Happy by Derren Brown - Book Summary

Take-Home Message

3 Best Insights from the book Happy by Derren Brown:

1. The happiest among us are those who have learned to stop worrying about the things that they can’t control.
2. You can’t change the world around you, but you can change how you react to it.
3. Happiness isn’t about material gains, it’s about accepting what you already have

My Highlights

• Most of what happens in life is entirely out of your control, and while blind self-belief might disguise that fact for a while, it will eventually prove an anaemic opponent to brute reality.
• Confirmation bias occurs when we notice things in the world that support our beliefs and pay less attention to things that contradict them.
• We are, each of us, a product of the stories we tell ourselves.
• ‘What upsets people is not things themselves but their judgements about these things.’
• The greatest burden a child must bear, we remember from Jung, is the unlived lives of its parents.
• Don’t try to change things you cannot control.
• If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgement of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgement now.
• ‘Everything we need is easy to procure, while the things we desire but don’t need are more difficult to obtain.’
• The good news is that we can give ourselves permission to change our story. To act differently. To remind ourselves that we are not characters in a movie based on a true story, whose personalities are clearly defined and predictable. We, unlike them, can act out of character.
• Under our control are our thoughts and actions. Not under our control is everything else, including fame, power, the behaviour and thoughts of other people, our property and our reputation.