Week 11 Measuring the Costs

 

This week the study of an article entitled “Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” from the Acton School of Business had a profound effect on me. I do not feel a summary can do it justice, it contains so many principles and truths that contain such power and is something I will read again and refer to it often. I shared it with some of the people in my life that are most important to me as I feel it will be able to have a positive affect on them as well.

 If pressed to share what stood out most to me, I would share the following thoughts and quotes:

·         Once you have abandoned a foolish quest for the ephemeral rewards of happiness, wealth, and power, you can begin to look for your true calling on this earth—a Hero’s Journey. To do this, you must first learn to lose yourself. Unbundling this paradox will require you to accomplish three tasks.

·         We seem to confuse enjoyment, a transitory experience, with the deeper and more complex experience of satisfaction. Satisfaction requires looking past ephemeral joy to trends in our levels of happiness. Measuring satisfaction requires weighing and balancing the good with the bad in life and getting some sense of your general level of contentment.

·         We do a poor job predicting how recent events will make us feel in the future. The human brain is not sensitive to our absolute level of happiness but is sensitive to short-term change and comparison to others. As a result, we greatly overestimate how the gain or loss of material goods or social standing will affect us.

·         We also overestimate the negative effects that setbacks and failures will have on our long-term happiness. People have shown they cope well with many challenges, including the loss of limbs or life-threatening illnesses. For example, even individuals who have become paraplegics because of a spinal cord accident will have more positive than negative emotions within only eight weeks of the accident.

·         Quite simply, we long for fulfillment while engaged in a futile pursuit of happiness.

·         Our inward focus makes us captive to our emotions instead of drawing value and strength from them. We tend to enjoy being victims. We focus on slights and magnify pain until we are obsessed with past hurts instead of future possibilities.

·         We push others away even though we need relationship and intimacy. We seek unconditional love but rarely offer the same in return. Instead, we prefer to compare ourselves to others in ways that make us feel superior.

·         A Hero’s Journey does not promise a life full of happiness. On the contrary, it means facing “dragons and giants,” challenges that stretch you to your limits and sometimes beyond.

·         Overcoming challenges releases chemicals like dopamine in our brains that make us feel good.

·         If you choose instead to see life as a gift, you are likely to marvel each day at your good luck and the kindness of others.

·         Training yourself to suppress negative chatter and replace it with positive thoughts does make a difference.

This is only a small sampling of the things I love about this article, there is so much more I could include but these are some of the principles and thoughts that I want to remember.