However, if you held a gun to my head…
Page 301. However, if you held a gun to my head and insisted that I identify an overarching theme that connects everything I found out about how the brain deals with happiness, it’s that so much of what makes us happy is dependent on other people.
— from Enjoy the Flight (Living/Balance/Happiness/Passion) · Happy Brain by Dean Burnett
In the book
The taker's trap. Finally, beware of becoming a taker, because takers are forever dependent on someone else for their happiness — on praise, on possessions, on pleasures — and without the next hit they feel like nothing. If I had to name the single finding that runs underneath all the research on happiness, it's this: so much of what makes us happy depends on other people. The longest study ever done on the subject — Harvard followed the same lives for over eighty years — found that the quality of your relationships is the single greatest predictor of a long and happy life, more than money, more than fame. — Enjoy the Flight (Living/Balance/Happiness/Passion)