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I didn't set out to write a book on on
happiness uh I set out uh I guess in my
own life I set out to figure out the
meaning of life because I was a Suburban
kid at the age of 17 who read waiting
for gdau and was already pretty much an
atheist and began to think oh my God
there's no meaning to life I'd better
major in philosophy um so that was my
personal Quest that led to the book uh
along the way uh life had a lot of
twists and turns for me um um I didn't
uh I didn't get a job my first time out
of grad school ended up doing a postdoc
in health psychology which taught me a
lot about the conditions of human
flourishing and human health um I was
assigned to teach introductory
psychology at the University of Virginia
and that forced me to review the entire
field of psychology uh and in reviewing
all of psychology I I found myself
looking for or choosing quotations from
the ancients from poetry to help my
students understand um how the mind
works how the heart Works um and it was
only once I did that that I thought hey
there are a lot of these great quotes I
wonder how many uh uh great truths there
are I wonder how many um insights the
Ancients had so it's really just a set
of coincidences and flukes that led me
to write a book about the great
psychological truth which my publisher
then labeled a book about
happiness
I think the the greatest truths the ones
that you find in every culture that has
any sort of history of reflection and
writing uh the greatest truth is that
there's nothing good or bad but thinking
makes it so that's the way Shakespeare
put it um but you get basically the same
idea from Buddha uh from the Bhagavad
Gita in India and from the stoics in in
ancient Greece and Rome um so in
understanding that uh the world doesn't
usually affect us directly it's how it's
what we we do with it it's the filters
that we put on it uh that's the
foundation of certainly most pop
psychology uh and of a lot of
psychotherapy cognitive therapy so that
I think is the greatest truth but if you
take that to its logical conclusion you
get a psychology or philosophy of life
that says stop striving um uh look
within meditate disengage and the
conclusion I came to in writing the
happiness hypothesis it wasn't where I
started uh was that that contemp
contemplative life that life of
reflection that stoic life might have
worked for some people in some times but
it's generally a bad idea for us
westerners uh many of us who are not
anchored in a religion uh we feel like
we're seeking many of us end up at
Buddhism many of us think oh so wise oh
meditate reflect withdraw um of course
you can still be engaged in the world in
a way but oh you know passionate
engagement is bad for you um I disagree
I think that we are passionate creatures
who really live our fullest life when we
are deeply engaged when we feel
successes
uh uh and exal in them when we feel
losses and tragedies and are hurt by
them U so I came to the conclusion that
Eastern ideas of withdrawal may not be
right for modern westerners now a lot of
uh modern Buddhists have given me flak
for this because they say oh no Buddhism
is compatible uh with a modern life and
sure modern American Buddhism is because
it's modern American if you read the
ancient texts they're pretty severe I
mean they really are not uh the sort of
thing that you would think is compatible
with really throwing yourself into to
life and being a part of
it the Divide itself is the other
greatest truth so uh um uh there is
nothing good or bad but thinking makes
it so being the second one the first the
most basic fact in Psychology is that
the mind is divided into parts that
often conflict um Freud brought this to
everyone's awareness but he had a kind
of an odd scheme of how these parts are
he had an unconscious that was deep and
dark and repressive and sexual and
violent uh the unconscious can be all of
those things but mostly the unconscious
is just the 99% of stuff that you're not
thinking about right now most of which
you can never think about because you
can't see you can't look inside and see
the operation of your mind um so almost
everything we do uh is automatic uh yet
we're not aware of that we feel uh we
feel like um there's a circle of light
I'm looking within it uh we're like the
drunk who lost his keys and is looking
under the street light and the cop says
where'd you lose your keys you say back
in the alley but the light's so much
better over here um so the Divide itself
refers to the fact that we are basically
animals with animal brains uh these
animal brains run our lives um they're
very good at it uh we are like a rider
on top of a gigantic elephant we can
steer the elephant and if he's not busy
he'll go where we want um but if he has
other desires he'll often go where he
wants in part this comes with with
maturity in part this comes with the
development of your frontal cortex so
the frontal areas of the brain are
especially involved in self-control in
suppressing your initial your your
initial instinct to act uh this is why
teenagers are so impulsive this is why
it's terrible to allow the death penalty
for teenagers because they really don't
have working brains yet um so a lot of
it comes with maturity uh Psychotherapy
can help some people especially people
who are highly neurotic who are always
making problems for themselves they need
to get a better working relation ship
between the Rider and the Elephant um in
part I think you get it just from
watching yourself stumble around in life
make mistakes uh and then uh read a
little psychology and stop blaming
yourself realize that uh I'm flawed I'm
complicated I'm divided and I'm doing
the best I
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can there is some research suggesting
that years and years and years of
meditation can have a lasting impact on
the brain This research is isn't well
replicated yet but it may be true um I
think that we Americans in particular
tend to think too directly about
problems uh if there's a problem we want
to basically go in with a screwdriver or
else drop bombs on it um a better way to
solve problems is to think indirectly
and try to change the environment so I
think you can gain much better
self-control not So Much by working on
yourself as by looking at the situations
you're in and the people you hang around
uh and changing your environment if you
want to effect on animals Behavior you
want to be very careful about what
stimuler in its environment and you have
to look at us as
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animals