Deepak Chopra - The Ultimate Happiness Prescription: 7 Keys to Joy and Enlightenment

The purpose of life is the expansion of happiness. Happiness is the goal of every other goal. Most people are under the impression that happiness comes from becoming successful, accumulating wealth, being healthy, and having good relationships. There is certainly enormous social pressure to believe that these accomplishments are the same as achieving happiness. However, this is a mistake. Success, wealth, good health, and nurturing relationships are byproducts of happiness, not the cause.

When you are happy, you are more likely to make choices that lead to all these things. The reverse isnt true. Everyone has observed people who are deeply unhappy even after they have attained incredible wealth and success. Good health can be taken for granted and abused. And even the happiest family can find its happiness ruined by a sudden crisis. Unhappy people are not successful, and no amount of money and achievement will change the equation.

So lets shift our gaze beyond external indications to inner happiness, which we all want to attain and yet which remains elusive. In the last few years psychologists and brain researchers have undertaken the first serious research on happiness. Previously, the field of psychology was almost entirely focused on treating unhappiness, much the way internal medicine is based on treating disease. But just as interest in wellness and prevention has dramatically risen in recent years, so has interest in happiness.

Surprisingly, one of the most controversial topics in this new field of positive psychology is whether human beings are actually meant to be happy. Perhaps we are all pursuing an illusion, a fantasy fueled by occasional moments of happiness that can never turn into a permanent state. Or perhaps some people are genetically predisposed to be happy, and they will be the lucky few who escape what the rest of us experience, which is a kind of low-level contentment at best. Some experts contend that happiness occurs by chance, an emotional surprise that quickly comes and goes, like a surprise birthday party, leaving no permanent change once the event is over.

Leading researchers in the new field of positive psychology, in particular professors Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ed Diener, and Martin Seligman, came up with what they call the happiness formula. These researchers found three specific factors that could be quantified in a simple equation:

H = S + C + V

OR

H APPINESS = S ET P OINT + C ONDITIONS OF L IVING + V OLUNTARY A CTIVITIES

Since this is one of the leading theories of happiness, well explore it before showing that there is a better way to reach the goal. Although it helps point the way, the happiness formula doesnt go deep enough to uncover the real secret of happiness.

The first factor, S, is the brains set point, which determines how naturally happy you are. Unhappy people have a brain mechanism that interprets situations as problems. Happy people, on the other hand, have a brain mechanism that interprets the very same situations as opportunities. So the glass half full, glass half empty phenomenon is rooted in the brain, and is set in a way that doesnt vary much over time. According to the researchers, a persons set point is responsible for something like 40 percent of the experience of happiness. Apparently, this set point is partly genetic. If your parents were unhappy, you have a higher likelihood of being unhappy as well. But there are also childhood influences to take into account.

Childrens brains have neurons that mirror the brains of adults in their surroundings. These so-called mirror neurons are responsible for the way children learn new behaviors, so the theory goes. As they develop, young children dont have to imitate their parents in order to learn something new; they only have to observe them, and certain brain cells will fire in a way that mirrors the activity. For example, a baby being weaned from breast-feeding watches how her parents eat. As they reach for food and put it into their mouths, certain areas of their brains light up. Simply watching this activity leads the same areas to light up in the infants brain. In this way the newly forming infant brain learns a new behavior without ever having to go through trial and error alone.

This model has already been tested in monkeys and theoretically extended to humans. It provides a physical explanation for something as mysterious as empathy, the ability to feel what someone else is feeling. Some people have this ability; others dont. A few saintly individuals have so much empathy that they can hardly bear it when someone else is suffering. Research with MRIs and CAT scans suggests that brain function plays a major role in empathy. A childs neurons mirror the emotions of adults around him, leading the child to actually feel what his parents feel. So if a youngster is surrounded by unhappy adults, his nervous system will be programmed for unhappiness, even before he has any cause for unhappiness himself.

Why doesnt every child learn empathy? Because brain development is wildly complex and never the same for two babies. When we were infants, all kinds of brain functions were being programmed at the same time, and for some of us, empathy was only assigned a minor role. This is a troubling inequality, and it extends to happiness. When you see the brain has a set point for happiness, traceable either to genetics or childhood influences, its all too easy to conclude that nothing can be done about it. However, this would be a mistake, because neither the brain nor your genes are fixed structures; instead, they are in process every minute of your life, constantly changing and evolving. You are still being influenced at the genetic level by new experiences. Every choice you make sends chemical signals coursing through your brain, including the choice to be happy, and each signal helps to shape the brain from year to year.