Solve for Happy (ENG)

Solve for Happy is a startlingly original book about creating and maintaining happiness, written by a top Google executive with an engineer’s training and fondness for thoroughly analyzing a problem. You can find it here.

Solve for Happy cover

I wouuld recommend to read this book for its interesting way, how to look at human’s happiness. I wrote the main ideas for me:

• Happiness is the absence of unhappiness, caused by the misrepresentation and misunderstanding of reality.
• “Your happiness is equal to or greater than your perception of events minus your expectations of life”
• It’s important to understand that you really know nothing, and that time is, in fact, a human invention.
  • But if time is just a human invention, maybe we’d be better off without it? The thoughts and emotions that cause suffering tend to have an attachment to the past or the future, such as grief and shame over the past or anxiety and pessimism for the future, while thoughts in the present tend to be positive, such as amusement or relaxation.
    • Imagine being unhappy because all the potential partners you meet turn out to be unsuited and worrying you might end up alone in life. The actual worry is based on a fear about the future rather than anything actually happening right now.
• You don’t actually have much control over your life, and your fears are often unfounded.
• Brain as layers
  • The filters. There’s so much information to take in from your surroundings that you simply couldn’t cope if you tried to process it all, so a lot of it gets filtered out.
  • The assumptions. If you can’t see the whole picture, your brain fills in the blanks. These could easily be false, however, as they’re simply there to form a “complete” narrative.
  • The predictions. Something that has yet to happen, so why act as if it has?
  • The memories. When you remember something, it’s not necessarily the truth but your own personal record of it.
  • The labels. To make sense of things, we tend to put them in “boxes” we can easily understand based on preexisting associations. Labels don’t take context into account, often bypassing the truth.
  • The emotions. People often act on their emotions first and look for logical reasons to back them up later.
• If there’s a definite risk, the brain often exaggerates (“přehánět” in Czech) the probability.
• Truth/Ways to be happy:
  • Modern life is overly concerned with action and speed, but a calm awareness of the present moment will keep you happy. (Focus on the present moment.)
  • When you have to do something, make sure you only do one thing at a time and fix your attention on it so that you do it well
  • Open yourself up to the potential of change
  • Focus on yourself and what you have, rather than comparing yourself to others
  • Unconditional love is the most important emotion, as it has no expectations, and therefore no disappointments. (Give love and love will return)
  • Death is a fundamental part of existence. Acceptance rather than fear will allow you to properly embrace life.

Written on July 7, 2018