Nancy Etcoff: Happiness and its surprises
http://www.ted.com Cognitive researcher Nancy Etcoff looks at happiness -- the ways we try to achieve and increase it, the way it's untethered to our real circumstances, and its surprising...
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This is called Hooked on a Feeling: The Pursuit of Happiness and Human Design. I put up a somewhat dour Darwin, but a very happy chimp up there. My first point is that the pursuit of happiness is obligatory. Man wishes to be happy, only wishes to be happy, and cannot wish not to be so. We are wired to pursue happiness, not only to enjoy it, but to want more and more of it. So given that that's true, how good are we at increasing our happiness? Well, we certainly try. If you look on the Amazon site, there are over 2,000 titles with advice on the seven habits, the nine choices, the 10 secrets, the 14,000 thoughts that are supposed to bring happiness. Now another way we try to increase our happiness is we medicate ourselves. And so there's over ...
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This is called Hooked on a Feeling: The Pursuit of Happiness and Human Design. I put up a somewhat dour Darwin, but a very happy chimp up there. My first point is that the pursuit of happiness is obligatory. Man wishes to be happy, only wishes to be happy, and cannot wish not to be so. We are wired to pursue happiness, not only to enjoy it, but to want more and more of it. So given that that's true, how good are we at increasing our happiness? Well, we certainly try. If you look on the Amazon site, there are over 2,000 titles with advice on the seven habits, the nine choices, the 10 secrets, the 14,000 thoughts that are supposed to bring happiness. Now another way we try to increase our happiness is we medicate ourselves. And so there's over ...
