Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation) to the ones paying heed, this is where we try to draw your attention to things that matter and the importance of our attention, why is that? Now ‘let us remember this again, ‘What we give our Attention to matters,’ as Our life’s experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to.
Attention: is as fundamental as food; and we go blundering about, seeking ways to assuage the craving, instead of learning how to provide ourselves with what we need, sensibly and calmly. Once our attention is drawn to the mechanism of why and what we give attention to, it is as if a veil has been stripped off and we become freer in our action and choices. And that is our endavour.
This week I bring to your attention an excerpt titled – ‘Happiness’ from an article titled ‘How to become Happier’ from the book ‘The Happiness Hypothesis’ by Jonathan Haidt.
This is a book about ten Great Ideas. Each chapter is an attempt to savor one idea that has been discovered by several of the world’s civilizations - to question it in light of what we now know from scientific research, and to extract from it the lessons that still apply to our modern lives.
Happiness
Here are some of the ideas from the book that can point in the direction on ‘How to become Happier’.
Step 1: Diagnose Yourself
You inherited a particular brain with a setpoint for an average happiness level (ch. 2). You are not doomed to live at your setpoint — many other factors move your actual level of happiness up or down from your biological predisposition. But you do need to KNOW what your setpoint is, so you know which challenges you’ll face. And knowing your strengths will help you overcome these challenges.
Step 2: Improve Your Mental Hygiene
Happiness doesn’t come entirely from within, but if you ever have to choose between changing your thinking or changing the world to make it conform to your wishes, be sure to choose the former.
Step 3: Improve Your Relatedness
The theme that arose most often in my research for the book is that we need others to be happy. We were made for love, friendship, and family, and when we spend a lot of time alone, or free ourselves from the “constraints” of relationships, it is generally bad for us.
Step 4: Improve Your Work
Work at its best is “love made visible,” as Kahlil Gibran said (p.222). Are you doing your work with love, or out of duty or fear? Most people don’t have the luxury of choosing a job for its spiritual satisfactions, but no matter what your work is (and that includes childrearing or being a full time student), you can take steps to make it more lovable, or to make yourself more loving.
Step 5: Improve Your Connection to Something Beyond Yourself
In the Happiness Hypothesis I suggested that we are, in a way, like bees: our lives only make full sense as members of a larger hive, or as cells in a larger body. Yet in our modern way of living we’ve busted out of the hive and flown out on our own, each one of us free to live as we please. Is it any wonder so many people ask “what’s the point?” or “what is the meaning of life?”
Excerpt from ‘How to Become Happier’ extracted from the book ‘The Happiness Hypothesis’ by Jonathan Haidt.
I am sure that you will enjoy reading this article and may want to buy the book. So, you can click on the following link:
https://www.happinesshypothesis.com/beyond-gethappy.html
Enjoy reading it with your family, friends and near and dear one’s.
Namaste!
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