We have been talking about happiness and looking for happiness. But it's hard to say what happiness is. Although our material level is getting higher and higher, our happiness seems to be getting lower and lower. What is the reason? The author of "Rebuilding Happiness" believes that the reason why we feel unhappy is that our values have gone wrong. The key to recreating happiness lies in shaping new values. There are several ways to reshape values in the book, and I quite agree with them.

I summed up two questions: "First, why do values affect our sense of happiness?" Second, how can we find happiness again? "

Let's look at the first question first. Why do values affect our sense of happiness? Values are the basis of measuring everything, which determines what kind of eyes we look at life and what standards we choose to do. How do values affect our sense of happiness? The author uses the story of himself and his brother as an example. His brother has little contact with him on weekdays, which makes him very upset for a long time and thinks he is not a good brother. But soon, he found that this distress was caused by his values. Because he used to think that brothers should keep in touch often if they were close. So later he changed his values. Change the standard of measuring brotherhood from frequent contact to mutual respect and trust. At this time, he found that there was enough trust and respect between him and his brother. From this point of view, he is a good brother. There are many similar things in life. For example, some people think that happiness means owning your own house. But the house prices in big cities are so high that he can't earn enough money to buy a house. So he's unhappy. Or when you get married, you buy a big diamond ring, which shows that you love your bride enough. He doesn't have that much money to buy a diamond ring, and he will feel unhappy. These are the values that we adhere to in our hearts, but they easily make us feel anxious and unhappy. Must our happiness be based on the diamond ring of the house? If our values change. I think renting a house can also be very happy. Diamond ring is not the most important thing in marriage, but love is. Will our sense of happiness change greatly?

Knowing how values affect our sense of happiness, how can we change our values and regain happiness?

It is found that there are five bad values that affect the happiness index of this urbanite. Only by understanding and changing these bad values can we regain happiness. Here are the four values that I think best suit me:

The first bad value that affects happiness is "Happiness comes from eliminating pain". We often have the illusion that we are unhappy now because we have some pains and troubles, but if we eliminate these pains, we will be happy. For example, I am in pain now, because the house is not big enough and the family lives very tightly. If I can live in the big house of my dreams, I will be very happy. Or I am miserable, because I don't like my present job. I would be very happy if I could change to a more relaxed job. But even if we really achieve our goal, we are likely to be happy for a while, and then we will find new problems and new pains. Cleaning the big house may be tiring, and the new company may suddenly have a picky boss, so in order to get rid of these pains, we set ourselves higher goals and then fall into an infinite loop. It seems that no matter what we do, we can't get real happiness by eliminating pain. Why can't eliminating pain bring happiness? The author believes that the most fundamental reason is that as long as people are alive, there will always be pain, because pain is useful to us. There are all kinds of risk factors in the environment we live in. Pain plays a warning and protection role, allowing us to react quickly when we just feel danger. From the perspective of biological evolution, nature chooses pain as a means to promote change. For example, in the primitive hunting era, food sources were unstable and people often went hungry. In order to eliminate this kind of pain, human beings entered the farming age from the hunting age. In this way, a relatively stable grain quantity can be obtained in a certain period of time. However, in the agricultural era, human beings will encounter new problems and still have to eat according to the weather, so people have entered the industrial era again. In this way, every pain will promote the occurrence of evolution and the environment for human survival will develop in a better direction. And many times happiness and pain coexist. For example, getting a fitness card can solve the problem of fitness places and equipment, but the following problem is that you have to get up early and go to the gym on time, or you just made a girlfriend and are intoxicated with love, but then you will find that you have to prepare special funds for falling in love or even getting married, and you have to change your living habits and make concessions for * * *. Since people can't live without pain, how can they get along with pain to get happiness? The answer is to learn to experience happiness in the process of solving pain Because happiness itself is a semi-finished product. We need to constantly improve it. Every time we solve the pain, we will get new growth, and this process of growth will give us a sense of accomplishment and happiness. Many people's ways of coping with pain are very negative, mainly in two aspects. One is denial. They refused to see the real world and ran away blindly. Although they will feel good in a short time, in the long run, their lives will be full of anxiety and depression because the pain has not really disappeared. The second kind is broken cans and broken falls. They will think that they have no ability to solve problems at all, so they blindly blame fate and face pain in a negative way. They will think that I have no choice because I am weak. But in the long run, they will live in anger, helplessness and despair. How should we begin to solve the pain? The author puts forward two concrete methods. One way is to acknowledge the pain itself. Because all pain will not disappear by itself, on the contrary, the longer it exists, the more it will consume our physical and psychological energy. Therefore, accepting pain and facing it will speed up the dissolution of pain and let us experience happiness earlier.

I also tried such an unforgettable experience. Someone made me a music box seriously, which is the most authentic gift I have ever received in my life. Later, because my life track has undergone earth-shaking changes, I can only adapt to the changes, but I can't force them. Over time, that person left my world with a love and disapproval mentality. Seriously, the proportion of people in the world who seriously believe in and cherish the most trivial things on weekdays is estimated to be less than 1%. I have been carefully remembering it for three years. Actually, it's nothing. I just think that memory can be deceiving in my mind. It's been a long time, and I want to go. Only to find that two people have only a little memory. I regard this little thing as my own treasure. I came up with a lot of things I shouldn't have thought about and became stubborn. However, if these wonderful memories can be recorded in the book, it will be different. This feeling, it will form an instinct. Just like getting the long-awaited first gift when I was a child, it is still familiar to recall that feeling many years later. The world of flowers has disturbed so much. Think about that feeling. I will feel at ease and happy. This is how I feel happy from pain.

This is the first solution: "the painful preference choice that needs to be solved." Our life itself is made up of pains that need to be solved. If all the pain needs to be solved immediately, we will become firefighters and become busy, but there is no clear direction choice, so it is also important to choose which pain to solve. The author suggests that we should learn to give priority to the problem we are most concerned about to solve it. This kind of pain can be very small, such as not eating well, not sleeping well, not being able to find your favorite movie, or it can be very complicated and abstract, such as not having a good relationship with your parents, being pushed out by your colleagues in the company, and so on. No matter how big or small the pain is, as long as it is solved, you can get happiness from the process of solving the pain. If we want to be happy, we just need to know that the pain will not be eliminated, but we can experience happiness in the process of solving the pain.

Next, the second bad value that affects happiness is "My happiness is in the charge of others". The other person mentioned here can be a person or an abstract concept. For example, "fate". Just like some people blame themselves for their bad lives when they see others succeed, and they don't have a rich and powerful good father. There is a short story in the book. A man has a good academic record and is very humorous, but he just firmly believes that no girl will like him. Because she thinks she is too short, no girl wants to associate with him, so he thinks about staying at home all day, and only touches girls a few times. He also behaves cautiously and hardly talks. As for the girl, she may have inadvertently expressed something, thinking that others dislike him for being too short, so his love situation has been very bad. In this story, we can see that this person can have two choices. The first is to attribute their inability to find a girlfriend to congenital deficiency and bad fate. He can go on living without his girlfriend and love, which will make him unhappy. But he can have a second choice, that is, to position his values as that I only want to date girls who like men like me. This is an honest and acceptable value. This kind of values will bring him a different experience. He may start to dare to go out on a date and show his humorous talk. In this way, he will show a more positive side and get love and happiness more easily. In my opinion, I just want to date a girl who likes a man like me. This is the value of being responsible for myself. Because he no longer attributed the reason why he couldn't find a girlfriend to the unchangeable factor of short height. Instead, face the problem with a positive attitude and try to solve it. So the correct value is to be responsible for yourself. So how to do it specifically? Many people dare not take responsibility for themselves. One of the most direct reasons is that they don't know how to take responsibility. The author mentioned a simple principle called something. This can be anything. I think the most difficult part of many things is the part from 0 to 1. We often don't know where to start. At this time, we can follow the principle of doing what we want. Don't think about anything, just take out one thing to do, but by doing it, we may find the direction and goal, and turn to accomplish something that we thought was difficult to accomplish. For example, some people keep a diary to relieve their inner depression, and when they write, they find themselves interested in writing. Slowly, they really embarked on the road of writing. Some people choose to run to relieve their anxiety during their own confusion. As a result, they met their girlfriends who also like running in the process of running, which also opened a new stage of life. So what principles should we follow to make our gains and losses less serious, instead of always thinking about what to do if we fail? It's easier to start.

In my opinion, learning to be responsible for yourself is the beginning of happiness. In the process of being responsible for yourself, the most important thing is to follow the principle of doing something and put it into action.

Then there is the third bad value, "Happiness comes from avoiding failure". Few people like to fail. Failure will make us feel bad and even lose confidence in ourselves, so many people will instinctively avoid failure. This way of thinking is called Manson avoidance, which means that the more you threaten your self-identity, the more you will avoid her. Simply put, we instinctively reject things that we have not done, are not good at or may fail. For example, some people are dissatisfied with their jobs and want to change jobs or change careers, but she doesn't want to really change, because change may mean attending interviews, adapting to new industries, and facing new leaders, new colleagues and new working environment. These are uncertain, and they may face failure, so in order to avoid possible failure, he would rather stay in a familiar, stable but uncomfortable working environment, which will make him feel safe. We always have the illusion that we can gain a sense of security and some certainty by avoiding failure. But the reality is that the more you pursue certainty, the less secure you may be. That sounds a little awkward. Let's give an example to explain. For example, some people are engaged in a stable job that looks like drought and flood, and the future looks very certain. But the world is changing, the enterprise is changing, and the people around him must be changing and growing. If you want to gain a sense of security through constant change, it will only make you feel more insecure. For example, other colleagues have been promoted, but she has been standing still for many years, which makes him even more uneasy. Seeing this, many people will ask, do I know to try and change, or am I afraid of failure? How can we reduce our dependence on certainty and be a person who dares to make mistakes? The author suggests that we often ask ourselves, what will happen if I do something wrong? When you ask yourself this question, you will find that the result is very interesting, that is, you made a mistake, which has little influence on you or others. For example, many people are afraid to speak in public, afraid that they can't speak well, become the laughing stock of others, and even lift their heads from now on. At this time, you can ask yourself, I don't know what will happen? Then you will find that the speech is actually not good. At most, the audience did not respond enthusiastically and bowed their heads to play with their mobile phones. But for yourself, you gained a speech experience, which not only exercised your courage, but also found that you still have room for progress and promotion. We can do better next time. So we avoid failure only because we exaggerate the seriousness of the matter. And the failure itself is really not as serious as we thought.

We will instinctively reject things that may lead to our failure to gain a sense of security, but we often overestimate the seriousness of failure, so what we have to do is to face failure and try bravely.

The last bad value is "excessive pursuit of being different". Everyone should make extraordinary achievements and everyone should be unique. This is an established concept in today's society. For example, there are always many stories of successful people in the media. They are full of personality and extraordinary achievements, and their success often seems easy. And often advertising bosses also take personality as a selling point, which will make many people think that I am too mediocre when looking back on my life. Thereby causing anxiety. However, the author believes that everyone should achieve extraordinary things, which is a paradox in itself. If everyone has achieved extraordinary things, the so-called extraordinary achievements will become extraordinary things. Moreover, it is difficult for a person to achieve extraordinary achievements in all fields, because our time and energy are limited, and truly extraordinary achievements require us to pay a lot of time and energy. So the truth is that most people are mediocre in most things. Therefore, the correct values are to accept the ordinary reality of life and admit that most of our lives will be boring and unknown, but there is nothing wrong with this. It should be noted that accepting our own triviality does not mean not working hard or doing nothing, but just helping us to unload the great and extraordinary burden, so that we can no longer worry about other people's evaluation and fear of failure, so as to go into battle lightly and let go of our hands and feet to be what we really want to be. In fact, for most people, ordinary is the normal state, so accept our own ordinary and let us be ourselves and be happy.

So far, we have learned that the reason why we often feel unhappy lies in some wrong values, such as avoiding pain, responsibility, failure and conflict, and excessively pursuing differences. The author's advice to us is to learn to accept the pain, learn to take responsibility, be brave in failure, learn to refuse and accept the ordinary self, which will help us find happiness again. Finally, I hope everyone who is reading this article can find the life they want and become a very happy person.

The picture comes from the TV series "Writing on the Pillow". Network background has nothing to do with this article.