The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living

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This is not some fleeting feeling – it is a profound sense of a life well lived. And although such a life will undoubtedly give us many pleasurable feelings, it will also give us uncomfortable ones, such as sadness, fear and anger. Of course, happy feelings are quite pleasant, and we should certainly make the most of them when they present themselves. But if we try to have them all the time, we are doomed to failure.

The end of the book is great. It teaches how to make real change that brings real happiness. Happiness comes from living according to your values. He urges us to spend REAL time discovering our values. Not our goals, or what society tells us to care about, but what we REALLY care about. Figure those values out, then set immediate, short medium, and long term goals that are congruent with your values. Today’s middle class lives better than did the Royalty of not so long ago, and yet humans today don’t seem very happy.” – p. 2 When we take action on the things that truly matter deep in our hearts, when we move in directions that we consider valuable and worthy, when we clarify what we stand for in life and act accordingly, then our lives become rich and full and meaningful, and we experience a powerful sense of vitality.Values: Clarifying what is most important to you in your life, what sort of person you want to be, and not just focusing on external goals – focusing more on the expression of those values (e.g., “I want to practice connection with people” instead of “I want to be married to a romantic partner”) I’m not saying ACT is worthless, that all of it is stolen, or that it should be discarded in favor of more religiously and culturally traditional practices. I *am* saying that instead of distancing ACT from obvious Eastern connections, it would seem more appropriate to deliberately and respectfully highlight the connections, give credit where credit is due, and *then* point out that it’s possible to utilize some of these ancient practices with modern Western cues, in a non-religious way in service of our mental health (as Easterners figured out, like, forever ago). A grande rasgo, el autor propone percibir nuestros pensamientos como lo que son, solo palabras, y prestarles atención solamente si son útiles para poder construir una vida plena y llena de sentido. Y este último es el otro gran elemento de la ACT. Para ello, el autor define qué entiende por "una vida plena y llena de sentido" y propone identificar nuestros valores, o dicho de otra forma, qué es más importante para nosotros, y emprender acciones y objetivos para vivir en consonancia con estos valores.

The Observing Self: Bringing a pure awareness in which you observe your challenging, unpleasant thoughts and feelings without being hurt by them or subsumed by them Aprender los principios de la ACT y aplicarlos no es tarea fácil. En ese sentido, para seguir el libro completamente se requiere tiempo y dedicación. Pero más allá de la presentación de una destreza, pienso que el libro trata de transmitir una filosofía de vida, basada no en el disfrute sino en la aceptación, que puede hacer de la vida una experiencia más completa. El aprendizaje más destacado que haría de este libro es: si aceptamos los pensamientos o sentimientos negativos, dejamos que estén ahí y vayan y vengan a su antojo, a lo mejor no vamos a ser más felices, pero podremos conectar mejor con el presente. En ese sentido, el rótulo que la editorial ha añadido "Deja de sufrir, comienza a vivir", me parece totalmente inadecuado y poco representativo de los contenidos de este libro. Sooner or later we all will come face-to-face with a crisis, disappointment and failure. This means that in one form or another, we are all going to experience painful thoughts and feelings.

It must reveal something if I feel cagy about advertising that I've read a book subtitled "How to Stop Struggling and Start Living." Who doesn't imagine people are paying way more attention to your insecurities than they really are? "Gracious, I didn't know Josh was struggling! The poor dear. Let's make him some soup." Committed Action: Taking effective action in line with your values, no matter what the outcome and even if it is hard Body awareness exercise: notice each of the different aspects of the body--posture, location of parts, temperature differences, scanning for stiffness, tension, pain, discomfort; scanning for pleasant or comfortable sensations.