Summary of Derren Brown's Happy

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 We are constantly editing events in the world around us to form a story, and we are constantly communicating that story to others and ourselves. We are constantly changing the details and selectively remembering what fits into our preferred narrative.

#2 We are all the products of the stories we tell ourselves. Some of our stories are brief and inconsequential, while others define who we are. We tell ourselves tales about the future: I’ll never have a fulfilling relationship. We tell the story we want to tell, and we live out those stories every day.

#3 The Stoics believed that it is not events out there that cause our problems, but rather our reactions to them. We do not need to react unhappily to events in the way to which we are accustomed, and we can begin to question our relationship with those aspects of the outer world.

#4 We are trapped inside our own heads. Our beliefs and understandings about the world are limited by that perspective. We mistake that story we’ve constructed of our lives as the truth. We are prey to an analogous error every waking moment of our lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Jun 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822528550

IRB Media

With IRB books, you can get the key takeaways and analysis of a book in 15 minutes. We read every chapter, identify the key takeaways and analyze them for your convenience.

Book preview

Insights on Derren Brown's Happy

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

We are constantly editing events in the world around us to form a story, and we are constantly communicating that story to others and ourselves. We are constantly changing the details and selectively remembering what fits into our preferred narrative.

#2

We are all the products of the stories we tell ourselves. Some of our stories are brief and inconsequential, while others define who we are. We tell ourselves tales about the future: I’ll never have a fulfilling relationship. We tell the story we want to tell, and we live out those stories every day.

#3

The Stoics believed that it is not events out there that cause our problems, but rather our reactions to them. We do not need to react unhappily to events in the way to which we are accustomed, and we can begin to question our relationship with those aspects of the outer world.

#4

We are trapped inside our own heads. Our beliefs and understandings about the world are limited by that perspective. We mistake that story we’ve constructed of our lives as the truth. We are prey to an analogous error every waking moment of our lives.

#5

Negative storytelling takes root within five minutes. You can see this by trying anagrams. Each word I will give you below is an anagram of another word, so you must try to unscramble each example to form another word that can be made from its letters.

#6

The learned helplessness experiment is used to demonstrate how we can become victims of our own stories. When we feel like we are no good at a task, we act out of character and become helpless, which causes us to give up and not try again.

#7

The idea of a drug curing a certain condition is enough to make people change their stories about who they are. They become no longer the person with the problem, because a new medicine is solving it for them.

#8

The Fear and Faith programme focused on the participants’ new, more helpful stories, which resulted in dramatic changes in their lives. The neatly packaged ideas that constitute small-screen viewing material belie a much richer fascination with what constitutes a happy life.

#9

The ideas in this book are from intellectual giants and astonishing thinkers. While it is clear that having less than you need is a source of unhappiness, having more than you need does not make you happier.

#10

We must be willing to entertain the notion that the story we tell ourselves of our lives is a fiction. We need some sort of story in place, for without one we would lack any coherent sense of identity.

#11

The Law of Attraction is a two-step process that runs as follows: you are the most powerful magnet in the universe, and this unfathomable magnetic power is emitted through your thoughts. Your thoughts attract more of the same things back into your life.

#12

Positive thinking has become ingrained in American culture, and it is often used to promote the idea that everything is already as it should be and that we only need to learn to harness the power of this all-encompassing Mind/Spirit to control our lives.

#13

While it is true that positive thinking can be just as destructive as negative thinking, a belief in the power of positive thinking can be just as harmful if not more so.

#14

The New Thought movement, which was rehashed in The Secret, tells us that as good Christians we are as entitled to financial wealth as spiritual wealth.

#15

I had heard that Grant would often relate people’s private information to them during his services. It sounded like a variation on the same trick a