Jul 15 2008
The Beginning
This may be one of the most difficult questions I have ever been posed…but why not start out with a challenging one.
How do you find true happiness. Does it even exist?
True happiness does exist…but not in other people or things. Happiness is something that comes from within. The key to happiness lies in your perception, so in fact, the way to find true happiness is to control your perception of life. Might sound a little confusing, but it’s something I pride myself on being able to do, so let me explain a little bit more.
I wrote my college capping paper on Quantum theory and William James (the first American Psychologist). Here’s some information I learned during my research:
William James created a concept that he called the DIE model or Data, Interpretation, Emotional Response model. I believe that this concept clearly describes my view on the key to achieving happiness.
1.Data: The input that is given to the person…this input can be in any form: seeing, talking, smelling, etc.
2.Interpretation: This is the important step. The data just collected means nothing to you until you interpret it. This means you need to become aware of yourself and control your interpretations.
3.Emotional Response: In this case, happiness is desired.
So how does one control their interpretations and ensure happiness? Most importantly, use introspection to determine how you normally interpret data. For example, lets say your mother has to borrow your car for the day to go to work so you can’t go run my errands. You get angry. Obviously your interpretation in this example was negative, perhaps something along the lines of “what an inconvenience, now I have to wait until tomorrow to go out”. By becoming aware of your negative interpretation, you are now on the path to fixing it. The way to change your anger to happiness, or at least, a content frame of mind is to instead say to yourself”Now my mom can go to work, and I can clean the house like I’ve been meaning to for a while”.
Seems utterly simple in one situation, but, when you change your interpretation of many situations that occur daily in your life you will notice that you are happier. Additionally, you will have to think less and less about changing your interpretations as time goes on because they become more positive through practice. You will no longer be prone to negative responses, but rather positive one; and all of this achieved by simply changing your interpretations.
I hope this has helped…let me know if you need any clarifications.
112 Responses to “The Beginning”
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Very true, I am a naturally happy person but I have my moments like everyone else. Most of the time, I pick my battles and just chose to be happy and it works for me.
Alicia
http://todaystyle.today.com/
I love this, below… yet I feel true happiness does it even exist, yet it is fleeting and easy to obtain for a while. But True Joy, is the key and can trickle down to happiness. See with joy of heart it give me the ability to be both happy and sad yet sit have a joyfully heart.
1.Data: The input that is given to the person…this input can be in any form: seeing, talking, smelling, etc.
2.Interpretation: This is the important step. The data just collected means nothing to you until you interpret it. This means you need to become aware of yourself and control your interpretations.
3.Emotional Response: In this case, happiness is desired.
Chato
latest blog:
http://mentalhealthhumor.today.com/2008/07/14/mental-health-humor-ask-dr-bob-bob-how-do-i-leave-my-house
So where dose Quantum Theory come into play?
I am dreading the answer being something along the lines of “The Secret” or “What the Bleep Do we Know…” but I ask anyway.
And I do see one minor flaw in the D*I*E method, and it is this, it lends itself too well to simply lying to yourself. That is my mother’s favorite trick. She will simply say “Why don’t you just tell yourself it IS the way you want it?” I see that as too much of a short term results based plan.
Simply choosing to be happy sounds simple, but I somehow doubt that it really is, and the multitude of Self Help books and videos on the market today only supports my argument. If it were that easy, or even possible at all, there would be no market for these things.
In your self awareness, have you ever considered that you are a person who just naturally tends to be happy? Just as there are people who naturally tend to be overweight, or tend to be energetic, or tend to be depressed, it may sound easy to one who has a tendency toward happiness to feel like it is simple, but those others will vehemently disagree.
I can tell you when I am helping someone, I often find them staring at me or making some comment about what I am doing, astounded that I do easily what they can hardly do, or not do at all. Well, I am 6′4″ tall and weigh 240 lbs, and that is not because I am overweight. I can do easily what others would not even attempt.
You may question the relevance, but our emotions are as much a part of our physiology as muscles. By exercising them both they become healthy. Emotions effect, and are effected by our physical well being. To deny an emotion, any emotion, is paramount to suppressing it and along that road lies trouble.
I will pass along an anecdote from Leonard Nimoy who played Spock in the original Star Trek series, and several movies. In one of the many books on the series he described playing the emotionlessly logical Vulcan. He described periods of finding himself crying for no reason at all, or none he could easily identify. It was later that he realized it was the suppression of emotion, even while acting a role, that caused its natural release in other forms and at odd times when no other natural influence seemed to be at cause.
IFLING.TODAY.COM
I’m a little frustrated..I just wrote an extremely long response that was deleted.
Anyways, Quantum theory comes into play (very simply stated) because many quantum physicists believe that people create their own realities based on their perceptions. I went more into depth in my paper, obviously, than I did here. My research was conducted with, among many other books, “Introduction to Quantum Theory”-Hameka and “Quantum Reality: Beyond the New Physics”-Herbert
And to address your question of me just being a happy person. I believe that introspection has made me a happy person. There have been many times in my life where I have heard words come out of my mouth that I was not proud of, or a had feeling I didn’t want to have…by looking at why I felt and acted certain ways I have been able to change and become the person I want to be. Of course, I am not suggesting that anyone suppress their feelings. Like anyone else, I have times of sadness, disappointment, anger…there is no way to eliminate that from life but it is possible to not be an angry person but simply a happy person that is angry.
Yes, I was anticipating that Quantum involvement. It is the same interpretation used in “The Secret” and “What the Bleep…” even if it does not come from those sources.
Yes, there is the potential that because of the seemingly elastic, fluid nature of the universe at the quantum level, that perception should influence reality. And taking that statement alone it is easy to build this sort of philosophy around it. The problem occurs when you consider how many forms of life there are on this planet alone, ignoring for the moment the possibility of life in other solar systems and galaxies. After all, the ocean is fluid, but try to move it.
Start with amoebas, or plankton, creatures whose entire life is determined by stimulus response. We know they existed millions of years before larger forms. In fact single celled organisms were the first forms of life. Lacking a consciousness, who was determining what their reality was for all that time? And if they were doing it, why did the planet not simply remain the perfect environment for only them? And that question can be extrapolated into so many questions I would not even start to list them here.
Now lets look at all potential life. It is highly likely that other planets did not take so many evolutionary dead ends as ours did, or depend on a natural disaster of planetary scale such as caused the extinction of the dinosaurs for an intelligent dominant species to arise. If there is extra-solar life, some of it must be far more advanced than we. And by extension far better able to determine their own reality, because if Quantum is a law, and string theory the Unifying force of the universe, they must know it as well or better than we and have had longer to practice. Are we being subjected to their reality?
Since there are measurable, provable laws to how the universe functions, then there must be one consciousness that is deterministic of what the universe should be, because if all consciousness is equally deterministic, then there can be no physical laws unless we all agree, and we do not. Was the earth flat until the day it was proved not to be?
Or does the idea that there is one consciousness prove the existence God? Which god? How many have there been? Of course you could say they are all just interpretations of the same god, but then you have to take into account that perception creates reality, and all those interpretations must become realities and all those gods exist and you have the same problem of battling realities.
The most likely is that if you exist at the quantum level, that yes you can effect reality, at that scale. But once you go beyond the the subatomic scale Newton and Einstein still make the rules.
And consider that nothing is created or destroyed, ever. It only changes form: matter to energy, energy to matter. If we are all out there creating your own reality, whose are you stealing? What are you consuming? And Sir Isaac was a kook in many ways, but he did get one thing right and it pervades very deeply into physical law: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Consider that without laws that override perception, every reality we create,either creates an opposing reality somewhere else, or destroys one.
Even if it occurs in one of eleven dimensions required for String Theory, and thus Quantum, I for one, do not crave that responsibility.
Happiness is a journey, not a destination….
~Kelly
http://30somethingandsearching.today.com/
So is Chemotherapy, that does not mean everyone should try it, nor want to stay there all the time.
That is the problem with platitudes.
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