The desire for happiness drives human beings regardless of race, religion, or nationality. Participants in countless surveys usually explain it as their degree of satisfaction or pleasure. But happiness has many meanings. Later in this book, we will define the true meaning of natural happiness, for everyone, and how you can accept your gift of happiness. For now, we invite you to examine your meaning through a written exercise.
Happiness Genes
by James D. Baird
[A] What Is Happiness? A Preliminary Exercise
Can you describe how it makes you feel?
Do you feel it in your physical body and/or brain?
What sorts of activities, beliefs, places, foods, colors, sounds, or people contribute to or reduce your happiness?
How do you feel when you do a good deed or an act of compassion?
How does climate or the time of day or night influence your being happyor not?
Does your happiness depend on others, or certain circumstances?
What is the difference between your feeling of happiness and your pleasures?
The United States Constitution guarantees each individual the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." We have a multi-billion-dollar industry dedicated to persuading you that the secret to happiness lies in money, power, success, or buying the latest gadget, car, or body-enhancement product.
Ask anyone who bought an SUV because he fell in love with a commercial showing it on a mountaintop whether acquiring this vehicle made him or her happy. Perhaps it did briefly...until gas prices rose, making it twice as expensive to fill the tank. Or perhaps until he tried to park the car on a city street or in your average suburban driveway. Similar to millions of his fellow consumers, the SUV owner probably wishes he had turned off the TV instead of sitting glued to the seductive commercials.
The notions of happiness that are fed to us through the media are just that: seductive. They lure us in with false promises that we will be happy when we own a sports car or an iPhone, or have bigger breasts...and when those purchases don't work, the advertising industry flashes new stuff onscreen, urging us to spend more money in the hope that we can purchase happiness.
More than 2,000 years ago, BI (Before Internet) and BTV (before Television), Gautama Buddha said that "wanting is the source of human
