Happy: Why More or Less Everything is Absolutely Fine

by Derren Brown

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference.

Two powerful, positive consequences result from practising this non-attachment: we learn to value those things more by appreciating their transience in our lives, and we are more prepared for the moment we lose them.

learn to desire what you already have, and you will have all you need.

Remind yourself that what you love is mortal, that what you love is not your own. It is granted to you for the present while, and not irrevocably, nor for ever, but like a fig or bunch of grapes in the appointed

season; and if you long for it in the winter, you are a fool … Henceforth, whenever you take delight in anything, bring to mind the contrary impression. What harm is there while you

Ambition means tying your well-being to what other people say or do. Self-indulgence means tying it to the things that happen to you. Sanity means tying it to your own actions.

I am responsible for how I feel about external events. What am I doing to give myself this feeling? Is this thing that’s upsetting me something which lies under my control? If not, what if I were to decide it’s fine and let it go?

‘You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realise how seldom they do.’7

If we don’t do something for a long time, it is difficult to then do it when we need to. And, likewise, failure is not important (for everyone will fail as life and fortune sometimes prove too much for us to virtuously handle); tenacity is the key. ‘Getting back in the saddle’ is how this

embrace tenacity over perfection.

Nothing prepares us like preparation itself.

we are not aiming to ‘let go’ of thoughts like the

Buddhists; rather we want to rationally engage with them.

Anger is by far the most destructive and pervasive of the passions.

Seneca tells us that we do not require anger to motivate us: that the impulse towards duty and virtue should suffice. This

‘Life, if we attach ourselves to it, alienates us from our own humanity.’9

Regardless of our temperament, it clearly serves us to be less bothered by irritants, displays of disrespect and transgressions of perceived rules.

amusement, we were just watching our

Anger, then, gets in the way of us making our point. We may feel desperately entitled to it, due to feelings of panic, or the outrage we feel in response to the story we have concocted about other people’s motives and so on. But if given free rein, it will defeat our objective: to express ourselves convincingly.

Anger destroys relationships and cuts through love of any sort. ‘When anger is present, neither marriage nor friendship is endurable;

we reserve our real fury for those people whom we have admitted into our most intimate circles. We can only feel betrayed by those whom we love and trust, and it is betrayal that often stings us the most.

No passion disturbs the soundness of our judgement as anger does.

replace the unhelpful thoughts with more positive ones, through a rational process of sifting for evidence that could support or undermine the anxiety in question. Then the patient would apply the same process to deeper beliefs, which might be responsible for generating such negative thoughts in the first place. This is a truly cognitive model and recognisably a systematised version of the Stoic approach.

Trigger > judgement > inhibitions > behaviour.

The best course is to reject at once the first incitement to anger, to resist even its small beginnings, and to take pains to avoid falling into anger.

we tend to suffer from one of two basic fears: the fear of abandonment or the fear of being overwhelmed. The former tends to make us meet stress with anxiety, the latter to retreat.

So we need wait only long enough to consider our phrasing and take responsibility for our feelings. To wait so long that we never bring up our concerns is likely to do both parties a disservice. Expressing our unhappiness in a sensitive way is one of the most productive things we can do in a relationship.

his striking kindness of which we are so fond; another’s

When you run against someone’s wrong behaviour, go on at once to reflect what similar wrong act of your own there is.38

‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.’39

When people injure you, ask yourself what good or harm they thought would come of it. If you understand that, you’ll feel sympathy rather than outrage or anger.

were

When a person is rude, or aggressive, or in some way riles us, we should, where we can find a moment of pause and wherewithal, appreciate they are acting from a place of pain. They are dragging around their own baggage, and right now is most likely a particularly bad time for them. We know how vile we can be when we are stressed, hungry, feeling abandoned or overwhelmed. At those moments, we have a desperate need for the world to slow down and appreciate that we are struggling. However strong people may appear, they struggle too, and when they upset us, they are very likely in pain.

In the same way that we can adjust our desires in life to more accurately reflect what is available, we can also adjust

our expectations of other people to mirror reality. Seneca would

Do not seek to have events happen to you as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they

do happen, and your life will go well.

We are moving from blaming others (for their actions) to blaming ourselves

(for our judgements) to blaming no one. Marcus writes: ‘The gods [for which we can substitute ‘fortune’, or ‘the onward momentum of all things’] are not to blame.

with the world creates less room for distress. What acts as a barrier to accepting this? Once again, our inflated egos.

A better strategy is to treat fame and riches as pleasant side effects.

pay attention to what we need.

as

part of a considered life, he suggests we become more aware of what our priorities are:...

We need to be more imaginative, more patient, more attentive to the lessons of our own experience, more serious about the things we care for, more canny, more independent in our judgements. But most importantly, we have to figure out what we actually need.

Most people are respectful and friendly, and it’s up to me whether I focus on the positive or negative aspects.

W. B. Yeats warns us: ‘Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.’

worse. The experience of fame is primarily one of widening the extremes between what is enjoyable and what is unpleasant, which does little to affect happiness.

The development of your talent and the energy with which you approach that aspect of your life are of course two things that are under your control. Success itself is not.

recognise and beware the toxic blend of low self-esteem and grandiose self-regard known only to the truly damned.