Mark Strom - There Is No App for Happiness: How to Find Joy and Fulfillment in the Digital Age

Copyright 2013 by Max Strom

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

ISBN 978-1-62087-636-7

Printed in the United States of America

Consult a licensed medical professional before beginning any practice related to health or exercise. Should you choose to make use of the information contained herein without first consulting a health professional, you are prescribing for yourself, which is your right. The author and publisher do not assume any responsibility whatsoever under any conditions or circumstances.

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I extend my sincere thanks to:

My editor Jenn McCartney for her belief in this book.

Tony Lyons for his support.

The great team at Skyhorse Publishing.

Andrea Barzvi at ICM for her strength and guidance.

Liz Delaney and Kristin Garbarino for their help with editing.

A special thanks to my friend Chris Silbermann.

And my deepest gratitude to my wife, Stephanie Cate Strom, for her insight and help with editing, her belief in me, and her dedication to the truth.

PART ONE:
THE WORLD WE LIVE IN NOW

HOW TO AVOID A NEAR-LIFE EXPERIENCE

We sometimes hear about near-death experiences from the news or even from someone we know and trust. These mysterious and powerful experiences usually involve a person being pronounced clinically dead for a few minutes but who is then brought back to life. It is fascinating, and for many of us reassuring to hear of the uncannily similar experiences of those who have gone through the beginning stages of dying and then returned to tell us that what they experienced was not pain or terror, but a sense of great peace and unconditional love. Many have an out of body experience, even observing a medical team performing resuscitation efforts on their lifeless body. Many describe a tunnel through which they move toward a powerful, clear, and beautiful light. Many claim to receive a rapid life review, the life-flashing-before-your-eyes event , while others even report receiving knowledge about the nature of life and the universe itself. Quite often, a powerful catharsis like these near-death experiences will cause a drastic readjustment in the persons life trajectory; he or she can be essentially reborn and will start a new life. In cases such as these, it seems that the closer to death we come, the more committed we are in choosing to live a fuller life after receiving a second chance.

What this book begins with is not extraordinary stories of near-death experiences, but a much more common phenomenon I call a near-life experience . This is when a person comes to the end of his life and looks back with abject regret from the recognition that his life could have been so much more, and with haunting realizations such as, I could have, but didnt or Why didnt I say I love you when I had the chance? A near-life experience is to know that you had the opportunity for a rich and meaningful life but missed it because you instead chose, or resigned yourself to, something far less. A near-life experience could be the saddest tragedy of all because it is an avoidable one, because it is a result of our own choices.

This book is to help you determine if you are truly happy and, if not, to give you some tools to empower you to remove the obstacles that keep you from happiness. It will challenge you to understand how you define happiness and what it means to be a human being in a modern world. For a life truly and fully lived, you must be willing to let go of things that no longer serve you, and embrace new actions that empower you in the deepest possible ways. A journey like this begins with looking into the mirror and studying yourselfnot meekly, but with the excitement of an archaeologist making a discoveryand learning to look outside your own box of social conditioning. This isnt easy, partly because most of us are so incredibly busy working long hours to get ahead, get out of debt, or just to stay afloat, or are exhausted from raising children, going to school, or putting our kids through school. And it is also challenging because we have to overcome our presets, the social programming that triggers behavior that is sometimes exactly the opposite of what we need or even want.

This book is going to illuminate the two most significant trends that are impacting your life, and then introduce you to the three most important actions you can take to look at your world with fresh eyes, overcome your negative presets, and propel yourself into a new and more meaningful experience of living.

While we have been busy with our hyperscheduled lives, we have quietly arrived at the threshold of a new era, the beginning of a new cultural paradigm unlike anything we have ever known. Yet too many of us havent yet realized that we live in a very different world than we did twenty years ago, and we are so distracted that we have become unaware of what we are feeling and why we are feeling it.

There are two extreme trends occurring now that are massively impacting our society and causing tectonic changes in our culture.

Trend 1: Technology is exploding exponentially.

Trend 2: We are becoming less happy.

Technology has begun to distract and overwhelm us while many of us find ourselves suffering from a strange malnutrition, a malnourished emotional state. This is because technology has expanded at such a rate that nearly every aspect of our world has been affectedour economy, medical industry, manufacturing, military, and education, and especially how we interrelate with each otherand technological growth is now happening so fast that we live in an ever-changing environment, which allows us to become masters of nothing. Yet with the exponential growth of information technology, there has been no corresponding expansion of personal happiness. Instead we find our society depressed, anxious, sleep deprived, and overmedicated.

Although the technology revolution has been surging for some time, it has gone largely unnoticed beyond the excitement of upgraded smartphones, social networking, iPads, and dazzling special effects in films and video gaming. But currently, because the exponential growth curve* has become steeper, almost doubling every year, things are moving faster and faster. (Remember that Facebook did not exist eight years ago.) Now the media is beginning to notice that our over infatuation with social media is concurrent with our slipping into an isolated lifestyle and has begun reporting it, but it is far from headline news.

* Explanation of exponential growth: If I gave you a dollar every day for thirty days, at the end of the month you would have collected thirty dollars from me. This is an example of linear growth. But with exponential growth, if I would give you one dollar on the first day, the next day it would double, so I would give you two dollars; on the next day four, then eight, and so on. At the end of the month, you would collect over one billion dollars. According to some preeminent futurists, technological advances are growing so fast, they have nearly reached this point of doubling every year.