The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris Read Free Book Online

through committed action: action that you take again, and again, and again, no matter how many times you fail, or go off track. So ‘committed action’ is shorthand for ‘committed, effective, valued action’.
    It’s important to remember that while these six basic principles can transform your life in many positive ways, they aren’t the Ten Commandments! You don’t have to follow them. You can apply them if and when you choose to. So play around with them. Experiment. Test them out in your life, and see how they work for you. And don’t believe they’re effective just because I say so; give them a go and trust your own experience.
    I should also warn you that as you work through this book, there is one key point I’ll be repeating again and again: you won’t change your life simply by reading this book. To do that, you will have to take action. It’s like reading a travel guide about India: by the end of it, you have a lot of ideas about where you’d like to visit—but you still haven’t been there. To truly experience India, you have to make the effort to get up and go there. Similarly, if all you do is read this book and think about the contents, then by the end, you will have a lot of ideas about how to create a rich, full and meaningful life—but you won’t actually be living one. In order to actually live a better life, you will need to follow through on the exercises and suggestions within these pages. So, are you eager to begin? Then read on...

Chapter 4
THE GREAT STORYTELLER
    This morning I held a fresh lemon in my hands. I ran my fingers over the bright yellow skin, noting all the little dimples. I lifted it to my nose and inhaled the delicious aroma. Then I placed it on a cutting board and sliced it in half. Picking up one of the pieces, I opened my mouth and squeezed a drop of fresh lemon juice onto the tip of my tongue.
    What happened as you read about that lemon? Perhaps you ‘saw’ its shape and colour. Or maybe you ‘felt’ the texture of the skin. You may have ‘smelled’ the fresh, lemony scent. You may even have found your mouth watering. However, there was no lemon in front of you, only words about a lemon. Yet once those words entered your head, you reacted to them almost as you would to a real lemon.
    The same thing happens when you read a great thriller. All you have in front of you are words. But once those words enter your mind, interesting things start to happen. You may ‘see’ or ‘hear’ the characters and experience powerful emotions. When those words describe a character in a dangerous situation, you react as if someone really were in danger: your muscles tense, your heartbeat speeds up, your adrenaline rises. (That’s why they’re called thrillers!) And yet, all you are dealing with in reality are little black marks on a page. Fascinating things, words! But what exactly are they?
Words And Thoughts
    Humans rely heavily on words. Other animals use physical gestures and facial expressions and a variety of sounds to communicate—and so do we—but we are the only animal that uses words. Words are basically a complex system of symbols. (And a ‘symbol’ means something that stands for or refers to something else.) So, for example, the word ‘dog’ in English refers to a certain type of animal. In French, chien refers to the same animal, as does cane in Italian. Three different symbols, all referring to the same thing.
    Anything that we can sense, feel, think about, observe, imagine or interact with can be symbolised by words: time, space, life, death, heaven, hell, people who died thousands of years ago, places that never existed, current events and so on. And if you know what a word refers to, then you know its meaning and you can understand it. But if you don’t know what a word refers to, then you don’t understand it. For example, ‘axillary hyperhidrosis’ is a medical term that most of us don’t understand. It means ‘sweaty armpits’. And now that