some thoughts on happiness

woke up to a beautiful nc summer morning. actually, by the time i woke up, it was barely morning. i had been working at the capital hospital until 2 am, so i felt it was reasonable to sleep until 11 am today. bubba was, of course, ready to start the day. or maybe he just wanted to be fed.




i've been thinking a lot lately about happiness and what makes it. i have less than half of the free time that i had a few months ago when i was an attending, and i'm making about a third of the money. but now, as a resident, i'm happier than i've felt in a long time. it's a truism that external circumstances don't add up to well-being, but sometimes it's difficult to wrap my head around that idea and what it actually means. when asked what makes for a happy life, freud said, "arbiet und liebe." i've yet to hear a more pithy explanation. of course, this leaves out elements that i think i need to be happy, namely, spiritual practice and service. but you might say that this can get rolled into the idea of work. either way, what freud said fits into my worldview pretty nicely.

so, on that topic, here are two videos that i saw yesterday that makes sense to me in terms of creating happines. the first is about the paradox of choice. the idea is this: more choices cause us to second-guess ourselves and be less satisfied with the choices that we do make. schwarz hypothesizes that the more we believe we control, the more upset we get when things don't turn out exactly as we want them to:



this one is by dan gilbert who wrote "stumbling on happiness."