Absolutely loved this book. It had psychology, existentialism, religion, and deep science all in one. Highlight for me was that work, yes, work, actually can make one happy. I always though work was the means to an end (at least that is what I have heard many people say), but for me, whenever I worked, I gained joy, satisfaction and self fulfillment. Reading this book gave me an understanding why for me ‘work’ was never ‘work’ but always a passion – and why I always found ‘work’ rewarding – and never considered it really working.
The excerpts that I really liked from the book are here:
The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (Jonathan Haidt)
– Highlight Loc. 71-73 | Added on Saturday, December 26, 2009, 12:42 PM
We’ve all heard that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, but that is a dangerous oversimplification. Many of the things that don’t kill you can damage you for life. Recent research on "posttraumatic growth" reveals when and why people grow from adversity, and what you can do to prepare yourself for trauma, or to cope with it after the fact.
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– Highlight Loc. 96-97 | Added on Saturday, December 26, 2009, 12:45 PM
Human thinking depends on metaphor. We understand new or complex things in relation to things we already know.3
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– Highlight Loc. 314-15 | Added on Saturday, December 26, 2009, 01:07 PM
An emotionally intelligent person has a skilled rider who knows how to distract and coax the elephant without having to engage in a direct contest of wills.
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– Highlight Loc. 330-31 | Added on Saturday, December 26, 2009, 01:09 PM
When controlled processing tries to influence thought ("Don’t think about a white hear!"), it sets up an explicit goal. And whenever one pursues a goal, a part of the mind automatically monitors progress, so that it can order corrections or know when success has been achieved.
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– Highlight Loc. 355-56 | Added on Saturday, December 26, 2009, 01:13 PM
Two people feel strongly about an issue, their feelings come first, and their reasons are invented on the fly, to throw at each other. When you refute a person’s argument, does she generally change her mind and agree with
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– Highlight Loc. 393-94 | Added on Sunday, December 27, 2009, 04:38 AM
"No man can ever be secure until he has been forsaken by Fortune."6
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– Highlight Loc. 399 | Added on Sunday, December 27, 2009, 04:39 AM
"Nothing is miserable unless you think it so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it."’
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– Highlight Loc. 450-51 | Added on Sunday, December 27, 2009, 04:45 AM
We can’t just will ourselves to see everything as good because our minds are wired to find and react to threats, violations, and setbacks.
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– Highlight Loc. 546-47 | Added on Sunday, December 27, 2009, 04:43 PM
As Buddha said: "When a man knows the solitude of silence, and feels the joy of quietness, he is then free from fear and sin."35
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– Highlight Loc. 639-40 | Added on Monday, December 28, 2009, 04:29 PM
Buddha got it exactly right: You need a method for taming
the elephant, for changing your mind gradually. Meditation, cognitive therapy, and Prozac are three effective means of doing so.
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– Highlight Loc. 800-801 | Added on Monday, December 28, 2009, 04:53 PM
Concession leads to concession. In financial bargaining, too, people who stake out an extreme first position and then move toward the middle end up doing better than those who state a more reasonable first position and then hold fast.27
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– Highlight Loc. 804-5 | Added on Monday, December 28, 2009, 04:56 PM
If you can reappraise the salesman’s move for what it is-an effort to exploit you-you’ll feel entitled to exploit him right hack. Accept the gift or concession with a feeling of victory you are exploiting an exploiter-not mindless obligation.
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– Highlight Loc. 1073-74 | Added on Tuesday, December 29, 2009, 03:48 AM
Meditation has been shown to make people calmer, less reactive to the ups and downs and petty provocations of life.35 Meditation is the Eastern way of training yourself to take things philosophically.
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– Highlight Loc. 1075-76 | Added on Tuesday, December 29, 2009, 03:48 AM
He advises using many of the same techniques that Aaron Beck used for depression: Write down your thoughts, learn to recognize the distortions in your thoughts, and then think of a more appropriate thought.
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– Highlight Loc. 1130-32 | Added on Tuesday, December 29, 2009, 04:02 PM
In other words, when it comes to goal pursuit, it really is the journey that counts, not the destination. Set for yourself any goal you want. Most of the pleasure will be had along the way, with every step that takes you closer. The final moment of success is often no more thrilling than the relief of taking off a heavy backpack at the end of a long hike.
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– Highlight Loc. 1174-75 | Added on Friday, March 19, 2010, 12:50 AM
a happiness hypothesis that asserts that striving to obtain goods and goals in the external world cannot bring you more than momentary happiness. You must work on your internal
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– Highlight Loc. 1174-75 | Added on Friday, March 19, 2010, 12:50 AM
a happiness hypothesis that asserts that striving to obtain goods and goals in the external world cannot bring you more than momentary happiness. You must work on your internal world.
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– Highlight Loc. 1182-83 | Added on Friday, March 19, 2010, 12:51 AM
A good marriage is one of the life-factors most strongly and consistently associated with happiness.
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– Highlight Loc. 1265-66 | Added on Friday, March 19, 2010, 01:02 AM
You never adapt to interpersonal conflict;45 it damages every day, even days when you don’t see the other person but ruminate about the conflict nonetheless.
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– Highlight Loc. 1291-92 | Added on Friday, March 19, 2010, 01:31 AM
Eating a quart of ice cream in an afternoon or listening to a new CD ten times in a row are good ways to overdose and deaden yourself to future pleasure.
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– Highlight Loc. 1302 | Added on Friday, March 19, 2010, 01:33 AM
Seligman suggests that the key to finding your own gratifications is to know your own strengths.53
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– Highlight Loc. 1303 | Added on Friday, March 19, 2010, 01:33 AM
www.authcntichappiness.org.
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– Highlight Loc. 1332-34 | Added on Friday, March 19, 2010, 01:39 AM
Conspicuous and inconspicuous consumption follow different psychological rules. Conspicuous consumption refers to things that are visible to others and that are taken as markers of a person’s relative success. These goods are subject to a kind of arms race, where their value comes not so much from their objective properties as from the statement they make about their owner.
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– Highlight Loc. 1335-37 | Added on Friday, March 19, 2010, 01:39 AM
Conspicuous consumption is a zero-sum game: Each person’s move up devalues the possessions of others. Furthermore, it’s difficult to persuade an entire group or subculture to ratchet down, even though everyone would be better off, on average, if they all went back to simple watches.
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– Highlight Loc. 1337-38 | Added on Friday, March 19, 2010, 01:39 AM
Inconspicuous consumption, on the other hand, refers to goods and activities that are valued for themselves, that are usually consumed more privately, and that are not bought for the purpose of
achieving status.
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– Highlight Loc. 1344 | Added on Friday, March 19, 2010, 01:40 AM
"doing versus having."
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The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (Jonathan Haidt)
– Highlight Loc. 1350 | Added on Friday, March 19, 2010, 01:41 AM
Activities connect us to others; objects often separate us.
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The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (Jonathan Haidt)
– Highlight Loc. 1362-63 | Added on Friday, March 19, 2010, 01:43 AM
Yet, when people are actually given a larger array of choices-for example, an assortment of thirty (rather than six) gourmet chocolates from which to choose-they are less likely to make a choice;
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– Highlight Loc. 1366-67 | Added on Friday, March 19, 2010, 01:44 AM
The psychologist Barry Schwartz calls this the "paradox of choice" :61 We value choice and put ourselves in situations of choice, even though choice often undercuts our happiness.
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– Highlight Loc. 1409-10 | Added on Friday, March 19, 2010, 01:48 AM
Yes, attachments bring pain, but they also bring our greatest joys, and there is value in the very variation that the philosophers are trying to avoid.
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– Highlight Loc. 1521-22 | Added on Friday, March 19, 2010, 04:19 AM
When children are separated from their attachment figures for a long time, as in a hospital stay, they quickly descend into passivity and despair.
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– Highlight Loc. 1782-83 | Added on Friday, March 19, 2010, 05:08 AM
This chapter is about what we might call the "adversity hypothesis," which says that people need adversity, setbacks, and perhaps even trauma to reach the highest levels of
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– Highlight Loc. 1824-25 | Added on Friday, March 19, 2010, 05:13 AM
people who have suffered through battle, rape, concentration camps, or traumatic personal losses often seem to be inoculated’ against future stress: They recover more quickly, in part because they know they can cope.
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– Highlight Loc. 1917-18 | Added on Friday, March 19, 2010, 01:22 PM
Optimists are more likely to benefit than pessimists.28 Optimists are, for the most part, people who won the cortical lottery: They have a high happiness setpoint, they habitually look on the bright side, and they easily find silver linings.
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The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (Jonathan Haidt)
– Highlight Loc. 2061-62 | Added on Friday, April 02, 2010, 11:38 PM
Cultivating the appearance of virtue will make you successful, and therefore happy, regardless of your true character.
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– Highlight Loc. 2183-84 | Added on Friday, April 02, 2010, 11:55 PM
wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence (the ability to forge connections to something larger than the self).
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– Highlight Loc. 2447-48 | Added on Saturday, April 03, 2010, 06:40 PM
If we think like gods we become like gods, if we think like demons we become like demons.
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– Highlight Loc. 2448-49 | Added on Saturday, April 03, 2010, 06:41 PM
Divine behavior means not cheating people, not killing people. Complete character. You have divinity, you are a god.
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– Highlight Loc. 2190-2200 | Added on Saturday, April 03, 2010, 06:43 PM
Peterson and Seligman suggest that there arc twenty-four principle character strengths, each leading to one of the six higher-level virtues. 19 You can diagnose yourself by looking at the list below or by taking the strengths test (at www.authentichappiness.org).
1. Wisdom:
• Curiosity
• Love of learning
• Judgment
• Ingenuity
• Emotional intelligence
• Perspective
2. Courage:
• Valor
• Perseverance
• Integrity
3. Humanity:
• Kindness
• Loving
4. Justice:
• Citizenship
• Fairness
• Leadership
5. Temperance:
• Self-control
• Prudence
• Humility
6. Transcendence:
• Appreciation of beauty and excellence
• Gratitude
• Hope
• Spirituality
• Forgiveness
• Humor
• Zest
Odds arc that you don’t have much trouble with the list of six virtue families, but you do have objections to the longer list of strengths. Why is humor a means to transcendence? Why is leadership on the list, but not the virtues of followers and subordinates-duty, respect, and obedience? Please, go ahead and argue. The genius of Peterson and Seligman’s classification is to get the conversation going, to propose a specific list of strengths and virtues, and then let the scientific and therapeutic communities work out the details. Just as the DSM is thoroughly revised every ten or fifteen years, the classification of strengths and virtues (known among positive psychologists as the "un-DSM") is sure to he revised and improved in a few years. In daring to he specific, in daring to he wrong, Peterson and Seligman have demonstrated ingenuity, leadership, and hope.
This classification is already generating exciting research and liberating ideas. Here’s my favorite idea: Work on your strengths, not your weaknesses. How many of your New Year’s resolutions have been about fixing a flaw? And how many of those
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– Highlight Loc. 2335-36 | Added on Saturday, April 03, 2010, 06:45 PM
and the human quest for meaning is Flatland, a charming little hook written in 1884 by the English
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– Highlight Loc. 2478-79 | Added on Saturday, April 03, 2010, 11:11 PM
Eliade says that the modern West is the first culture in human history that has managed to strip time and space of all sacredness and to produce a fully practical, efficient, and profane world. This is the world that religious fundamentalists find unbearable and are sometimes willing to use force to fight against.
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The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (Jonathan Haidt)
– Highlight Loc. 2484-85 | Added on Saturday, April 03, 2010, 11:12 PM
Even atheists have intimations of sacredness, particularly when in love or in nature. We just don’t infer that God caused those feelings.
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– Highlight Loc. 2502-4 | Added on Saturday, April 03, 2010, 11:15 PM
When any … act of charity or of gratitude, for instance, is presented either to our sight or imagination, we are deeply impressed with its beauty and feel a strong desire in ourselves of doing charitable and grateful acts also. On the contrary, when we see or read of any atrocious deed, we are disgusted with its deformity, and conceive an abhorrence of vice.
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The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (Jonathan Haidt)
– Bookmark Loc. 2504 | Added on Saturday, April 03, 2010, 11:15 PM
conceive an abhorrence of vice. Now every emotion of this
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The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (Jonathan Haidt)
– Highlight Loc. 2522-23 | Added on Saturday, April 03, 2010, 11:17 PM
Jefferson got it exactly right. People really do respond emotionally to acts of moral beauty, and these emotional reactions involve warm or pleasant feelings in the chest and conscious desires to help others or become a better person oneself.
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– Highlight Loc. 2548-49 | Added on Saturday, April 03, 2010, 11:20 PM
Oxytocin causes bonding, not action. Elevation may fill people with feelings of love, trust,30 and openness, making them more receptive to new relationships; yet, given their feelings of relaxation and passivity, they might be less likely to engage in active altruism toward strangers.
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– Bookmark Loc. 2667 | Added on Saturday, April 03, 2010, 11:31 PM
chatter, much of which is negative (threats loom larger than
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The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (Jonathan Haidt)
– Highlight Loc. 2741-44 | Added on Thursday, January 01, 1970, 12:12 AM
There is no God and no externally given meaning to life, I thought, so from one perspective it really wouldn’t matter if I killed myself tomorrow. Very well, then everything
beyond tomorrow is a gift with no strings and no expectations. There is no test to hand in at the end of life, so there is no way to fail. If this really is all there is, why not embrace it, rather than throw it away?
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The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (Jonathan Haidt)
– Highlight Loc. 2805-7 | Added on Thursday, January 01, 1970, 12:18 AM
the amazing thing I learned about plants is that as long as they are not completely dead, they will spring back to full and glorious life if you just get the conditions right. You can’t fix a plant; you can only give it the right conditions-water, sun, and soil-and then wait. It will do the rest.
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– Highlight Loc. 2807-10 | Added on Thursday, January 01, 1970, 12:19 AM
In the happiness formula from chapter 5, H(appiness) = S(etpoint) + C(ondi- tions) + V(oluntary activities), what exactly is C? The biggest part of C, as I said in chapter 6, is love. No man, woman, or child is an island. We are ultrasocial creatures, and we can’t be happy without having friends and secure attachments to other people. The second most important part of C is having and pursuing the right goals, in order to create states of flow and engagement.
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– Highlight Loc. 2813-15 | Added on Thursday, January 01, 1970, 12:20 AM
In Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs, once people have satisfied their physical needs (such as food and safety), they move on to needs for love and then esteem, which is earned mostly through one’s work.
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– Highlight Loc. 2815-16 | Added on Thursday, January 01, 1970, 12:20 AM
Leo Tolstoy wrote: "One can live magnificently in this world, if one knows how to work and how to love, to work for the person one loves and to love one’s work."19
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– Highlight Loc. 2818-19 | Added on Thursday, January 01, 1970, 12:22 AM
Harlow had noticed: the overwhelming evidence that people and many other mammals have a basic drive to make things happen.
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– Highlight Loc. 2821-22 | Added on Thursday, January 01, 1970, 12:22 AM
And you can see it in the lethargy that often overtakes people who stop working, whether from retirement, being fired, or winning a lottery.
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– Highlight Loc. 2825-26 | Added on Thursday, January 01, 1970, 12:24 AM
Dealing with the environment means carrying on a continuing transaction which gradually changes one’s relation to the environment. Because there is no consummatory climax, satisfaction has to he seen as lying in a considerable series of transactions, in a trend of behavior rather than a goal that is achieved.21
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– Highlight Loc. 2827-28 | Added on Thursday, January 01, 1970, 12:25 AM
We get more pleasure from making progress toward our goals than we do from achieving them because, as Shakespeare said, "Joy’s soul lies in the doing."
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– Highlight Loc. 2831-33 | Added on Thursday, January 01, 1970, 12:25 AM
Men who were closely supervised in jobs of low complexity and much routine showed the highest degree of alienation (feeling powerless, dissatisfied, and separated from the work). Men who had more latitude in deciding how they approached work that was varied and challenging tended to enjoy their work much more. When workers had occupational self-direction, their work was often satisfying.
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– Highlight Loc. 2834-35 | Added on Thursday, January 01, 1970, 12:26 AM
If you see your work as a job, you do it only for the money, you look at the clock frequently while dreaming about the weekend ahead, and you probably pursue hobbies, which satisfy your effectance needs more thoroughly than does your work.
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The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (Jonathan Haidt)
– Highlight Loc. 2835-38 | Added on Thursday, January 01, 1970, 12:26 AM
If you see your work as a career, you have larger goals of advancement, promotion, and prestige. The pursuit of these goals often energizes you, and you sometimes take work home with you because you want to get the job done properly. Yet, at times, you wonder why you work so hard. You might occasionally see your work as a rat race where people are competing for the sake of competing.
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– Highlight Loc. 2838-41 | Added on Thursday, January 01, 1970, 12:27 AM
If you see your work as a calling, however, you find your work intrinsically fulfilling you are not doing it to achieve something else. You see your work as contributing to the greater good or as playing a role in some larger enterprise the worth of which seems obvious to you. You have frequent experiences of flow during the work day, and you neither look forward to "quitting time" nor feel the desire to shout, "Thank God it’s Friday!" You would continue to work, perhaps even without pay, if you suddenly became very wealthy
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– Highlight Loc. 2851-52 | Added on Thursday, January 01, 1970, 12:29 AM
If you can engage your strengths, you’ll find more gratification in work; if you find gratification, you’ll shift into a more positive, approach-oriented mindset; and in such a mindset it will be easier for you to see the bigger picture2 -the contribution you are making to a larger enterprise-within which your job might turn into a calling.
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The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (Jonathan Haidt)
– Highlight Loc. 2890-91 | Added on Thursday, January 01, 1970, 12:32 AM
When doing good (doing high-quality work that produces something of use to others) matches up with doing well (achieving wealth and professional advancement), a field is healthy. Genetics, for example, is a healthy field because all parties involved respect and reward the very best science.
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– Highlight Loc. 2915 | Added on Thursday, January 01, 1970, 12:39 AM
People gain a sense of meaning when their lives cohere across the three levels of their existence.37
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– Highlight Loc. 2934-35 | Added on Thursday, January 01, 1970, 12:42 AM
As you make an offering to God, you don’t think, "What does this all mean? Why am I doing this?" The experience of meaningfulness just happens. It emerges automatically from cross-level coherence. Once again, happiness-or a sense of meaningfulness that imparts richness to experience -comes from between.
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– Highlight Loc. 2997-99 | Added on Thursday, January 01, 1970, 12:48 AM
word religion literally means, in Latin, to link or hind together; and despite the vast variation in the world’s religions, Wilson shows that religions always serve to coordinate and orient people’s behavior toward each other
and toward the group as a whole, sometimes for the purpose of competing with other groups.
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– Highlight Loc. 3016-17 | Added on Thursday, January 01, 1970, 12:50 AM
Group selection creates interlocking genetic and cultural adaptations that enhance peace, harmony, and cooperation within the group for the express purpose of increasing the group’s ability to compete with other groups.
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– Highlight Loc. 3018-19 | Added on Thursday, January 01, 1970, 12:50 AM
Atrocities committed in the name of religion are almost always committed against out-group members, or against the most dangerous people of all: apostates (who try to leave the group) and traitors (who undermine the group).
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– Highlight Loc. 3047-50 | Added on Thursday, January 01, 1970, 12:54 AM
The War-eiors: Reflections of Men in Battle that describes the thrilling communal state that soldiers sometimes enter:
"I" passes insensibly into a "we," "my" becomes "our," and individual fate loses its central importance…. I believe that it is nothing less than the assurance of immortality that makes self-sacrifice at these moments so relatively easy… I may fall, but I do not die, for that which is real in me goes forward and lives on in the comrades for whom I gave up my life.e’-
There is indeed something larger
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– Highlight Loc. 3048-50 | Added on Thursday, January 01, 1970, 12:54 AM
"I" passes insensibly into a "we," "my" becomes "our," and individual fate loses its central importance…. I believe that it is nothing less than the assurance of immortality that makes self-sacrifice at these moments so relatively easy… I may fall, but I do not die, for that which is real in me goes forward and lives on in the comrades for whom I gave up my life.e’-
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The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (Jonathan Haidt)
– Highlight Loc. 3047-50 | Added on Thursday, January 01, 1970, 12:55 AM
McNeill quotes an extraordinary
passage from the book The War-eiors: Reflections of Men in Battle that describes the thrilling communal state that soldiers sometimes enter:
"I" passes insensibly into a "we," "my" becomes "our," and individual fate loses its central importance…. I believe that it is nothing less than the assurance of immortality that makes self-sacrifice at these moments so relatively easy… I may fall, but I do not die, for that which is real in me goes forward and lives on in the comrades for whom I gave up my life.e’-
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– Highlight Loc. 3057-61 | Added on Thursday, January 01, 1970, 12:56 AM
Happiness is not something that you can find, acquire, or achieve directly. You have to get the conditions right and then wait. Some of those conditions are within you, such as coherence among the parts and levels of your personality.
Other conditions require relationships to things beyond you: Just as plants need sun, water, and good soil to thrive, people need love, work, and a connection to something larger. It is worth striving to get the right relationships between yourself and others, between yourself and your work, and between yourself and something larger than yourself. If you get these relationships right, a sense of purpose and meaning will emerge.
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– Highlight Loc. 3068 | Added on Thursday, January 01, 1970, 12:57 AM
The Eastern and Western approaches to life are also said to be opposed: The East stresses acceptance and collectivism; the West encourages striving and individualism.
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– Highlight Loc. 3071-72 | Added on Thursday, January 01, 1970, 12:58 AM
the most important lesson I have learned in my twenty years of research on morality is that nearly all people are morally motivated.
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– Highlight Loc. 3072-73 | Added on Thursday, January 01, 1970, 12:59 AM
Selfishness is a powerful force, particularly in the decisions of individuals, but whenever groups of people come together to make a sustained effort to change the world, you can bet that they are pursuing a vision of virtue, justice, or sacredness.
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