THE ACTUAL, EVOLUTIONARY FACTORS CAUSING HAPPINESS
THE "SECRET" TO MANAGING HAPPINESS
tba
Happiness is a higher, more enduring form of "feeling good".
We are driven by our feel good (and feel bad) chemicals to do that which causes us to survive. Those chemicals are what causes our sensation, aka "feelings". Our life is the sum total of our feel goods. Of course, we call this our "experience" of life. (See The Story Of Our Happy And Our Unhappiness Chemicals.)
We are here to have good (chemical) experiences. Life is all about experiences.
These include eating, having sugar, and other such survival actions, but if we do those inappropriately (and/or stupidly) we will incur some bad experiences.
Of course, it is not the quantity of experiences that produce our life quality, but it is the value of those experiences. A feeling of competence and ability to handle life has a value that is 1,000's of times that of eating ice cream. Each time of recalling that feeling of competence has more value than the ice cream feeling, but it also produces multiple effects over our lives, as it serves as a "background" feeling of life. While we are doing other things, we also have a sense of confidence that makes us feel better - if we don't have that sense of confidence then we will feel bad, as our chemicals will be avidly trying to spur us on with feel bad impulses to get us moving.
If we could just generate these feeling directly at our command we would be happy. But that is not the way it works. The human brain operates of off "associations", so we must do those things that cause associations that cause good feelings and avoid those that don't. Of course, if we are smart, we will change the associations so that there are more that will be beneficial for us and fewer that cause us to feel bad.
what can we build in?
Survival feeling good → feel good
stuff value units
↘
Net Happiness
"feel good"
↗
Poor feels bad feel bad
surival value units
+ +
Bad strategies Feel bad feel bad ↗
bad results value units
Many things have a feel good plus a potential feel bad, if overdone, so they have "net" values. ("Net" is the sum of some negative values subtracted from positive values.)
Eating sugar might have a value of 5 units of feel good. Eating too much sugar might have a value of 8 units but a "feel bad" of 4 units, for a net of 4 feel good units.
Some things produce alot of feel good units and some produce only a few. If we do too many of those that produce just a few, then we'll be pushing out the ones that have a greater feel good.
The "art of life" is in knowing how to evaluate the consequences and then choosing what will produce the greatest benefit for our efforts.
The job of life is to manage the process for the maximum value of feel good.
To do this we must learn what the consequences are. To know what the consequences are we must learn how the consequences are produced - we need to know how things work! (Otherwise, we are out in the cold, subject to life's whims - and most likely unhappy and most definitely far less happy than we could be!!!!!)
eating, sugar
fat (satiation)
What feels feel bad value units
bad?
poor survival
What is wired in? Is there something we can "unwire" or "rewire"? We can rewire alot of our basic reactions, but some we probably can't. We can rewire the associations by figuring out what is correct and/or beneficial and then installing them so that they will be available to fire off when we do something that is associated.
we harvest what is left, using the wiring to the best of our advantage.
happiness is not some mysterious force that just happens from random events or magic...
some things I do not have to make myself so unhappy about...
the value of a nice memory - priceless, as they say in the commercials. The benefit can be used over and over again, for quite a high (chemical) return. In a sense, we can "inject" ourselves with this means - at no detriment to our health but at a great benefit in how I feel about life.
