Mind gone back to sleep.

Hibernating, actually. Somehow, I haven't learned to be mom, housekeeper, and interesting at the same time.

Serenity Prayer

Here's one more tidbit from Dan Gilbert:
Freedom to choose, to change and make up your mind, is the friend of natural happiness.
But freedom to choose, to change and make up your mind, is the enemy of sythesized happiness.

You're not stuck. You don't have to make the best of it, so you don't. Choose something better.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Sythesized Happiness vs Natural Happiness. Right?

Manufactured, Synthesized, Chosen.

So here I am, in my house full of stuff that promised to make me happy. Married to the one I thought would make me happy. Listening to the children I thought would make me happy. And it turns out to be a matter of choice after all. Sorry Coca Cola. Coldstone wins this round. Create your own Happiness. At least I'm on the right track now.

The Gospel perspective on Choice

So then I was reading my Gospel Principles book and got into the chapter on Agency. Choice.
Thou mayest choose for thyself, for it is given unto thee. Moses 3:17
Halfway down the page it says, "We are happier doing things when we have made our own choices." Addaboy Dan Gilbert. Of course Heavenly Father would have built that into our fascinating brains. Good idea.

I said I'd come back to it - here I am.

Sythesizing Happiness.
That's the basic idea of the next video I watched. This one was awesome. Dan Gilbert said that his studies have shown that people will increase happiness about a choice they made and increase dislike for the choice they left behind.

Even tested on Amnesiacs: "arrange these items best to worst, 1,2,3,4,5,6". Then give them a choice to keep either their 3rd or 4th fav and "we'll mail it to you". They choose the 3rd fav. Ask them again in 30 min when they have NO memory of you at all, best to worst 1,2,3,4,5,6? The one they chose (3rd fav) they now list as their 2nd fav. Their old 4th fav, the one they choose to not have, is now 5th.
----Their feelings of happiness about that item increased, even though they have no memory of choosing it.

So--- what he's saying is that once we make a choice, we back ourselves up - talk ourselves into it. And at the same time we talk down the option we left behind. I've seen this 100 times when matt or I apply for jobs. "This job would be perfect, for reasons innumerable" then we get a no answer and we start to focus on the reasons we "knew it wasn't a good idea anyway". I always thought it was a juvenille tendancy. But according to Dan it's an emotional immune system. :)

He says that synthesizing happiness works best in final choices. No refund policy on the shoes, vs a 4 day return policy. Makes sense. Cool that we have a natural and unconscious ability to make ourselves happy. Developing that skill would be smart.

"The Problem is Choice."

Choice. It is my new fascination. Watched a TED talk by Barry Schwartz called the "Paradox of Choice" Barry says that people should not be given too much choice, that they become paralysed at worst, and at best, unhappy. The happiest, he says, are those who are given a limited amount of choices. Choices, he suggests, that are controlled by a structure or set of rules. Restricted, limited choices. Choose your own life! ...But pick only from the options highlighted in blue, please.
His example was jeans. It used to be that he would go to the store and buy the only kind of jeans and they were uncomfortable, but he was happy. He didn't know any better. (I'll come back to this one.) Now he goes to buy jeans and there are 36 different options. After 2 hours he found the perfect pair of jeans - never had a better fitting pair. But he was miserable. Too many choices, he says, makes you doubt your final decision, makes you critical of the slightest drawbacks, makes you think you can be a perfectionist, and leaves you always feeling unfulfilled. Therefore, limit the choices. Only a few to choose from = happier more fulfilled customers.
At first, my mind revolted against this idea. Watching our rights be quietly packed away into a box and shelved in the great closet of communism makes me think all freedom of choice should be kept, well, free.
But then - back I go to 15 years ago, sunday school. Complete freedom to choose, without allowing yourself to be bound by a set of rules, will sooner or later leave you imprisoned. I absolutely agree with that. It's a no brainer. We see it everywhere. The child that is given unrestricted freedom makes all the rest of us mothers, and probably his own mother, crazy.
So then I beleive that restricted choice, choice guided by a structure or system of beliefs, that's better.
What I do not believe, however, is that there is a person or group or government who has the right to decide for me what that system of limiting my choices should be. Unless I choose to limit someone elses choices, that is. Different story, that.

Good Morning to you! ...and to myself.

It all started in 2008, when the news station I listened to most was using the phrase "You decide 2008" to cover their news of the presidential election. After hearing that phrase day after day, it finally hit me in a new light. I could decide what happened to me in 2008. It was a revelation.

The slogan from Coldstone Creamery, "Create your own Happiness" came back to me again and I cut out the letters and put it on my wall. I was reborn.

Now before you think I've gone atheist, Let me tell you. By myself, "I know that I am nothing" (Alma 26:12). That said, I was never meant to let others around me direct my future.