Be Happy

QUOTES
Success-related happiness is a very short term state.

You have to treat acute suffering before you treat lack of happiness...you put the biggest fire out first.

Neutral (state of the brain), generally speaking, is mildly exploratory, mildly positive...if your basic needs are met and you're satiated, you're going to be mildly curious about your surrounding.

We're too focused on happy...We want the outcome but we don't wish to undergo the process for getting there.

The root to happiness is to be maximally resposive to everything that happens in your life - the good, the bad, the blah - the everything.

Why do we need to be this ideal? No one is perfect.

There are lots of pathologies associated with excessive positive emotion. Mania, for example, is a disease of positive emotion.

Cocaine is unhealthy happy.

People can adapt to environments that are incresingly stressful so that after awhile they can live and survive within those environments.

We can train ourselves to be more present in the moment.

It's a notion that's dying that the brain is set in stone after a certain time.

Stimuli that indicate you're making progress produce positive emotions.

Mindfulness can bring their attention back to the present and help them see the beauty and value of things that are immediately in front of them and that's not trivial.

People are very fragile.

Our nervous systems are tilted to protect us.

There are people that need meds...but they're not everything.

We're starting to see this type of mindfulness practices and contemplative practices being put into the curriculum of K through 12 and it's inevitable now that we're going to start using this type of therapy as a way of developing the mental muscle.

You don't want to limit the options that are available to people who are suffering.

The advantage to the mindfulness training is that it's a non-drug option and because it involves learning it's likely to be more permanent. Also the probability that it's going to produce negative side effects is very low which is something you can't necessarily say about medications.

Play is great.