

We often work hard for things that do not increase either pleasure or happiness; we act like addicts…1260

Neuroticism and depression are associated with poor physical health...1340

Unhappiness, anxiety and depression engage the stress system, leading to suppression of the immune system…therefore negative long term consequences …1346

Crooks on the market: change your underwear; change your life…1388

Three changes:

1.       reduce the impact of negative emotion

2.       increase positive emotion

3.       change the subject…

excess of Fear, worry, sadness, anger, guilt, shame-is one of the most potent causes of unhappiness… 1417

negative emotions are more urgent and capture consciousness …1427

negative emotion were designed to cope with emergencies and go off…constant fear and worry makes us hostile, paranoid, less attractive and less open to good things..1447

Pleasant Activity Training –determines which activities are pleasant and do them more often

All the evidence suggests you would be happier not caring about your promotion

The more important people believe financial success is, the more dissatisfied they are 1493

People could be preoccupied with wanting things that they forget to do things they enjoy

People’s behavior is driven by desire

We can intervene to affect happiness: changing the subject. The Hedonic paradox: by pursuing happiness itself, one makes it more distant

Ask yourself if you are happy and you cease to be…1517

The more complex a person is, the less his happiness swings: if he is many things, setbacks in one area will be offset by the other facets …1533

Regular meditators have reduced negative emotion, stress, increase well being and immune responses

Meditation has a positive effect on well-being…1540

Writing regularly about one’s experiences has beneficial effects on well-being and health, immune function. Writing has healing effects, whether experiences are negative or positive. We become more mindful, we take distance, replicating the effects of meditation

The more importance people place on money, the less satisfied they are with their income. One way to change the subject would be to give up on desires and wants that cannot be fulfilled.

In Buddhism, happiness depends on the mind, not on external trappings- the joke: a man gives the Dalai Lama a nice box, when the Dalai Lama opens it to find it empty, He says: “exactly what I wanted”

Happiness is relative to what others around are getting

People adapt quickly to positive changes and return to the previous level of happiness

Pleasure is triggered by love, sex, esteem, food

We want to do some things because our most successful ancestors wanted them

Evolution hasn’t set us up for the attainment of happiness, merely its pursuit

we would attain more enjoyment by trading income for TIME

Society is driven by wanting instead of Liking

 

 

 I’d like to note the books recommended for further reading: Daniel Kahneman, Ed Diener and Norbert Schwarz (eds), Well-being: The foundations of hedonic psychology

 

David Lykken’s Happiness (New York: Golden Books 1999)

 

Michael Argyle’s The psychology of happiness

 

Peter Whybrow’s A mood apart: A thinker’s guide to emotion and its disorders

 

Robert Sapolsky Why zebras don’t get ulcers

 

Ziyad Marar’s The happiness paradox (London: Reaktion Books 2003).

 

happiness, http://www.eur.nl/fsw/research/happiness

 

Sources of joy: Scherer, Summerfield and Wallbott