What are beliefs?

• Beliefs are:
  • what we think is true about the world we live in.
  • a way that our brain has to represent and simplify the world we live in.

Let’s say for example that Paul was raised in a family where hard work was considered a virtue. From a young age, he observed his parents and grandparents putting in relentless effort to achieve their goals. As a consequence, Paul believes that hard work is a way to have success in life. So he studied a lot in school, he always works hard at work and in his personal life following his passions. Hard work leads to success have become one of Paul’s core belief in his life.

Index

• The importance to suspend judgement
• How to know when to suspend judgement
• The importance of time in make decisions (To be done)

Related Questions:

Related Topics:

References

Index

• What is self determination theory
• How to apply self determination theory
• How self determination theory is related to happiness

Related Questions:

Related Topics:

References

How our brain works to decide how to behaves?

1. Our brain:

   1. receives information about the situation we are living at the moment

   2. filters great parts of the information because it would need too much time to considerate every single information we receive from our senses.

   3. then compares these information with our beliefs, the experiences lived in the past and the meaning we have given to those experiences. These composes our mental models.

What are emotions?

Emotions are a way to describe a whole of thoughts, feelings and behaviours.

What are positive and negative emotions?

Positive emotions are emotions associated with happiness and wellbeing.

Negative emotions are emotions associated with suffering.

Why do we experience emotions?

Because is one of the ways our brain works to decide how behaves in our life.

Why can’t we simply ignore emotions?

• Various researches suggest that:
  • simply ignore emotions can have negative effects in the long term from the psychological point of view.
  • allow greater well-being:
    • acknowledge emotions and what they want to tell us
    • evaluating emotions and situations with reasoning
    • let them pass when they are negative

Why can’t we simply follow pleasure and avoid suffering?

Because this will lead to hedonic happiness and not true eudaimonic happiness.

Because our thoughts and in particular the presence of negative thoughts have a huge impact on our happiness, I want to know more about this topic.

What are thoughts? And in particular negative thoughts?

Thoughts are words, images, stories that are created by our minds. They are not necessarily true.

Negative thoughts in particular are thoughts about self, others or the world in general that are associated with negative emotions.