Dan Gilbert's Stumbling On Happiness

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Happiness is the inner filling of joy and fulfillment although different people have varied definitions( Smail, p.12) It is, therefore, an aspect that is highly subjective since human beings are made happy by uncommon things. Some people confuse fun with happiness, but it is true to say that one may have the former without the latter. Most of the activities that bring fun have been shown to bring unhappiness. Happiness is more of a mental well being than just a short-lived feeling of joy that may be aroused by some external factors( Iwata et al., p 107). This means that the human brain is at the center of this important aspect. The brain has the ability to interpret thoughts and cause either joy or sorrow. This is why some people experience …show more content…

The central idea of the book is that the priviliege to think about the future makes human beings special from animals and that the bias of the mind in anticipation of things to come makes people have deranged feelings( Gilbert, p.35). The human brain tends to exaggerate the anticipated outcomes of a certain issue and fails to tie it to the present. In other word, the mind creates a different future which in the real sense is likely to be similar to the current conditions. The same happens to memories. The ability of the human brain to retain memories of events is also erroneous. This is because it will most likely bring out the only significant events and leave others which may be important in arousing …show more content…

This is also tied to the issue human imagination. Gilbert claims that "imagination tends to add or remove details, but people do not realize it( Gilbert, p.54)." When an individual is thinking about the future, they expects to achieve a lot of things. People also want to accomplish many things within a short time. This is because the brain convinces one that it is possible to accomplish that thing. A college graduate, for example, may expect to acquire a house in a high-end estate and drive an expensive car one year after graduating. The thought of such an accomplishment brings happiness to the mind. However, such expectations fails in most of the cases. The individual is thus left disillusioned and with no hope of the future. The feeling that all is lost after such a short term failure may bring immense sorrow in the life of an

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