The How of Happiness
To tell the truth I was very skeptical about this book. Or to put it more clearly, I’m always skeptical about books that begin with how to be happy, reach, successful and stuff like this. And after taking a look at the book now I am even more skeptical. The statistics seem very questionable. The definitions seem even more questionable. Even the term in the title, i.e. happiness is probably one of the most difficult words to be defined.
If we take the book’s statistics for granted we can see that genetics is the most important determinant of happiness. Contrary to what most of the people think, life circumstances determine only ten percent of our happiness. The other determinant is intentional activities. So we cannot do anything about our genetics. However, we can change our happiness level if we do some intentional activities like: expressing gratitude, avoid over thinking, be grateful for what we have etc.
I believe that two are the most important factors that render us unhappy. The first is fear of death. I think that all of our phobias are related in some way to the fear of death. Claustrophobia, acrophobia, enochlophobia are al related to the fear of death. So in order to keep our minds distracted from that fear we engage in many activities. We need to lose ourselves either in drinking, working, our families just to take our minds off the inevitable thing that is going to come.
The second reason for unhappiness is comparison. Every time we compare ourselves with others we tend to become unhappy because people have the tendency to compare themselves with the people that are better than them. Where we were under the communism regime, I believe that Albanian people were a lot happier than nowadays because they were unaware of the huge differences of wealth that exist in the capitalism regime.
So if we can find some cure for these two factors I think that all of us will be happier than they already are.
Indrit Beqaraj
Indrit I like the way you begin your review when you say that you are skeptic related to writings about Happiness and you have to, because everyone is unique and no unique formula can be found but the author tells us some simple steps to follow and somehow can make our life happier because no one can secure happiness without earning it.
YanıtlaSil``people have the tendency to compare themselves with the people that are better than them.`` yes but because we are unhappy we tend to watch eachother to see if the others are ok ore are like us. than we start comparing perhaps just to feel better. sometimes it sounds weird.
YanıtlaSilThere are no recipes for happiness and we already know that, however if someone feels to share the experience learned during a lifetime it is ok and someone may find it helpful, so i am not so skeptical at the end.
YanıtlaSil