The seven secrets of a happy life
By Nick Powdthavee and Carl Wilkinson
Published: August 28 2010 00:23 |in Financial Times
Many of us struggle to find real happiness. Why is that? Studies in psychology suggest that part of the reason is that most of us are very bad at predicting how we’ll react when faced with many of life’s experiences. Consequently, we end up making choices that are potentially harmful to our emotional well-being. According to Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert, we tend to overestimate, by a long way, the extent and duration of the emotional impacts of, say, a pay rise, the death of a loved one, or even moving to an area that’s sunny all year round. This is simply because, when we’re trying to imagine how an experience will affect us emotionally, we tend to focus too much of our attention on the most salient features of the experience in question.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/9a4d4a64-b0b9-11df-8c04-00144feabdc0.html