Happy: Why More or Less Everything is Absolutely Fine

by Derren Brown

‘The greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of the parents,’ wrote

notion: ‘What upsets people is not things themselves but their judgements about these things.’1 In other words, it is not events out there that cause our problems but rather our reactions to them: the stories we tell ourselves.

with quotidian aplomb. It’s unclear who

And above all, that cycle of self-blame in which you are likely to find yourself once you’ve gone home and calmed down is based on a lie. In reality, God isn’t doing anything to you, and it’s not your fault when the symptoms return.

Plan for success; prepare for failure. And the universe doesn’t care either way.

Events and our chief aims can be in most cases compared to two forces that pull in different directions, their resultant diagonal being the course of our life.

you do not have the control over your life that you might like to believe. You will of course have certain aims, pulling you in one direction. However, life is constantly pulling back in the other. Irrespective of how much ‘you believe in yourself’, the forces of life (or the universe, or fate) will continue to do their own thing. They operate independently of your wishes. You may put everything into opening a successful coffee shop and making your fortune, but a sudden recession will scupper that plan with no respect for how S.M.A.R.T. your goal was, how

plans. Most of what happens in life is entirely out of your control, and while blind self-belief might disguise that fact for a while, it will eventually prove an anaemic opponent to brute reality.

refers to the cycle of desire-fulfilment (‘hedonism’ means ‘the pursuit of pleasure’): we want something, we perhaps get it, we feel good for a while and then return to whatever default level of happiness or sadness we enjoyed before. Nothing really changes.

the things we desire really do little other than fuel further desires and teach us what greed is. In the accumulation of material things, no deep satisfaction is to be found, other than fleeting pleasure and the temporary delight of impressing

others. Both of these are short-lived (before we return to our default level of happiness), and ultimately controlled by other people or things. We choose whom to impress based on how impressive they seem to us, and if they fail to be convinced by our attempts, then we tend to feel anxious. This is neither a healthy nor a happy cycle.

Sociologists refer to ‘reference group theory’: the idea that in forming our self-identity, we compare ourselves to those in our peer group. Our cognitions, perceptions, attitudes

and conceptions of ourselves are all tied in with those to whom we liken or contrast ourselves. Driven as we are to form these self-evaluations, the groups with which we choose to identify will dictate whether we decide we’re doing well or falling short, and are thus a vital component of our feelings of well-being. Moreover, this process

human needs as divisible into three categories,

Natural and necessary needs – which cause pain if not satisfied.

Essentially food and clothing, which are easy to satisfy. Natural but unnecessary needs – such as sexual satisfaction – which are more difficult to satisfy. Neither natural nor necessary needs – such as the latest gadget, other luxuries and personal fame – which are without end and difficult to satisfy.

we must first do away with the notion that happiness is something straightforward, a simple thing to which we are entitled. Happiness is a chimera: it is imaginary and deceiving in many of its forms. Like the rainbow which so commonly symbolises it, happiness is an optical illusion that retreats or hides itself the closer you approach.

a key to achieving whatever this state might be is to harness the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.

let’s take a look at the importance and pleasure of living a considered life. I am talking about engaging with and owning our life stories; of

being able to step back far

enough to see them for what they are; of finding a way of living that has come from due thought rather than a passive immersion in ...

If we don’t assume more conscious authorship of our stories, others will write them for us, and we will invariably find ourselves fundamentally bored or anxious and prone to any number of complaints from within.

Yet we are all disturbed to one degree or another, all somehow repressed and to varying extents shut off from our true selves: this is the human condition and precisely what we should address to increase our quotient of happiness. The relevant question is whether these disturbances own us or whether we contain or manage them. Either way, the analogy with physical training holds: you don’t need to be suffering from physical under-development to benefit from the gym.

But without any means of identifying and engaging with our stories, we might quickly find ourselves at the mercy of whatever voices

happen to be loudest around us.

The greatest burden a child must bear, we remember from Jung, is the unlived lives of its parents.

Is it not potentially just as disastrous to live one’s life with the goal of dying happily and without regret, just to find that our regret is that we did not live for the moment while we could?

we cannot talk about happiness without distinguishing between two selves that both operate within us: the experiencing self and the remembering self.

we don’t make decisions based on our experiences. We make them based on the stories of our experiences. And we don’t form our stories based on an accurate reflection of experience. We form them like novelists, and we look for a good ending.

remembering self with which

we should be more concerned.

not. Mere pampering to the experiencing self is not enough; we want memories too.

hand. To live well and happily necessitates that we engage with this side of ourselves. If we don’t engage with our stories, taking our cue from passing pleasure, we pander only to our bestial experiencing self. This has an attention span of about three seconds, and its reports are quickly superseded by those of its story-loving, identity-forming superior. We might enjoy plenty of experiences along the way, but they will not tend to correlate with any particular feeling of happiness.

This is the antithesis of a life where our centre of gravity is rooted within ourselves. In the centred life, work, health, family and friends may still make their demands, but we can acknowledge and entertain those forces without feeling them impose directly upon our core selves.

We are missing out if we feel that happiness is a result of lucky circumstance rather than something rooted immovably in us.

it to be solid, our happiness would not rely on fortuity or what we happen to have. It would be fu...

He points to pain and boredom as ‘the two foes of human happiness’3. When our stability relies principally on external factors, we shuttle back and forth between the two. We avoid pain, seek comfort, and become bored. To counter that boredom, we may choose to engage in distracting or competitive activities that bring new forms of stress into our lives.

people from all walks of life, he discovered there is a state of ‘flow’: a ‘prime state’ that brings together the chess player, the surfer, the artist, and others who can lose themselves in an activity and later testify that it is their happiest frame of mind.

When an activity allows us to steer an x=y diagonal, we find ourselves happily in this ‘flow’ state, avoiding the

tedium that arises when our skills outweigh the challenges we face, as well as the anxiety that follows when our obstacles become too great for us.

that to lead a happy and considered life, we should seek to use our intellect in a way that allows us to rise above our instincts and this pertinacious Will.

A considered life

is one in which we aspire to aims other than the procreation and fame that the Will amply encourages, avoiding the swing from pain to boredom and back that would carry us passiv...

considered life also informs and improves that otherwise fickle thing: our self-image. We don’t pay much conscious attention to the mental picture we carry around of ourselves, but it dictates so m...

That self-image is, though, just that: a picture we make in our heads.

It’s a rule in life that the more certain we appear about something, the less we know about it.

1. Humans can know themselves. We can use our reason to examine our unconscious beliefs and values. 2. Humans can change themselves. We can use our reason to change our beliefs. This will change our emotions, because our emotions follow our beliefs. 3. Humans can consciously create new habits of thinking, feeling and acting. 4. If we follow philosophy as a way of life, we can live more flourishing lives.5

Would you live your life over and over again exactly as it happened? Is your centre of gravity within you, with your self-image sturdy and tenacious, or is it outside of you and woefully subject to the inconstancies of fate and the intimations of others? And when you reach the end of this life, will you feel you have lived a life worth living?

Being human is an extraordinary complex and befuddling thing, and it would serve us to remember this as we look for ways to improve our lot.

‘The Truth is Out There’, as Mulder and Scully told us, and it is embodied in simmering, sublime concepts quite external to our limited everyday experience. We have to get beyond our normal way of seeing to apprehend them.