The wisdom behind happiness

"tis nothing good or bad But thinking makes it so.” (William Shakespeare) Happiness is something that people can easily acquire, never knowing the power you get when you can be grateful for everything. Subsequently, Dan Gilbert speaks about the science of happiness and how humans perceive happiness, he starts with a pop quiz about two situations one is bad and one is good and he asks the audience to choose one depending on how much happiness they would get from either one, he guesses the obvious choice which is the good one. Then he shows them a graph of how much happiness the two people in those situations feel and both of them feel the same happiness. Gilbert is talking about the power to synthesize happiness and how people can utilize that in their daily lives. He says that happiness either natural or synthesized is the same and that people should try to have a positive outlook on life. He gave examples of that when the drummer of the Beatles got out of the band he said that's was better off now than he was in the band. 

What message Gilberts is trying to convey is that happiness is all around us and that people should try to look at everything with an optimistic view, when something bad happens; your happiness will not get any less, you will still be happy within and people could be happy in all situations. An example that is evidence of this theory is a poor family that is eating dinner together and are having the time of their life contrary to the rich family that is having dinner at one of the best restaurants in the world but isn't enjoying their time. This is not about money or the quality of the food, it is about the environment you put yourself in and what synthesized happiness could do to you. Equally important is that imagination is similar to synthesized happiness and holds the same idea. When your imagination is big you will not see all the bad stuff the poor family has at their home instead you will focus on the good time that they are having and the delicious food that their Mother made. What's more with the wealthy family their imagination led them to ignore the nice place and the quality time that they could be getting with their family but on boring time they are having. Another lesson that you could get from this video is that the quality of an experience is more supreme than the place or the clothes your wear to such a place. Using the same example with the improvised family; they are having fun and focusing on the positive side of the situation and importantly on the quality of the time that they are having. They are enjoying time with their loved ones and the food. Opposing that is the lavish family that is blocking all of the blessings they have and concentrating on the bad time. This is what people go through in their life as you see people could make something good of any situation no matter the circumstances and as Dan Gilbert said “The lesson I want to leave you with from these data is that our longings and our worries are both to some degree overblown because we have within us the capacity to manufacture the very commodity we are constantly chasing when we chose experience."