Nick DiMaggio’s Reviews > The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living: A Guide to ACT > Status Update

When we ruminate, worry, or obsess, we can think of it as “problem-solving in overdrive”; our mind’s going over and over the problem, full speed ahead, desperately trying to come up with a good solution. But it’s like a car stuck in the sand: the engine’s on full throttle, the wheels are spinning wildly — but the car is going nowhere.

“There is only one time that is important & that is now. It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power.”

Any emotion we experience — anger, sadness, guilt, fear, shame, disgust, love, joy, curiosity, and so on — is always comprised of three interweaving elements: sensations, cognitions, and urges.

Truthful or not, our thoughts are nothing more or less than words. If those words are telling us something useful, something that can help us, then it’s worth paying attention to them. But if not, why bother?

The brain doesn’t change by subtraction. It changes by addition — by laying down new neural pathways on top of the old ones. So we can’t simply delete these unwanted thoughts. But we can lay down new neural pathways that enable us to respond differently — so that when these thoughts inevitably reappear, we can acknowledge them and allow them to freely come and stay and go without getting hooked.

ACE
A- Acknowledge your thoughts & feelings
C- Connect with your body
E- Engage in what you’re doing

So here is “the happiness trap” in a nutshell: to increase our happiness, we try hard to avoid or get rid of unwanted thoughts and feelings — but paradoxically, the more effort we put into this STRUGGLE, the more difficult thoughts and feelings we create.

A life spent in pursuit of “feeling good” is, in the long term, deeply unsatisfying. Indeed, research shows that the harder we chase after pleasurable feelings and try to avoid the uncomfortable ones, the more likely we are to suffer from depression and anxiety.