The secret of success

is concentrating interest in life, interest in sports and good times, interest in your studies, interest in your fellow students, interest in the small things of nature, insects, birds, flowers, leaves, etc. In other words to be fully awake to everything about you & the more you learn the more you can appreciate & get a full measure of joy & happiness out of life."

LeRoy Pollock to his 16-year-old son, Jackson Pollock, inAmerican Letters 1927-1947: Jackson Pollock & Family

The secret of success is concentrating interest in... • literary jukebox

The Secret

"The secret of happiness — or of purpose, for the semantically scrupulous — is a kind of holy grail of human existence. We probe its science and psychology, scour its geography, go after it with empirical enthusiasm, seek it in the wisdom of our greatest heroes.

But might the faith that happiness is possible be the very secret to its attainment? This beautiful 1964 poem by Denise Levertov (1923-1997), entitled “The Secret,” makes me infinitely happy."

THE SECRET

Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry.

I who don’t know the
secret wrote
the line. They
told me

(through a third person)
they had found it
but not what it was
not even

what line it was. No doubt
by now, more than a week
later, they have forgotten
the secret,

the line, the name of
the poem. I love them
for finding what
I can’t find,

and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so that

a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines

in other
happenings. And for
wanting to know it,
for

assuming there is
such a secret, yes,
for that
most of all.

“The Secret” comes from O Taste and See: New Poems, where you can find more of Levertov’s elegant and thoughtful poetry.

Video of Levertov  reading: The Secret | Brain Pickings

Happy moments

"A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind." I think I may have to take issue with this, as a walker whose happiest moments are almost always in the middle of a wander. But then, wandering feet do create a more focused mind.

"When are humans most happy? To gather data on this question, Matt Killingsworth built an app, Track Your Happiness, that let people report their feelings in real time. Among the surprising results: We're often happiest when we're lost in the moment. And the flip side: The more our mind wanders, the less happy we can be."

Matt Killingsworth: Want to be happier? Stay in the moment | Video on TED.com

Celebrating everyday happiness

A Private History of Happiness: Ninety-Nine Moments of Joy from Around the World by George Myerson-

a remarkable compendium of seemingly unremarkable yet powerful moments of everyday bliss culled from several millennia of personal correspondence and journals by famous poets, artists, scientists, philosophers, novelists, and other thinkers, aiming to “show the enduring value and beauty of ordinary human happiness as we find it in passing moments.” What emerges is a refreshing celebration of happiness encrusted not in the bombastic language of our self-help pop psychology culture, but in the quiet humility of the real, the lived, the timeless human experience..."

From Ptolemy to George Eliot to William Blake, Celebrating the Private History of Everyday Happiness | Brain Pickings

The pursuit of happiness a recipe for neurosis?

"Since moving to the States just shy of a year ago, I have had more conversations about my own happiness than in the whole rest of my life. The subject comes up in the park pushing swings alongside a mother I met moments before, with the man behind the fish counter in the supermarket, with my gym instructor and with our baby sitter, who arrives to put our son to bed armed with pamphlets about a nudist happiness retreat in Northern California. While the British way can be drainingly negative, The American approach to happiness can spur a debilitating anxiety. The initial sense of promise and hope is seductive, but it soon gives way to a nagging slow-burn feeling of inadequacy. Am I happy? Happy enough? As happy as everyone else? Could I be doing more about it? Even basic contentment feels like failure when pitched against capital-H Happiness. The goal is so elusive and hard to define, it’s impossible to pinpoint when it’s even been achieved — a recipe for neurosis..."

America the Anxious - NYTimes.com

A bigger happiness bang

"Interestingly, and usefully, it turns out that what we do with our money plays a far more important role than how much money we make. Imagine three people each win $1 million in the lottery. Suppose one person attempts to buy every single thing he has ever wanted; one puts it all in the bank and uses the money only sparingly, for special occasions; and one gives it all to charity. At the end of the year, they all would report an additional $1 million of income. Many of us would follow the first person’s strategy, but the latter two winners are likely to get the bigger happiness bang for their buck..."

Don’t Indulge. Be Happy. - NYTimes.com

A friend of mine posted this and I thought that I'd share.

Happiness for people who can't stand positive thinking

"Having studied under Positive Psychology pioneer Dr. Martin Seligman, and having read a great deal on the art-science of happiness and the role of optimism in well-being, I was at first incredulous of a book with the no doubt intentionally semi-scandalous title of The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking. But, as it often turns out, author Oliver Burkeman argues for a much more sensible proposition — namely, that we’ve created a culture crippled by the fear of failure, and that the most important thing we can do to enhance our psychoemotional wellbeing is to embrace uncertainty."

Against Positive Thinking: Uncertainty as the Secret of Happiness | Brain Pickings

Happiness Conference 2012

"Join activists and experts in a broad-ranging conversation about an old ideal, the pursuit of happiness! In July, 2011, the United Nations urged all member nations to make “the pursuit of happiness” the goal of their governments and find ways to measure their success. Don’t miss this exciting conference exploring the potential of this new movement. At this conference you’ll...

• Learn about the vital new worldwide movement for happiness
• Find out about how you can use the Happiness Initiative to improve your community
• Learn about the connection between happiness and sustainability
• Help plan “Pursuit of Happiness Day” (April 13) for 2013
• Hear prominent authors including Eric Weiner, The Geography of Bliss; Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life; Cecile Andrews, Less is More; and John de Graaf, Affluenza.
• Meet leaders of happiness movement in the US, including Laura Musikanski, director of the Happiness Initiative, Tom Barefoot of GNH USA, and Dr. Ryan Howell, creator of the Happiness Initiative survey."

Happiness Conference 2012

What Really Makes People Happy

"...when times are tough, the way out is in actively noticing new things. The essence of happiness is that feeling of engagement with the world and with other people."

In other words, instead of waiting for this daunting moment to pass, we can try to seize and shape it, to lighten it—however we please. "

What Really Makes People Happy - Finding Happiness - Oprah.com

We're expected to be happy when GNP grows, but are we?

"The crux of the question is what is it that we wish to achieve? Measures like Gross National Product (GNP) claim to answer this. We’re expected to be happy when it grows, and worried when it falls. But GNP is actually a very strange measure of anything. It only counts the velocity of the flow of money and stuff through the economy as they change hands in economic transactions. The more money that gets spent, conventional wisdom says, the better off we are.

But are we? If you volunteer at a home for the elderly, you’ve done nothing to increase the GNP. A divorcing cancer patient who gets in a car wreck adds handsomely to the GNP as money goes for insurance, repairs, and medical bills. But is she any better off? Clearly not."

Reframing The Global Economy To Include Happiness – on the effort to shift our measure of social well-being.
Companion read: "The Happiness of Pursuit."

Explore – The crux of the question is what is it that we...

Hitchcock on the Secret of Happiness

"A clear horizon — nothing to worry about on your plate, only things that are creative and not destructive… I can’t bear quarreling, I can’t bear feelings between people — I think hatred is wasted energy, and it’s all non-productive. I’m very sensitive — a sharp word, said by a person, say, who has a temper, if they’re close for me, hurts me for days. I know we’re only human, we do go in for these various emotions, call them negative emotions, but when all these are removed and you can look forward and the road is clear ahead, and now you’re going to create something — I think that’s as happy as I’ll ever want to be.”

Alfred Hitchcock on the Secret of Happiness | Brain Pickings:

Schopenhauer's Porcupines

"Gilbert relays the porcupine dilemma made famous by German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer — a beautiful metaphor for how we choose to go through the world and relate to others, in a quest to master the intricate balance of protective self-containment and the vulnerability necessary for the warmth of true intimacy."

Elizabeth Gilbert on What the Porcupine Dilemma Can Teach Us About the Secret of Happiness | Brain Pickings

Tali Sharot: The optimism bias | Video on TED.com

Are we born to be optimistic, rather than realistic? Tali Sharot shares new research that suggests our brains are wired to look on the bright side -- and how that can be both dangerous and beneficial.

Tali Sharot: The optimism bias | Video on TED.com

The Happiness of Pursuit: What Science and Philosophy Can Teach Us About the Holy Grail of Existence | Brain Pickings

The Happiness of Pursuit: What Neuroscience Can Teach Us About the Good Life by Cornell University psychology professor Shimon Edelman  is "an attempt to understand, in a deeper sense than merely metaphorical, what it means to be human and how humans are shaped by the journey thorough this world, which the poet John Keats called ‘the vale of soul-making’ — in particular, how it puts within the soul’s reach ‘a bliss peculiar to each one’s individual existence.’"
The Happiness of Pursuit: What Science and Philosophy Can Teach Us About the Holy Grail of Existence | Brain Pickings: 
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Four Ways Happiness Can Hurt You | Greater Good

"...the more people pursue happiness the less they seem able to obtain it. Mauss shows that the more people strive for happiness, the more likely they will be to set a high standard for happiness—then be disappointed when that standard is not met.  This is especially true when people were in positive contexts, such as listening to an upbeat song or watching a positive film clip. It is as if the harder one tries to experience happiness, the more difficult it is to actually feel happy, even in otherwise pleasant situations." Four Ways Happiness Can Hurt You | Greater Good
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Michael Norton: How to buy happiness | Video on TED.com

Michael Norton: How to buy happiness | Video on TED.com:

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Laura Carstensen: Older people are happier | Video on TED.com

Laura Carstensen: Older people are happier | Video on TED.com:

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The Future of Happiness

Sam Harris « Up@dawn:

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