Srikumar Rao: Plug into your hard-wired happiness | Video on TED.com

This is a great TED talk that challenges the way we approach life while chasing the "American Dream." The presenter does a brilliant job of articulating how focusing on the process of achieving, instead of the end goal that is desired, results in a very different experience with life. When we focus on the process of our lives we can actually be present and receive fulfillment from the process itself. This perspective is very counter-culture to the American way of achieving through the process of a means to an end.

Srikumar Rao: Plug into your hard-wired happiness | Video on TED.com

The Pursuit of Happiness

One of the fundamental definitions of "insanity" is to repeat an action, over and over, with the idea that the result will somehow change. When one applies this definition (as simple and over-generalized as it is) of mental wellbeing to the American pursuit of happiness, one can easily see that this society is suffering from some type of group psychosis. Our materialistic society that functions through a never-ending cycle of consuming and up-grading, is not designed to ever create some state of satisfaction or true happiness. Through the process of "buying into" this consumer culture we are giving up a fundamental law of human psychological wellbeing - the locus of control (for one's emotional state and therefore mental wellbeing) must reside within the individual. This is to say, there is a positive association between taking the primary responsibility of one's emotions (realizing that they are mostly internally manifested) and a high level of subjective wellbeing. Happiness does not come from the outside, it comes from an internal process. There is an ancient Eastern philosophical mantra that is very appropriate here - there is no way to happiness, rather, happiness is the way.

I encourage you to watch the TED Talk that is provided through the link below. This is a short presentation from a well respected psychologist named Dan Gilbert, whom studies happiness. I think you will find what he has discovered to be very challenging to the American ideal of "the pursuit of happiness." Our societies problems (economical, political, medical, etc.) will never be solved through more regulations, or less regulation for that matter, the solution to all of our problems lay within the very paradigm that they were created through. I see a fundamental starting point for the needed change in paradigm is to honestly challenge what we think will make us happy. How can we make the familiar seem strange?

http://youtu.be/LTO_dZUvbJA