TED Talk

I chose Dan Gilbert's talk "Why are we happy? Why aren't we happy?" He brings up a very important topic that I don't think many people have taken the time to realize, or I believe that there would be many more people who were happy. Dan believes that synthetic happiness is better than natural happiness. Synthetic happiness is what we make of a situation when we don't get what we want, and natural happiness is where we do get what we want. Being the selfish race that we are many would agree that it's always better to just get what we want. That is when Dan supported his idea with graphs and research. He put up two pictures, one of a man winning the lottery and the other of a paraplegic and asked the audience which would they rather be. Of course everyone wanted to win the lottery. But taking a poll a year later the paraplegic people were equally as happy as the ones that had won the lottery. I think that you will find a genuinely happy person from someone that uses synthetic happiness. Being able to accept the things that you can't change and finding a way to just be happy with what has happened, I believe will make you a stronger person and will also be able to cope with negative situations a lot easier than those who feed more off of natural happiness. William Shakespeare said, "Tis nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so." I really enjoyed listening to what Dan had to say and I recommend it to those who believe that happiness can be found in not always getting your way.