The Happiness Hypothesis

 

Freud's divided the mind into:

·        The Ego; the rational mind,

·        The Super Ego what's society dictates,

 

Corpus Callosus separate the two brain hemispheres:

·        Left for analysis, logic and communication,

·        Right is better in analyzing space..

·        Without the left brain one will not be able to communicate what the right has experienced

 

Confabulation, is a symptom of various memory disorders in which made-up stories fill in any gaps in memory.

 

Evolultion of the brain:

·        Brain started with the hind brain connected to the stem column,

·        Forebrain connected to the front sensory of the animal.

·        Expanded to include

o   Hypothalamus (drives)

o   Hippocampus (memory)

o   Amygdala (emotional learning and responding) ..

o   Neocortex available to humans for making decisions, controls limbic brains

 o        Changing your mind

·        Subliminal messages affect many aspects of our life.

·        People that have similar names tend to marry

 The three ways you can change your style

People who approach style have more activities on the left side while people who withdraw have more activities on the right side

·        Meditation

o   Buddha “When a man knows the solitude of silence and feel the joy of quietness he is then free from fear and sin”

·        Cognitive therapy

o   Cognitive therapy is training the mind to catch the negative thoughts and replace it with a positive one

·        Prozac.

A depressed person believes in one of the three things:

·        I am no good,

·        My word is bleak,

·        My future is hopeless

Medications

·        Prozac, or fluoxetine is part of a family of products that are called SSRI or serotonin selective  uptake inhibitors which leaves more serotonin in the brain

·        Prozac repairs damage that's done by stressed brain and the hippocampus region, this brain has more stress hormones, Prozac works by by preparing the neural growth hormones.

The fault of others

·        To cure hypocrisy (Fault of others) you need to train the elephant,ie; meditation

·        People with positive ideas about themselves are usually happier, have more self esteem and more likeable by others

 

The pursuit of happiness

·        “Good man surrender all attachments, the holy does not spend time on desire, wanted pleasure,” the Buddha

·        We have set point to return to, to change the symptoms you can do one of the three ( meditation cognitive therapy and prozak)

·        H (happiness) = S ( set point, “meditations”) + C (condition of life, “reduce noise”) + V(variability of what you do)

Aspects of happiness

·        Gratifications (non sensory experiences, leads to flow)

·        Pleasure,

 

To know your strengths:

·        https://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/

 Love and attachment

there are two kinds of Love

·        Passionate love and

·        Companion love,

Passionate type does not turn into companion

 Levels of personalities

Psychologist measure personality by the big 5 traits (elephant reaction to various situations, influenced by genes)

1.      Neuroticism (Worriness, anxiety, anger)

2.      Extraversion (Sociability, Assertiveness)

3.      Opening to new experiences

4.      Agreeable or niceness

5.      Conscientiousness

 

Psychologist Dan MacAdams, indicates only 3 levels

1.      Basic traits

2.      Characteristic adaptation such as personal goals, defense and coping mechanisms, values, beliefs, life stage concerns,

3.      Life stories, (this is written by the rider not the elephant)

The need of adversities is more obvious here,

 

Knowledge has two forms

1.      Explicit ( taught in school)

2.      Tacit (procedural ie knowing how, gathered by the elephant)

 

The Felicity (happiness) of virtue

·        Set your heart on doing goods

·        Do it over and over again and it will fill you with joy,

·        “A fool is Happy until his mischief turns against him, any good man may suffer until his goodness flourish”, the Buddha

·        Aristotle nicomachean ethics

·        Plato Republic

·        In the West and special in the US The ethics moved from ethics of virtue to ethics of quandary

 

Divinity with or without God

“God created the angels from the intellect without sensuality, the beast from sensuality without intellect, and humanity from both intellect and sensuality, so when a person intellect overcome his sensuality he is better than the angels, but when his sensuality overcomes his intellect he is worst than the beast” Prophet Mohammed

 

Happiness comes from within

During meditation, scientist Andrew Newberg analyzed the brain in the back parietal lobe, two patches of cortex. Newburgh calls it orientation association areas. Left area keeps track of your body, the right keeps track of the space around you, these two areas are cut off during meditation

 

Links

To know your strengths:

·        https://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/