"The Happiniess Trap"

This book was recommended to me by the psychologist yesterday. We were talking about human emotions, and how people can put a judgement on them. Again, this was something that the BGF workshop went into but it was relevant to the conversation. Many times people say being happy is a good emotion, but being sad is a bad emotion. The truth is that all the emotions are the product of our evolutionary past and all are there for some evolutionary reason. 

For example, anxiety is often viewed as a bad emotion to have, but it has a reason to be there and is part of why we've survived as a species. If a bloody great animal was after us in the jungle in past times, the anxiety would have helped us to be more perceptive and to avoid or escape from the animal. Someone without anxiety in the jungle likely would end up being dinner.

So all these emotions we have aren't good or bad emotions, they're simply what makes us human. Yet we label happiness as being good and strive for the impossible. Nobody can be in a state of happiness all the time, it's just not how humans work. Then when we can't find this elusive happiness we tend to feel like failures, become depressed and anxious. 

I mean it does sound logical doesn't it; "All I want is to be happy". But in reality by wanting this we're setting ourselves up for failure. Feeling sad is as much of being human as feeling happy is. By ignoring or avoiding sadness the problems never get solved and fester inside.

Anyway I just bought the book online here. Interesting the US version of it has 10,000 words chopped out of it for some bizarre reason, so I bought the original Australian version. More expensive but I'd rather have the whole book you know. If anyone's interested you can order it from the above link and get it delivered worldwide.

What if almost everything we believed about finding happiness turned out to be inaccurate, misleading, or false? And what if those very beliefs were making us miserable? What if our efforts to find happiness were actually preventing it? 

A growing body of scientific research suggests that we are all caught in a powerful psychological trap: a vicious cycle, whereby the more we strive for happiness, the more we suffer. This book provides an escape from "the happiness trap", via a revolutionary new development in human psychology: a powerful model for change, known as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). 

ACT helps people to create a rich, full and meaningful life, whilst effectively handling the pain that inevitably comes with it. It has been clinically proven to be highly effective in a wide range of psychological disorders, ranging from depression and anxiety to drug addiction and schizophrenia. 

This book shows you how to apply ACT in your own life to increase self-awareness, develop emotional intelligence, enhance relationships, create a sense of meaning and purpose, access a transcendent sense of self, and fundamentally transform painful thoughts and feelings so they have much less impact and influence over your life. site