THE SECRET TO A HAPPY LIFE – STAY FOCUSSED

Relying on our memories leaves us open to chronic unhappiness – so what can we do about it?

Each person is actually two ‘selves’

Daniel Kahneman’s 2011 book ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ is a brilliant, wide-ranging summary of decades of research into how people make decisions and is well worth a read. Kanehman proves in a series of ‘thought experiments’ conducted on literally millions of individiuals over many years that – odd as it may seem – we are not our moment-to-moment ‘experiencing selves’ who actually do our living but are in fact  our ‘remembering  selves.’ 

Relying on our memories can be a major cause of suffering

Chronic unhappiness is due to what he regards as a deeply unfortunate disjunction between the ‘experiencing self’ and the ‘remembering self.’ He argues that when it comes to it – our ‘experiencing self’…