Dan Gilbert: Psychologist & Happiness Expert!

Dan Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, challenges the idea that we’ll be miserable if we don’t get what we want. Our “psychological immune system” lets us feel truly happy even when things don’t go as planned.

Dan Gilbert believes that, in our ardent, lifelong pursuit of happiness, most of us have the wrong map. In the same way that optical illusions fool our eyes — and fool everyone’s eyes in the same way — Gilbert argues that our brains systematically misjudge what will make us happy. And these quirks in our cognition make humans very poor predictors of our own bliss.

The premise of his current research — that our assumptions about what will make us happy are often wrong — is supported with clinical research drawn from psychology and neuroscience. But his delivery is what sets him apart. His engaging — and often hilarious — style pokes fun at typical human behavior and invokes pop-culture references everyone can relate to. This winning style translates also to Gilbert’s writing, which is lucid, approachable and laugh-out-loud funny. The immensely readable Stumbling on Happiness, published in 2006, became a New York Times bestseller and has been translated into 20 languages.

In fact, the title of his book could be drawn from his own life. At 19, he was a high school dropout with dreams of writing science fiction. When a creative writing class at his community college was full, he enrolled in the only available course: psychology. He found his passion there, earned a doctorate in social psychology in 1985 at Princeton, and has since won a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Phi Beta Kappa teaching prize for his work at Harvard. He has written essays and articles for The New York Times, Time and even Starbucks, while continuing his research into happiness at his Hedonic Psychology Laboratory.

“Gilbert’s elbow-in-the-ribs social-science humor is actually funny. … But underneath the goofball brilliance, [he] has a serious argument to make about why human beings are forever wrongly predicting what will make them happy.”

New York Times Book Review

Dear Lord,

So far today I am doing all right.  I have not gossiped, lost my temper, been greedy, grumpy, nasty, selfish, or over-indulgent.  However, I am going to get out of bed in a few minutes, and I will need a lot more help after that.

Amen

Taken from the First United Methodist Church of Downers Grove, IL weekly newsletter.

How much is enough?  Do you really need 23 pairs of shoes?  How about twelve pairs of jeans?  Is that new-fangled gadget you saw advertised on television something you feel you absolutely must have?  How many “must have” things have you purchased that are still in their original packaging and not being used or (even worse) forgotten about?

Acquiring “things” has become such a habit that we often don’t consider the cost of those acquisitions.  Material possessions cost us storage space, cost us the time it takes to shop and care for them and, more importantly, cost us mental space.

How many of us purchase an item of clothing because it was “on the clearance rack”, never wear it, and end up donating it because it either went out of style or was too big or too small by the time we discovered it in the back of our drawer or closet?  Keep in mind, the more we own, the more we have to care for.  Better to have a few possessions that we absolutely love and really use than a thousand that weigh us down.

Susan Karim

Your Personal Effectiveness Coach

http://myactiontimer.com

© 2009 * MyActionTimer.com . You may use this article in your own publications or web sites as long as NO changes are made to the text and the “Resource Box” above is included in its entirety.

Until you can forgive what happened in the past, you cannot live freely and joyfully in the present.  Don’t waste another second of precious life imprisoned in the past; forgive and forget, or at least forgive and move on.  Remember:  Don’t get even, get angry.  Let it all out and then let it go!  Letting go doesn’t mean suppressing emotions; that’s like putting a bandage on a serious wound.  Sure, you can’t see it when you cover it up, but it’s still festering underneath the bandage.  And it just keeps on getting worse.  The same is true for emotional wounds.  It’s important to air negative feelings and mistakes – then let them go so that you can heal.

Susan Karim

Your Personal Effectiveness Coach

http://myactiontimer.com

© 2009 * MyActionTimer.com . You may use this article in your own publications or web sites as long as NO changes are made to the text and the “Resource Box” above is included in its entirety.

There have been many times in my life when I wanted to scream, “Stop the world – I want to get off!”  What I really wanted was to stop time, so that I could catch up on everything that was making demands on me.

I used to make long lists of things to do and, like everyone who writes lists, I enjoyed the satisfaction of crossing off each task as I completed it.  But the list was endless.  There was always too much to do and too little time.  Not only did I never have enough time, I never had enough money.  I earned a decent income, but the money went out as quickly as it came in- sometimes faster.  I felt like I was working for nothing.

Then, I took a five-day bicycle trip that changed my life.  It was my first vacation in four years.  I rode between 40 and 70 miles each day.  Occasionally, other cyclists accompanied me, but mostly I rode alone.  The trip gave me plenty of time to think.

One day, it dawned on me what was wrong with my life.  I had been “pedaling along,” not realizing that I was lost.  I was not living true to myself or to my values.  I wasn’t even sure who I was anymore.  I just knew I was unhappy.

I was unhappy because I had made some bad choices – about how I spent my time, money, and energy – and I was living with the consequences of those choices.  Thankfully, I realized that I didn’t have to live with those consequences forever.  With the support of friends and family, I found the courage to make new choices.

Extracted From:  One-Minute Tips – Unclutter Your Mind (Introduction) by Donna Smallen