Graham Stoney

My Life Coach originally recommended I read Dr Russ Harris’s bestselling book The Happiness Trap at a time when I was struggling with a lot of anxiety which was getting in the way of me achieving consistent lasting happiness. The book is practical guide to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) with a subtitle that rang a chord with me: Stop struggling, start living.

The basic premise of The Happiness Trap is summed up when Dr Harris writes:

The more we try to avoid the basic reality that all human life involves pain, the more we are likely to struggle with that pain when it arises, thereby creating even more suffering.

We spend a great deal of our lives seeking pleasant feelings and avoiding unpleasant ones, because we think that this is what will make us happy. But herein lies the trap: the techniques we use to avoid unpleasant feelings actually tend to reinforce them, like the old “don’t think of pink elephants” trick. Or we avoid our feelings altogether, leaving us disconnected from reality. Even positive activities like setting and pursuing future goals can cause us to lose connection with what’s going on around us when we immediately notice that we haven’t met those goals yet, or we experience frustration over goals we haven’t been able to achieve yet.

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