This is how your brain sabotages your happiness
In this excerpt from The Gap and the Gain, authors Benjamin P. Hardy and Dan Sullivan say if you think that “happiness” and “success” are something you “pursue” and will have in your future, then you’re in trouble. You’re making yourself and others around you miserable
By | BENJAMIN P. HARDY | DAN SULLIVAN
“There is no way to happiness—happiness is the way.” —Thich Nhat Hanh
Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence in 1776, and Americans have been unhappy ever since. One specific phrase has come to define American culture and psychology: “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Even as a young man, Jefferson struggled with the idea of happiness. He believed we should aspire to it, but that its actual attainment was likely impossible. In 1763, the 20-year-old Jefferson wrote a letter to a college classmate, John Page. He shared a recent experience of being rejected by a woman. “Perfect happiness, I believe, was never intended by the Deity to be the lot of one of his creatures in this world; but that he has very much put in our power the nearness of our approaches to it, is what I have steadfastly believed.”
The pursuit of an unreachable happiness was part of Jefferson’s credo.
