It is better to look suffering straight in the eye, acknowledge and respect it’s presence, and then get busy as soon as possible focusing on things we choose to focus on.

The solution is to gradually become free of societal rewards and learn how to substitute for them rewards that are under one's own powers. This is not to say that we should abandon every goal endorsed by society; rather, it means that, in addition to or instead of the goals others use to bribe us with, we develop a set of our own.

Half a century ago, the Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl wrote that happiness cannot be attained by wanting to be happy - it must come as the unintended consequence of working for a goal greater than oneself.

It is as if evolution has built a safety device in our nervous system that allows us to experience full happiness only when we are living at 100%-when we are fully using the physical and mental equipment we have been given.

I think that evolution has had a hand in selecting people who had a sense of doing something beyond themselves.

As long as we respond predictably to what feels good and what feels bad, it is easy for others to exploit our preferences for their own ends.

Whatever the dictates of fashion, it seems that those who take the trouble to gain mastery over what happens in consciousness do lead a happier life.