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Corinne Appelberg
Ms. Deby Jizi
UWRT 1102-009
22 February 2016

Double Entry Journal

Citation: Dan Gilbert's TED Talk The Surprising Science of Happiness

Source: Quote (Page# or Paragraph #)

Responses

Ben and Jerry's doesn't have liver-andonion ice cream, and it's not because they
whipped some up, tried it and went, "Yuck."
It's because, without leaving your armchair,
you can simulate that flavor and say "yuck"
before you make it. (01:48)

Without even thinking twice, somethings we

know to be false. Through stimulation of the
flavor, we are able to know that live-andonion ice cream would not taste good.

Because the fact is that a year after losing

the use of their legs, and a year after winning
the lotto, lottery winners and paraplegics are
equally happy with their lives. (02:47)

In many cases, those who win the lottery later

find themselves in debt after splurging on
their huge winning. While paraplegics have
learned to be happy with their lives.

A system of cognitive processes, largely

non-conscious cognitive processes, that
helps them change their views of the world,
so that they can feel better about the worlds
in which they find themselves. (04:30)

I like the way this is stated, it is very

interesting to me the way the human mind
works sometimes without a conscious
thought.

We synthesize happiness, but we think

happiness is a thing to be found. (05:00)

Happiness is not found anywhere; it must be

made within your life to allow yourself to be
the happy person you want to become.

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We smirk because we believe that
synthetic happiness is not of the same
quality as what we might call "natural
happiness." (08:04)

Natural happiness is what we receive when

we get something we want, connecting it to
materialism.

Natural happiness is what we get when we

get what we wanted, and synthetic happiness
is what we make when we don't get what we
wanted. (08:37)

Money cant buy happiness, is a phrase that

is used a lot. Money can make you happy, but
can it provide lengthy happiness or does the
happiness soon wither away?

And in our society, we have a strong belief

that synthetic happiness is of an inferior
kind. (08:37)

The way we make our happiness when we

do not receive what we want creates a sense
of true happiness.

It turns out that freedom -- the ability to

make up your mind and change your mind -is the friend of natural happiness, because it
allows you to choose among all those
delicious futures and find the one that you
would most enjoy. (13:43)

I agree with this, a choice for decisions

always gives you leeway to decide amongst
your options.

The great source of both the misery and

disorders of human life seems to arise from
overrating the difference between one
permanent situation and another. (19:21)

Thinking about something being permanent

makes the decision bigger than something that
is not going to be permanent.

When our fears are unbounded and

overblown, we're reckless, and we're
cowardly. (20:12)

When we dont have set boundaries, we are

likely to be wild or crazy.

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 choose

What we want and what we can actually

receive is sometimes thrown out of
proportion. Resulting in us reaching for things
that are out of reach can become exhausting.

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experience. (20:51)