Happiness Hypothesis (Humber College)

Happiness Hypothesis Essay

Nature plays a big role in personality and part of that personality can be explained by the cortical lottery. The cortical lottery explains, “a person’s average level of happiness. It reflects the everyday balance of power between your approach system and your withdrawal system” (32). This can be found by looking at the activity in the frontal cortex. Experiments have shown that, people showing more of a certain kind of brain wave coming from their left side reported feeling more happiness in their daily lives and less fear, anxiety and shame. The cortical lefties are less subject to depression and recover more quickly from negative experiences(33). An example that was outlined in the book was that babies with more brain wave action on the right side are more likely to cry when separated from their mother. Toddlers are more anxious, teenagers are more fearful of social activity and adults in therapy tend to have to loosen up. “Rights lose the lottery and will struggle all their lives with overactive withdrawal system” (33). If someone who, “loses” the lottery wants to change their mind and the way they think there are 3 ways to do that. The first strategy is meditation. The goal of this is to change the automatic thought processes-- the elephant. The person must make the mind not react to the ups and downs of life. Meditation that is done every day for several months can help reduce the frequency of, “fearful negative grasping thoughts—improving our affective style” (36). The second strategy is called Cognitive Therapy which was researched by Aaron Beck. The idea of this strategy is that one talks to themselves through there negative thoughts. It is the most effective treatment available for depression, anxiety and many other problems. People must catch their thoughts, write them down, name the distortions and then find alternative and more accurate ways of thinking. “Over many weeks, their thoughts become more...