3 Lessons learned from Happy by Derren Brown

In this weeks blogpost I am going to be talking about another book, which I just finished reading recently and which completely changed the way I think about Happiness. I think it's an absolute must read in the world of stoicism and self develoment. The book is really dense in value and I could talk endlessly about the valuable lessons I learned in this book, but to not ramble on for pages I want to put my focus on the 3 most valuable lessons I learned while reading this book.

1. "What upsets people ist not the things themselves, but their judgements about these." This quote really stuck with me and was a real eye opener. Too often in life, we encounter events, which negatively influence our level of hapiness, but most of the time it is not the event itself, it's the story we tell ourselves that causes anxiety. So let's keep in mind that whenever some external event causes negative thoughts and feelings, tell yourself that those feelings are caused by the story that the voice in your brain is telling you. We have the power to change our attitude to those sorts of events. A way to change the stories you tell yourselves, is to think how someone you know would react to that situation in a more positive way.
2. "Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame." This is especially true, when it comes to material possesions. We buy and buy more stuff with the the train of thought, that those things will increase or level of hapiness. This increase of hapiness in not long lasting and it often only fuels further desires instead of giving us long and deep satisfaction. So we want somthing, we perhaps get it, feel good for a while and then return to our default level of hapiness. In addition we often buy those material things just to impress others. And if you would ask yourself the question, whether you would still want to buy this thing, if you were the last person on this planet, the answer would most likely be no. And it gets worse, when the people we were trying to impress aren't impressed by our latest purchase, we get anxious. This is obviously a bad way of living our lives and we should instead focus on the things, that truly make us happier, which are intimate and good relationships with people we love and enjoy spending time with.
3. Don't try to change the things you cannot control. Once we recognize that the only things which are under our controll are our thoughts and our actions there is a lot less to worry about and for that reason a lot less to feel unhappy about. Things which are not under our control includes what people think, what people think of us, how people behave , how well people behave, how rude people are and so on and so for. So whenever we worry about somthing, think it through and ask yourself: Is this thing under my controll, is this somehing I can influence and if it's not, just leave it be and go on with your life. Because when we are trying to controll something, we cannot control, we will most defnitly fail and get frustrated. And whenever we let go of things, which we cannot control, nothing bad will happen, basically nothing will happen at all, but we will feel an awfull lot better, because we go less stuff to worry about.

I hope you learned something interesting in this weeks blogpost, which you can apply to your own life, but I want to encourage to give the book a read, because there are definitely a lot more valuable lessons in this book, that I had to leave out.

Cheers Emil