It was recommended to me by my sister Cate after she heard that I was reading books on happiness. The author is one of her favorite talk show hosts. She likes him so much that when he was in Minneapolis, she made sure to see him.
Honestly, she hates that picture and she gave it to me incase I ever need a good laugh. I have it here at work incase I ever have a bad day. If this picture ever disappears from my blog it will probably be because she asked me to take it down. Just so you know that this is a BAD picture, I will include a good picture to make up for any harm I have done.
Now, back to the book. It had to be special ordered as an inter-library loan from the Logan Library System because my library didn't carry it anymore. Yes, I am that big of a cheap skate and I didn't want to buy it, although I like it enough that I wouldn't have minded if I did. Dennis Prager is not a happiness researcher and studied Jewish and Middle Eastern studies, I think that his book is my favorite so far. I just really like his approach. I like how practical he is and I like how he seems to hit on what the real issues and problems are. I don't know if I would recommend any of the other books I have read and I am only about 10% into the book, I would already recommend it to friends.
He starts out by saying that not everyone who studies happiness will become happy nor can everyone be equally happy. He said that there are many roads that lead to happiness and he just hopes that his book can help one person. He divides the book into three parts, I Premise of the Book, II Obstacles and III Attitudes and Behaviors.
He believes that being happy is a moral obligation. He told about a class he taught on happiness where a woman was struggling with a very unhappy spouse. She said that he decided to go to a technology class instead but he was the one who needed his class because he was constantly bringing her down with his mood and it was becoming a hard load for her to bare. When we are not happy we bring down everyone around us, especially those that are closest to us. People who are happy act decently because it is a lot easier to do so when you are happy.
He talked about how people of faith (I believe he is Jewish) should be happy and if they are not then they either they don't practice their religion or their religion isn't conducive to happiness. He said, "Unhappy, let alone angry, religious people provide more persuasive arguments for atheism and secularism than do all the arguments of Atheists."
In Chapter two he says that unhappiness is easy but happiness takes work. The easy way is often the wrong way. It takes no courage, effort or greatness to be unhappy. Hmmm... thinking about Nephi and his brothers right now... He said true achievement, lay in struggling to be happy. Happiness is a battle to be waged not a feeling to be awaited. I will quote him here, "The notion that happiness must be consistently worked at comes as news - disconcerting news - to many people. They assume that happiness is a feeling and that this feeling comes as a result of good things that happen to them. We therefore have little control over how happy we are, the thinking goes, because we can control neither how we feel or what happens to us."
Chapter three-The Mind Controls Happiness More than the Heart - When people are about to engage in an activity they don't usually ask themselves, "Will this make me happier?" They do what they do because it feels good at the moment. Intelligence doesn't necessarily make people happier. What most people lack are the following...
- The awareness that what will make them happy demands a great deal of thought
- The self-discipline to overcome their natural inclination to do what is most pleasurable at the moment
- The wisdom to consistently answer the question, "Will this make me happier or unhappier?"
He believes that there is much suffering in the world and that evil is very real in this world. Instead of being happy when good things happen to us we should be happy when nothing bad happens to us.
Chapter six was about obstacles to happiness. He said that it is our human nature to never be satisfied with anything. A successful ad campaign will read, "If you are not completely satisfied with ____ then call us." Everyone will feel the need to call because we are not ever fully satisfied with anything. No obstacle to happiness is greater than human nature. To be happy we have to battle ourselves. The book focuses a lot on the battle we need to wage against ourselves if we want a happier live.
Our brain not our nature must determine our happiness. "We must be able to, in effect tell our nature that although we hear it and respect it, our minds not our nature, will determine whether we are satisfied." Can we decide to be satisfied with what we have? Makes me think of this. If we are not satisfied with what we have will we allow that dissatisfaction to make us unhappy? We should be able to say to ourselves, "I can be happy with what I have even though I am not satisfied with it." This enables two things:
- We maintain our awareness of what we are feeling while not allowing it to sabotage our happiness
- We can work on reducing whatever it is that causes us dissatisfaction
We need to distinguish between necessary and unnecessary dissatisfactions. An unnecessary dissatisfactions is a dissatisfaction that is either unimportant or changeable. Just enter the Lord's prayer here. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
He asks a very important question that you may be asking yourselves right now. "If indeed, human nature is insatiable and therefor the greatest obstacle to happiness, Why was our nature so created? It would seem that either nature or God played a rather malicious trick on us." He goes on to say that this is in fact a great blessing that human nature cannot be satisfied. If we didn't have this then we would have no motivation to accomplish anything. Human dissatisfaction with illness has lead to cures, dissatisfaction with limitations has lead to inventions, dissatisfactions have lead to greater art, more moral society, democracy. The same is true in our personal realm. We seek better health, improved emotions, better ethics and the list goes on forever. He says, "Thank God for dissatisfaction. It is a distinguishing and ennobling human trait. There is no reason to believe that animals have it..." Animals can be satisfied but humans cannot. Cherish human dissatisfaction but do not let it make you unhappy.
Okay, is this post long enough for you? And sheesh... I am only a tenth into the book. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment