Why are we Happy?

Less than an hour after posting my previous post where I discussed "The Power of Now" I stumbled upon on a talk that was presented at TED 2004 by Harvard psycologist Daniel Gilbert. One of the points he makes at the beginning nicely compliments one of Tolle's points without being vague and spiritual...It made my blogging fingers itch ;)

Gilbert describes how human evolution has resulted in the ability to simulate situations in our minds due to the presence of the frontal lobe. In essence people can make decisions by playing out two scenarios in their head and deciding which would make them happier. I think this illustrates Tolle's statement: "You are not your mind". There is a distinct difference between the images and thoughts in your head and the conciseness that must make the decisions.

Gilbert expands on this stating that whichever choice we make will have no baring on how happy we are in the future. People have the tendency to synthesise happiness to fit their situation even if their situation was initially unwanted. Usually we scoff at people who claim to be better off after they lost everything, but Gilbert claims that this synthesised happiness might be just as good or better as natural happiness (where you actually get what you want).

This is an awesome video, I think I'm going to buy his book..



(video link)