PDF Summary:Happy, by Derren Brown

We take it as a given that we want to be happy, but how do we achieve happiness, or even define it? Derren Brown suggests that the answers can be found in the teachings of the ancient Greek philosophers for whom the quest for a happy, well-lived life was a practical problem to be solved. Brown says that by adopting a philosophy based on those of the Stoics and Epicureans, we can lead thoughtful, balanced, and more well-rounded lives.

As a magician, Brown isn’t a stereotypical self-help guru. However, his understanding of how stories misdirect us led to his belief that we can reshape our own narratives to be happy in the here and now while maintaining a positive outlook toward our own mortality. This guide will examine Brown’s definition of happiness and the philosophical building blocks he claims can achieve it. We’ll compare Brown’s ideas to those of modern psychology and contrast his views with those of other happiness experts, some of whom he argues directly against.

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To begin, Brown says to question your thoughts and feelings, being careful not to blame others and fall into mental traps. Learn to recognize your feelings without elaborating on them with self-serving or self-defeating stories. For example, if a friend acts thoughtlessly toward you, you may feel angry or hurt. Stop right there. Acknowledge the feeling, but don’t elaborate on it. Don’t construct a story that blames you or your friend. Allow yourself time and emotional distance, and you may find there was a reasonable explanation for your friend’s behavior. Even if there’s not, you may find your unhappiness isn’t as pronounced.

Feeling Is Hard Work

While the principles behind reframing your narrative may not be hard to grasp, developing them as a practical skill takes time, energy, effort, and persistence. Practitioners of traditions such as Tibetan Buddhism can devote a lifetime to mastering their inner lives.

In The Art of Happiness, the Dalai Lama emphasizes that cultivating a happier mindset requires a great deal of exertion. It takes energy to build a healthy sense of self-worth while fighting negative emotions such as anger and anxiety. The process involves first educating yourself about how and why your negative feelings affect you, then developing a proper motivation, such as one based on compassion and understanding, that will keep you on the path to positive change.

To develop this skill, practice self-examination when you’re not in a crisis, so you’ll be better prepared when one actually occurs. Acknowledge that you’ll inevitably experience difficulties in the future, and you’ll have primed yourself to react with poise and, if possible, compassion. Brown cites the example of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, who began every day by reminding himself that he would encounter challenges and unpleasant people. He’d remember that he'd faced these problems before, but that as long as he remained true to himself, then no other person could harm his character or spirit.

(Shortform note: A positive inverse to Marcus Aurelius’s “pre-meditation” is to practice gratitude at the end of each day. In The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown recommends taking several minutes out of every day to list the things you’re grateful for. Doing so can fill you with a feeling of contentment and reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. Both Aurelius’s meditation and Brown’s gratitude practice are normally performed outside of moments of crisis, but they can mentally prepare you to better respond when difficult events occur.)

Past, Present, and Future

During self-examination, Brown says it’s important not to fixate on the past (which can bring up guilt and anger) or the future (which can lead to anxiety). When any of these emotions do come up, ask if what’s triggering them is in the present moment. If it’s about a past event, let it go. If it’s something in the future, worry about it when and if it happens.

(Shortform note: Letting go of past trauma requires more than a simple attitude adjustment, as Brown suggests. In What Happened to You?, Oprah Winfrey and psychiatrist Bruce D. Perry explain that severe, prolonged periods of stress have a lasting impact on the brain and body. Recovering from a traumatic past involves learning to moderate your own stress response and treating yourself with compassion.)

This will, of course, take practice. Therapists, friends, and support groups can help, but Brown also suggests a novel approach—step outside yourself and look at the events in your life from a third-person point of view. This can help give you emotional distance from something particularly distressing. After all, if our perception of the past is a story we tell ourselves, then claiming authorship of our lives means we stop telling ourselves the same unhelpful stories.

(Shortform note: Psychologists use a similar technique in a process known as narrative therapy. The goal is to create distance between a person’s identity and the problems they’ve encountered. In narrative therapy, a person is guided to articulate the stories of their lives, which they can then deconstruct to find and reframe the underlying message. Instead of trying to change who a person is, this process aims at changing how they respond to life’s difficulties.)

As we reexamine the stories of our past, we need to remember that a good life balances the present and the future. It’s only in the present that we experience happiness, but looking forward to the future is what gives the present moment meaning. When we look at our stories about the future, we have to remember that it’s out of our control. Our thoughts and actions now can make a future we prefer more probable, but Brown insists we mustn’t attach our happiness to any particular version of the future. It’s sufficient to balance the joys of the present with our future aspirations and find a “good enough” compromise between them.

(Shortform note: The importance of looking forward to the future even when that future is uncertain is driven home by holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl. In Man’s Search for Meaning, he identifies working to benefit your future self as key to making the most of the present. Frankl cites the example of his fellow prisoners in the Nazi concentration camps—those who had goals beyond their present horror were able to cope better than those who did not.)

As we do this, Brown insists that we mustn’t interpret unhappiness as a personal failure. Instead, we can learn from unhappiness: Perhaps it’s pointing out an unhealthy attachment, or highlighting a toxic narrative that we cling to. Pain exists for a reason, after all—it’s a warning sign that something needs to be addressed. Additionally, Brown says to consider Sigmund Freud’s theory that unhappiness is a natural part of the human condition and that fighting too hard against it is part of what causes neuroses.

(Shortform note: The idea that unhappiness is fundamental to our lives is also a central tenet of Eastern philosophy. In The Art of Happiness, the Dalai Lama states that suffering is inherent to human existence, but his outlook toward it is more optimistic than Freud’s. He believes that you can escape suffering, but the first step is accepting the fact that you do suffer. After all, he says, we compound our pain by creating narratives around it, either painting ourselves as victims or shaming ourselves for being hurt.)

Barriers to Happiness

Even though we accept it as a given that the pursuit of happiness is core to human nature, most of us suffer from misguided notions about what happiness is, fueled by messages from the media and society. Instead of seeking contentment in the everyday balance between our aims and our troubles, the world at large would have us believe that happiness is something we can win like a trophy. Given that unrealistic societal message, Brown identifies three major obstacles to living a well-balanced, happier life—our culture’s insistence on positive thinking, the ways we let ourselves give in to anger, and the importance we attach to our ambitions and desires.

Positive Thinking

As counterintuitive as it sounds, “positive thinking” (as it’s peddled by the self-help industry and motivational speakers) can be toxic in the extreme. Brown claims that the philosophy of positive thinking oversells its benefits, leads to cycles of shame, and relies on false assumptions about what truly makes us happy.

(Shortform note: While Brown fires shots at proponents of shallow positivity, he doesn’t directly argue against the work of Norman Vincent Peale, who popularized the idea of positive thinking in 1952’s The Power of Positive Thinking. Peale, who practiced as a minister for 50 years and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, claimed that a positive mindset could overcome any obstacle when combined with faith in yourself and practical efforts toward change.)

Brown defines positive thinking as the belief that through concentrated hope, prayer, or just wishing really hard, you can influence the universe to manifest your desires. The particular targets of Brown’s ire are faith healers, the prosperity gospel movement, and Rhonda Byrne’s book The Secret, which argues that your thoughts “attract” the things you want. Focusing energy and attention on a project (such as learning to act on the stage) can certainly make a positive outcome more likely (becoming a movie star), but according to Brown, positive thinking proponents overpromise on results while downplaying the importance of random chance (for example, that a famous director might see you perform).

(Shortform note: Similar to Byrne’s claims in The Secret are those of Vex King in Good Vibes, Good Life. King asserts that thoughts and feelings have vibrational frequencies, and that positive thoughts have higher vibrations that attract more positivity back to you. Scientists insist that’s not how vibrational energy works and point to the misuse of scientific jargon to add credibility to pseudoscience and mysticism.)

Positive thinking, argues Brown, is about fooling yourself for as long as you can in the face of unpleasant realities. The most pernicious aspect of positive thinking is that when it fails to produce the desired results, it shifts the blame for its failure onto you. For example, if a minister fails to cure your illness, it’s your fault for not having enough faith. If The Secret doesn't make you rich, it’s your fault for not being positive enough. Even if used by those with good intentions, the “not enough” defense of positive thinking attacks a person’s feelings of self-worth.

(Shortform note: In The Secret, Byrne doesn’t make the explicit claim that your thoughts have to be “positive enough,” only that they need to be persistent. However, by declaring The Secret to be infallible and by tying it directly to your feelings of worthiness, she implies that if positivity doesn’t change your life, it’s your own thinking that’s to blame. Even if Byrne’s method is successful, it may be dangerous to link your happiness to having “enough” of any quality. In The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown argues that to do so goes against treating yourself with compassion and leads to a downward spiral of shame.)

Giving In to Anger

Once your slide into unhappiness begins, more likely than not, you’ll get angry. Anger (along with its cousin, frustration) is the single emotion most destructive to happiness. While anger often feels justified, Brown argues that it clouds anything you might want to communicate, distracts from the issue at hand, and doesn’t resolve anything to your satisfaction. Brown then explains the basic triggers of anger and the steps you can take to disarm it.

(Shortform note: Brown’s depiction of anger and how it’s expressed may seem a little simplistic. Not all anger is loud, showy, and distracting. People who develop an aversion to this type of anger may manifest it in other ways—through withdrawal, self-blame, or unhealthy coping mechanisms. Though this form of anger is more subtle and unconscious, it’s just as destructive to happiness.)

Anger has an evolutionary social purpose; it encourages others not to violate social rules. Brown writes that we feel anger when someone breaks a rule or when we perceive a personal slight (such as when someone cuts ahead of us in line). Anger can also be born out of a combination of irritants and our own temperament (such as when you get frustrated after hearing a song played over and over during the holidays).

(Shortform note: In Atlas of the Heart, Brené Brown describes how anger combines with other emotions to produce even more unhappy states of mind. Anger, she says, is how we react when something disrupts how we think things should be. When compounded with disgust (a strong aversion) anger becomes contempt—a feeling that not only has someone done wrong, but that they’re a fundamentally bad person. Contempt mixed with fear turns into hate, the negative emotional state that brings out the worst in human behavior.)

However, anger tricks us into ignoring our boundaries on what we consider acceptable in our own behavior. We react with shouting, aggression, and even physical violence that we would never condone in others. In that way, displays of anger become a distraction from the issues that ignite them. Instead, anger starts a spiral of back-and-forth retaliation that damages our relationships, leads to regret, and triggers even more unhappiness in the end, both for us and others.

(Shortform note: Not everyone agrees that anger inevitably leads to reprisals, but you should be careful about how you express it. In Nonviolent Communication, Marshall B. Rosenberg says that anger should be honored and expressed, but in a nonviolent way. He suggests that empathy is crucial to the process, both for yourself and the person you’re angry with. Only then can you address the triggering issue without losing your sense of connection.)

Because of this, the Stoics rejected anger as a valid motivation for behavior. It negates our openness to others and turns us against those whom we want to persuade. But what about situations in which anger feels appropriate, such as when fighting against social injustice? Can’t anger have a positive impact? Brown suggests that the key is to change it into something more constructive, such as in the examples of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. They acknowledged the anger that fueled people’s desire for justice, then shifted that anger into a positive drive for change.

(Shortform note: In How to Be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi argues that antiracist actions such as demonstrations, while laudable, are ineffective because they’re targeting the wrong emotions. While giving voice to the anger that racism engenders, demonstrations fail to address racism’s systemic cause—policies put in place not because of anger or hate, but because of greed and self-interest, a completely different emotional motivation. Far more effective are long-term, organized protest movements that aim at reforming the societal structure underlying social injustice.)

Brown offers several strategies to defuse anger. The first is simply to wait anger out—a delayed reaction creates emotional distance and gives you time to reframe your judgment. Another is to stop being curious about things you know will make you angry—for instance, by avoiding social media or keeping out of office gossip. But perhaps the most effective way to truly deal with anger is through empathy—recognizing that you and the person you’re angry with have much in common, and doing your best to understand their point of view. Whatever approach you take to interrupt your anger, philosophers and psychologists agree that the best time to do it is right away, before anger is able to fester.

(Shortform note: In Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman gives a few more techniques to short-circuit anger. In addition to Brown’s ideas, Goleman suggests writing down angry thoughts when you have them to increase your self-awareness. However, in Emotional Intelligence 2.0, Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves claim that if you express your anger in an intentional manner, it can be a strategic motivator—for example, it can sometimes spur people into action.)

Desire and Ambition

After anger, Brown identifies desire as the next most detracting emotion from happiness. Nearly every choice we make in life is to fulfill some desire, whether big or small, but the pleasure desire brings is always short-lived. Brown explains the nature of what psychologists call the “hedonic treadmill,” while also elaborating on the problems brought on by the search for wealth and fame.

According to Brown and many others, the hedonic treadmill is a self-repeating emotional cycle of desire, pleasure, and disillusionment. It begins like this: You see something you want, whether it be a person, an achievement, or a shiny new toy. You do the work and/or spend the money to achieve the object of your desire, and you’re happy. But it doesn’t last. Whatever it was you desired loses luster, and the temporary joy of receiving it fades. Soon you’re bored, you desire something else, and the cycle starts all over again.

(Shortform note: The causes and effects of the hedonic treadmill go beyond mere emotional satisfaction. In Dopamine Nation, Anna Lembke explains that because our brains evolved in an era of scarcity, our modern age of abundance creates the perfect conditions for indulging our senses and continually stimulating our production of dopamine, the chemical that drives us to seek new rewards. The pain/pleasure cycle of the hedonic treadmill goes into overdrive as our brains build up a tolerance to pleasure, requiring us to work the treadmill harder to achieve the same good feelings as before.)

Brown writes that many desires fueling the hedonic treadmill are driven by our need to impress other people, but the pleasure that comes from “showing up” others is fleeting in the extreme. Comparing ourselves to others breeds envy, even more so when comparing ourselves to those we consider our peers. Comparison and envy place our self-worth and happiness outside ourselves and in the hands of others. It’s the opposite of taking responsibility for our feelings.

(Shortform note: While chasing after status relative to others may sabotage your chances to be happy, it can be valuable in other parts of life. In Pitch Anything, Oren Klaff highlights the importance of relative status for commanding attention. He identifies two types of status—“global,” determined by wealth and position, and “situational,” which fluctuates because of context. Klaff contends that status does matter if you wish to persuade others with an idea, in which case having a higher status than your audience will help your cause.)

Money, Fame, and Success

One thing we envy most in others is money. Who doesn’t feel jealous when a colleague gets a raise? Yet study after study has shown that money only makes people happier to a point. Once a person has enough to live comfortably, increasing wealth brings diminishing returns. Brown suggests that what’s important to your happiness is that you understand your relationship with money. Be aware of what emotions you bring to it, whether it’s anxiety about not having enough, resentment and envy directed at others, or a desire for the status it brings.

(Shortform note: Instead of adopting the attitude that desiring money is philosophically bad, it’s more useful to develop your financial intelligence. In Your Money or Your Life, Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez explain that if you understand the flow of money in your life, you can reframe money as energy you can use to fuel what gives your life meaning. In The Total Money Makeover, Dave Ramsey argues that money has the power to magnify your character and that if you’re a generous person, wealth can expand the reach of your generosity.)

Brown decries the plethora of business and motivation experts who promote goal-setting strategies as a path to achievement and success, and therefore happiness. While goal-focused strategies may seem more practical and realistic than positive wish-fulfillment schemes, goal-setting makes the false assumption that achievements and financial success will make us happy. The trap is that if you invest too much time and effort into one specific goal, you end up sacrificing other aspects of your life. Then even if you achieve your goal, other parts of your life will be empty.

(Shortform note: In Designing Your Life, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans dispute this point. They agree that there isn’t one goal that will make you happy and that a happy life balances all of its aspects. However, they contend that you can achieve happiness by identifying actionable life paths and pursuing them as if you’re hunting for a job.)

Another form of desire is our longing for recognition and fame. As with any other kind of envy, Brown asserts that believing status will make you happy is once again placing your self-worth outside yourself. And yet the modern cult of celebrity is the loudest voice in the chorus teaching us that happiness comes from popularity and wealth. Our desire to be famous is also closely linked with our need to be loved, though it glosses over the fact that the “love” celebrities receive is both shallow and blown out of proportion. In addition, fame tempts us with a sort of immortality, though many celebrities quickly fall out of the public eye.

(Shortform note: Beyond the old truism that “fame isn’t what it’s cracked up to be,” if you find yourself suddenly famous, you’ll need a whole new set of life skills. In Ego Is the Enemy, Ryan Holiday says that to maintain your new status, you’ll have to be a lifelong student, especially as your priorities shift in new directions. In his autobiography Greenlights, actor Matthew McConaughey recounts how his own sudden rise to fame made his life so surreal that he had to relearn how to psychologically ground himself.)

Lessons of Mortality

While anger, envy, and desire are all fleeting, there is one permanent fixture in life that can cloud our present happiness—the fear of our eventual death. Instead of approaching death as a negative, Brown claims that if we look at what the experience of dying can teach us, it can help us be happier today. Brown discusses philosophical thoughts about death before suggesting the value of embracing your mortality so that you don’t end life with a mountain of regrets.

(Shortform note: In Being Mortal, Atul Gawande laments the fact that in modern culture we don’t prepare ourselves for death. Part of this is because of our greatly expanded lifespans—we’re simply not accustomed to seeing death on a regular basis. Our modern focus instead has become prolonging life by any means necessary, whether or not we’re able to enjoy it.)

Brown begins by asking provocatively whether death can actually harm us. Epicurus’s answer was “no,” because we won’t exist anymore when it happens. As long as we’re alive, we’re not dead. Once we’re dead, we’re no longer here to care. Like falling asleep, death itself isn’t something we’ll experience or remember. Brown isn’t fully satisfied with this answer, because he notes that it’s the process of dying that we fear, as well as the loss of future years that death takes from us. We value the years before us differently than we do the past. It’s the future that gives our lives meaning.

Death thwarts our desire to achieve and experience more in the future, but Brown suggests that if we can lessen our feelings of attachment toward the future, if we can learn to let it go and instead reframe our story so that we can look back on our lives without regret, then death loses its power to scare us. (Which, Brown admits, is easier in the abstract, but hard to accept when staring death in the face.)

The Death Positive Movement

While it’s hard to be dismissive of death, as Epicurus seems to suggest, it can be liberating and uplifting to talk about death and readjust our attitudes toward it. The last few decades have seen the rise of the Death Positive Movement, a growing trend of ways for people to become more accepting of death, including at-home hospice care, eco-friendly burials, and Death Café clubs where people are invited to discuss their thoughts on mortality over snacks. This movement has developed as a reaction against the taboos Western culture puts around talking about death, in essence rebranding death as something not to fear.

In The Untethered Soul, Michael A. Singer casts death in the role of a spiritual teacher that can actually help you be more courageous and loving. To facilitate this, Singer suggests that you think about death when you feel negative emotions such as anger or envy. This will put your feelings in perspective by forcing you to ask what will matter when you're gone.

Owning Your Death

However, Brown asserts that confronting death head-on can empower us to take control and prioritize what’s important in our lives. The way to balance between acknowledging death’s value while admitting that we don’t want to die yet is to embrace transience and accept that everything changes. He quotes Sigmund Freud, who argued that beauty doesn’t need to persist to be worthwhile. When contemplating the transient beauty of a flower, or that of an entire human life, the fact of its impermanence does nothing to lessen its value.

The problem isn’t that we’ll experience loss, but that we exert so much energy fighting against it. The truth is that we spend our entire lives losing people, possessions, and experiences we value. Brown doesn’t suggest that we should become so detached that we don’t grieve the people we lose—grief is an honest expression of love. Rather, we must acknowledge that life is a process of continual growth in which things pass away to make room for the new.

A Buddhist Approach to Death

The teachings of Buddhism have always emphasized recognizing and accepting the impermanence of life, as Brown recommends. According to tradition, it was the problem of death that motivated the Buddha to begin his spiritual quest. Buddhism teaches that meditating on death and impermanence makes every moment you experience precious.

In Radical Acceptance, psychologist and practicing Buddhist Tara Brach says that we should welcome the experiences that we fear, such as dying. Doing so will let us be more present in our lives and stop us from prolonging the anxiety that clouds the good things we experience. She explains that in Buddhism, we are beings of awareness who exist in the moment—there is no true individual “self,” and therefore nothing is actually lost when we die.

Therefore, Brown argues that instead of fearing your inevitable end, you should fully accept and own your death as empowering. Doing so gives you a chance to bring closure to your life that death itself doesn’t provide. To highlight this, he asks us to think about the end-of-life regrets that many people face—not having been true to themselves, never expressing their feelings, and not letting themselves be happy more often. People diagnosed with terminal illness are often shocked into reevaluating their priorities and the stories they tell themselves about their lives. If we consider that end-of-life narrative now, it can guide us to better choices in the present that balance our plans for the future with opportunities for happiness in the moment.

(Shortform note: Brown briefly references Being Mortal, in which Atul Gawande says that a vital first step in engaging with your end-of-life experience is to have frank discussions about aging and dying, not only with your doctors but with friends and loved ones. It’s important not to let others dominate these conversations, but to be clear about your hopes, fears, and wishes concerning how you would like your final days (and those after) to be managed.)

Whether or not we believe in life after death, Brown says there’s one afterlife we can be sure of—that life will go on without us. Most of us want our lives to have had a positive impact. If we want people to remember us fondly, we need to be able to see ourselves from an outside perspective. If we live a well-balanced life, being mindful of our thoughts and actions, then not only can we find contentment in the present, but the positive effects of what we do may ripple into the future. Perhaps we can find some happiness in that.

(Shortform note: While the core of our identity as we experience it may end in death, our identity as it’s perceived by others will carry on. That identity remains fluid as others reevaluate our lives and how we’re remembered. One way to maintain responsibility for our stories is to leave some form of permanent record. Even if you’re not up to writing a memoir, you can keep a collection of your own vital records or allow your family members to record your stories in your words. You can do this for your loved ones as well, and resources to do so are available online.)