Last week, I was with a student and I told her to open her door to all possibilities. I also told her how when possibilities arise she can find answers by finding a peaceful place, visualising options and listening to her emotions. Was it wrong? Is our future simulating system totally floaded?
Dan Gilbert is a psychologist at Harvard University. He is a great speaker and those 21 minutes are packed with humor and revelations. It’s a must see.
Two great quotations from his speech:
« I am the happiest man alive. I have that in me that can convert poverty to riches, adversity to prosperity, and I am more invulnerable than Archilles; Fortune hath not one place to hit me. » Sir Thomas Browne
“The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another. Avarice over-rates the difference between poverty and riches: ambition, that between a private and a public station: vain-glory, that between obscurity and extensive reputation. The person under the influence of any of those extravagant passions, is not only miserable in his actual situation, but is often disposed to disturb the peace of society, in order to arrive at that which he so foolishly admires. The slightest observation, however, might satisfy him, that, in all the ordinary situations of human life, a well-disposed mind may be equally calm, equally cheerful, and equally contented. Some of those situations may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others: but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardour which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice; or to corrupt the future tranquillity of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse from the horror of our own injustice.” Adam Smith
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Très intéressant
You mean « very interesting? »
Yes indeed
I would not have thought to call it « synthesizing happiness » but yes, I absolutely do do that. I actively reframe virtually everything that happens to me so as to maximize my happiness. I look for the silver lining in every cloud, I look for whatever lesson or insight I might gain from every « misfortune » and rewrite it in my own mind as a « painful blessing. » I figured out at around 14 that happiness was something you had to decide to create within yourself, not something you might happen onto.
14 that is a blessing to start so young with such a strong knowing