In the book series “A toolkit for your emotions” and “A toolkit for happiness”, psychologist Emma Hepburn will lead us on a journey to open up our inner world - from how emotions form and operate, to how to identify happiness and stay with sadness without letting it overwhelm us.
Dr Emma Hepburn is a clinical psychologist specialising in neuropsychology, with over 15 years experience working with and treating mental health issues. Her passion is to take psychology and evidence-based mental health information beyond the clinic, to a wider audience and to encourage people to take ownership of their mental health.
It’s an interesting fact that we have more words for negative emotions than positive emotions. Yet despite having more words, we tend to talk less about negative emotions, and even avoid or push them away. But what if one day people had no more negative emotions?
Emma Hepburn believes that unpleasant emotions are essential to human survival. Without anxiety, we would not consider risks. Without fear, we would not avoid danger. Without fatigue or sadness, we would not rest when we are sick, nor grieve when someone leaves. A world without negative emotions would be a world where people would be indifferent to pain, unable to sympathize, unable to love. And at this point, joy would also become meaningless because there would be nothing to compare it to, so it would be difficult to recognize pleasant and satisfying feelings.
It can be seen that understanding emotions is an important part of living happily. But is it true that just by opening up our emotions, we will be happy forever, and will never feel miserable again? Unfortunately, the answer is no. Emma Hepburn herself admitted that she was “not always happy” right from the first pages of “Opening Up Happiness”. She said: “It would be extremely hypocritical to pretend that we are always happy. Worse still, it would reinforce the myths about happiness that are still whispering around us, deeply ingrained in our beliefs, thoughts and behaviors”.
Misconceptions about happiness are ubiquitous in the messages we receive from society: from advertising, media to stories, social media shares... And these things have influenced the way we think about happiness and the way we try to achieve happiness.
As author Emma points out in her book “Unlocking Happiness”: “Society says: buy more, make more money, get promoted, stay busy, be happy all the time, achieve more, and never fail. If you are already doing all of those things, then strive for more.
But ironically, striving to achieve these things often doesn’t make us happy, and even when we do achieve them, we almost never feel happy. Yet these societal beliefs still drive our decisions, behaviors, and beliefs. They are the reason we often look for happiness in the wrong places.”
In “Unlocking Happiness”, Emma Hepburn chose to describe happiness as a sandwich that we eat every day. The base is the basic things we often forget, such as getting enough sleep, eating enough food, drinking enough water, having a safe space to breathe… The filling is the things that bring joy, inspiration, and meaning to life. Each person will have a different filling. The top layer of the sandwich is our belief. This layer, although fragile, governs the entire taste of the cake: if we believe that happiness must be complete and last forever, we will always feel lacking; but if we understand that happiness is small moments of connection with ourselves and others, we will no longer be constantly searching for it.
With her insightful perspective, Dr. Emma Hepburn not only helps us break down the myths about happiness, but also provides us with a practical toolkit to improve and build happiness from within. Instead of painting life in rosy colors, she argues that to fully understand happiness, we need to understand sadness and all the other complex emotions that life “throws” at us.
Source: https://baophapluat.vn/bo-sach-giup-hieu-dung-ve-cam-cuc-va-hanh-phuc-post552481.html
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