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Epub ISBN: 9781409033394
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Rider, an imprint of Ebury Publishing,
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Copyright © Deepak Chopra 2009
Deepak Chopra has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Published by Rider in 2010
First published in the USA by Harmony Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, in 2009
www.eburypublishing.co.uk
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Design by Maria Elias
ISBN 9781846042379
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Deepak Chopra
Title Page
Dedication
The Ultimate Happiness
First Key:
BE AWARE OF YOUR BODY
Second Key:
FIND TRUE SELF-ESTEEM
Third Key:
DETOXIFY YOUR LIFE
Fourth Key:
GIVE UP BEING RIGHT
Fifth Key:
FOCUS ON THE PRESENT
Sixth Key:
SEE THE WORLD IN YOURSELF
Seventh Key:
LIVE FOR ENLIGHTENMENT
Happiness Will Heal the World
Acknowledgments
Copyright
To the happiness that heals.
Creating Health
Return of the Rishi
Quantum Healing
Perfect Health
Unconditional Life
Ageless Body, Timeless Mind
Journey Into Healing
Creating Affluence
Perfect Weight
Restful Sleep
The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success
The Return of Merlin
Boundless Energy
Perfect Digestion
The Way of the Wizard
Overcoming Addictions
Raid on the Inarticulate
The Path to Love
The Seven Spiritual Laws for Parents
The Love Poems of Rumi
(edited by Deepak Chopra; translated by Deepak Chopra and Fereydoun Kia)
Healing the Heart
Everyday Immortality
The Lords of the Light
On the Shores of Eternity
How to Know God
The Soul in Love
The Chopra Center Herbal Handbook
(with coauthor David Simon)
Grow Younger, Live Longer
(with coauthor David Simon)
The Deeper Wound
The Chopra Center Cookbook
(coauthored by David Simon and Leanne Backer)
The Angel Is Near
The Daughters of Joy
Golf for Enlightenment
Soulmate
The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire
Peace Is the Way
The Book of Secrets
Fire in the Heart
The Seven Spiritual Laws of Yoga
(with coauthor David Simon)
Magical Beginnings, Enchanted Lives
(coauthored by David Simon and Vicki Abrams)
Life After Death
Buddha
The Essential How to Know God
The Essential Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire
The Essential Ageless Body, Timeless Mind
Jesus
The Third Jesus
Why Is God Laughing?
Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul
THE PURPOSE OF life is the expansion of happiness. Happiness is the goal of every other goal. Most people are under the impression that happiness comes from becoming successful, accumulating wealth, being healthy, and having good relationships. There is certainly enormous social pressure to believe that these accomplishments are the same as achieving happiness. However, this is a mistake. Success, wealth, good health, and nurturing relationships are by-products of happiness, not the cause.
When you are happy, you are more likely to make choices that lead to all these things. The reverse isn’t true. Everyone has observed people who are deeply unhappy even after they have attained incredible wealth and success. Good health can be taken for granted and abused. And even the happiest family can find its happiness ruined by a sudden crisis. Unhappy people are not successful, and no amount of money and achievement will change the equation.
So let’s shift our gaze beyond external indications to inner happiness, which we all want to attain and yet which remains elusive. In the last few years psychologists and brain researchers have undertaken the first serious research on happiness. Previously, the field of psychology was almost entirely focused on treating unhappiness, much the way internal medicine is based on treating disease. But just as interest in wellness and prevention has dramatically risen in recent years, so has interest in happiness.
Surprisingly, one of the most controversial topics in this new field of positive psychology is whether human beings are actually meant to be happy. Perhaps we are all pursuing an illusion, a fantasy fueled by occasional moments of happiness that can never turn into a permanent state. Or perhaps some people are genetically predisposed to be happy, and they will be the lucky few who escape what the rest of us experience, which is a kind of low-level contentment at best. Some experts contend that happiness occurs by chance, an emotional surprise that quickly comes and goes, like a surprise birthday party, leaving no permanent change once the event is over.
Leading researchers in the new field of positive psychology, in particular professors Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ed Diener, and Martin Seligman, came up with what they call the happiness formula. These researchers found three specific factors that could be quantified in a simple equation:
H = S+C+V
OR
HAPPINESS = SET POINT+CONDITIONS OF LIVING
+ VOLUNTARY ACTIVITIES
Since this is one of the leading theories of happiness, we’ll explore it before showing that there is a better way to reach the goal. Although it helps point the way, the happiness formula doesn’t go deep enough to uncover the real secret of happiness.
The first factor, S, is the brain’s set point, which determines how naturally happy you are. Unhappy people have a brain mechanism that interprets situations as problems. Happy people, on the other hand, have a brain mechanism that interprets the very same situations as opportunities. So the “glass half full, glass half empty” phenomenon is rooted in the brain, and is “set” in a way that doesn’t vary much over time. According to the researchers, a person’s set point is responsible for something like 40 percent of the experience of happiness. Apparently, this set point is partly genetic. If your parents were unhappy, you have a higher likelihood of being unhappy as well. But there are also childhood influences to take into account.
Children’s brains have neurons that mirror the brains of adults in their surroundings. These so-called mirror neurons are responsible for the way children learn new behaviors, so the theory goes. As they develop, young children don’t have to imitate their parents in order to learn something new; they only have to observe them, and certain brain cells will fire in a way that mirrors the activity. For example, a baby being weaned from breast-feeding watches how her parents eat. As they reach for food and put it into their mouths, certain areas of their brains light up. Simply watching this activity leads the same areas to light up in the infant’s brain. In this way the newly forming infant brain learns a new behavior without ever having to go through trial and error alone.
This model has already been tested in monkeys and theoretically extended to humans. It provides a physical explanation for something as mysterious as empathy, the ability to feel what someone else is feeling. Some people have this ability; others don’t. A few saintly individuals have so much empathy that they can hardly bear it when someone else is suffering. Research with MRIs and CAT scans suggests that brain function plays a major role in empathy. A child’s neurons mirror the emotions of adults around him, leading the child to actually feel what his parents feel. So if a youngster is surrounded by unhappy adults, his nervous system will be programmed for unhappiness, even before he has any cause for unhappiness himself.
Why doesn’t every child learn empathy? Because brain development is wildly complex and never the same for two babies. When we were infants, all kinds of brain functions were being programmed at the same time, and for some of us, empathy was only assigned a minor role. This is a troubling inequality, and it extends to happiness. When you see the brain has a set point for happiness, traceable either to genetics or childhood influences, it’s all too easy to conclude that nothing can be done about it. However, this would be a mistake, because neither the brain nor your genes are fixed structures; instead, they are in process every minute of your life, constantly changing and evolving. You are still being influenced at the genetic level by new experiences. Every choice you make sends chemical signals coursing through your brain, including the choice to be happy, and each signal helps to shape the brain from year to year.
In the overall picture, research has shown that the brain’s set point can be changed by the following:
Drugs that act as mood elevators, which work only in the short term and have side effects.
Cognitive therapy, which changes the brain by helping us change our limiting beliefs. We all tell ourselves stories in our heads that provoke unhappiness. Repeating the same negative belief over and over (“I am a victim,” “I am unloved,” “Life isn’t fair, something’s wrong with me,” etc.) creates neural pathways that reinforce negativity by turning it into a habitual way of thinking. Such beliefs can be replaced with others that are not simply more positive, but are a better match with reality (I may have been a victim in the past but I don’t have to remain that way; I can find love if I choose better places to look for it, etc.). In treating patients whose lives are dominated by negative beliefs, psychologists have found that altering really fundamental beliefs can be as effective in changing brain chemistry as prescribing drugs.
Meditation, which alters the brain in many positive ways. The physical effects of sitting quietly and going inward are amazingly extensive. It took a long time to unravel the puzzle. Researchers had to work against the Western assumption that meditation was mystical or at best a kind of religious practice. Now we realize that it activates the prefrontal cortex—the seat of higher thinking—and stimulates the release of neurotransmitters, including dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and brain opiates. Each of these naturally occurring brain chemicals has been linked to different aspects of happiness. Dopamine is an antidepressant; serotonin is associated with increased self-esteem; oxytocin is now believed to be the pleasure hormone (its levels also elevate during sexual arousal); opiates are the body’s painkillers, which also provide the exhilaration associated with runner’s high. It should be obvious, then, that meditation, by creating higher levels of these neurotransmitters, is a more effective way of changing the brain’s set point for happiness. No single drug can simultaneously choreograph the coordinated release of all these chemicals.
The second factor in the happiness formula is C, or conditions of living. Because we all want to improve our quality of life, we take it for granted that moving from bad conditions to good ones will make us happier. But apparently this factor accounts for only 7 to 12 percent of the total happiness experience. If you win the lottery, for example, at first you will be ecstatically happy. But by the end of one year you will have returned to your baseline level of happiness or unhappiness. After five years almost all lottery winners report that the experience has actually made their lives worse. Experts on stress have coined the term