Happy smarts
Happy smarts is the ability to consistently make happiness enhancing decisions.
happiness is like a balloon
There are many reasons why I like this metaphor. Balloons are such fun and happy things. They're associated with positive events, like birthdays and other kinds of celebrations. Also, when you hold a balloon, not just you, but everyone around you knows how big the balloon is. It turns out that happiness is very similar. Not just you, but everyone around you knows how happy you are.
you can predict their future behavior.
So, for example, if you ask people how satisfied are they with their life at age 18 or 20, we see that the people who are more cheerful, more satisfied early in life later succeed in certain ways. For example, in age 38 they have higher incomes, controlling for other things like their parental income, their occupation, and so forth. So that's interesting, happy people making more money. We also see that happy people later, are more likely to live longer, have better health. We see that they are more likely to get married and stay married and not get divorced. You say well maybe their marriage was unhappy no, this is five, ten years before they ever got married when we took the happiness report and later we see that the people who are low on happiness way back then when they were 18 and 20, are fair amount more likely to get divorced or have any unhappy marriage. So this points to the fact that these aren't just made up at the moment, current mood. That there's something enduring and important that these measures are capturing.
definition
Happiness means being light-hearted and joyful. It means not taking yourself so seriously that it robs you of the fun of living.
Being lighthearted and joyful, by the way, doesn't mean that you don't think of certain things like your family or your work to be important. But it does mean that these important things in your life don't sap the joy from your life. It means enjoying life, but at the same time being responsible and engaged with everything life has to offer.
1st sin: devaluing happiness
- First reason is that we harbor negative beliefs about happiness.
Those who believe that healthy food is not as tasty as unhealthy food find it more difficult to resist eating unhealthy food.
改变认知，健康食物和垃圾食品一样美味
- One common negative belief about happiness is that it will lead to laziness.
study after study reveals that happiness doesn't makes us lazy. Instead, it makes us more productive and more successful.
- Happiness is fleeting.
But is happiness in fact, fleeting? The answer is, it depends. It depends on how you define happiness.
If you define happiness as sensory pleasure, happiness won't last long.
If you define it as love or connection, on the other hand, it has the potential to last much longer.
Likewise, if you define it as something akin to what I call abundance. Which is the feeling you get from believing that you're taken care of and that life is perfect with it's imperfections, then that feeling has the potential to last even longer.
- Second reason is that we fail to define happiness in concrete terms.
we have a tendency to focus on things that we can see more clearly. Which is similar to the idea that we give greater value and priority to things that are more clearly defined.
Much the same way that we value things that are easier to see and process, we devalue things that are difficult to see and process. You are likely to devalue happiness if you aren't clear about what it means to you.
- And the third reason is that we're susceptible to medium maximization.
The simplest way to understand medium maximization is that we often forget what we we ultimately want in life, and we end up chasing the mediums that are supposed to get us what we ultimately want.
1st habit: prioritize but don't pursue happiness.
This means reminding yourself on a regular basis to make happiness enhancing decisions, but then not obsess about how happy you are.
5th sin:distrusting others
聪明地信任
用一种能最大化从信任别人中的得到的利益同时最小化被欺骗与伤害的方式来信任
更加主动地信任
