Release year: 2007, 2022

Author: Russ Harris

Link to my handwritten notes

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Questions

What is the book about as a whole?

The book explains how to apply Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT) in one’s life to make it feel purposeful and, as a result, happier.

What is being said in detail, and how?

The core idea of the book is that we often find ourselves at choice points—difficult situations, thoughts, feelings—where our actions, or inaction, inevitably lead to consequences. We all have in our minds an idea of the life we want to build for ourselves, and thus from each choice point we must make the move in the direction that will put us closer to realizing that vision. We must avoid actions that move us away from our goal. In order to help get a clearer picture of this desired life, the book encourages us to reconnect with our individual values.

When we get hooked by our feelings, we get dragged in performing actions that move us away from our objectives. That’s why unhooking skills are important.

There are two hooking mechanisms, OBEY and STRUGGLE.

  • When we OBEY our thoughts and feelings, we either give them so much attention that we can’t usefully focus on anything else, or we allow them to tell us what to do.
  • In STRUGGLE mode we may turn to basically anything that gives us momentary relief from those painful thoughts and feelings—even when doing so has negative impacts on our health, well-being, and happiness.

It is not only a matter of knowing what is the right move. Often, we will get “hooked” by our thoughts and feelings and dragged toward making away moves. Thus, the core skill that the book aims to teach is how to unhook from these thoughts and feelings by “dropping anchor” instead of restricting ourselves to either obeying (fusing) or struggling (fighting or fleeing) with our thoughts. By doing so, we stay longer at the choice point, and when we are unhooked, the toward move becomes more obvious and is easier to choose.

The formula for dropping anchor is ACE:

  1. Acknowledge your thoughts and feelings
  2. Connect with your body
  3. Engage in what you’re doing
  4. (Run through several ACE cycles)

The book is filled with such techniques. Another of interest is the TAME acronym to get the better of our urges. (A way to practice this safely is to try taming sudden urges to scratch itches on our skin.)

  1. Take note: notice and name the urge. Where do you feel it most in your body?
  2. Allow: Give your urge permission to be there. Let it be.
  3. Make room: Open up to this urge. Allow it to freely rise, peak and fall in its own time.
  4. Expand awareness: Connect with your body and notice the world around you.

Is the book true, in whole or part?

The book teaches how to apply ACT, a researched type of therapy that has been shown to be efficient in bringing positive effects in a broad range of conditions. Personally, I found the framework of the choice point to be very useful. Every time I have made use of the techniques from the book when I was facing difficult thoughts and feelings, it made it easier for me to weather my mental storms.

What of it?

The ideas from this book are in strong accordance with many of the books I have read before, which teach that the single universal recipe to lead a satisfying life is to live according to one’s values. Thus, I find that it fits neatly in my mental toolbox.

What will stay with me the longest will probably be the image of the choice point, which is very simple to construct, and thus hard to forget. I can visualize myself getting pulled toward doing away moves when hooked by my thoughts and feelings. I have a vivid image in my mind of me unhooking from my thoughts and feelings by literally pulling hooks out of my body, and start running in the direction of the toward move.

This picture tells a simple yet powerful story that I can easily bring to mind in difficult moments.

I will also keep the checklist of common values handy in case I want to try on new values to see if they suit me.

Review

I have a confession to make. In the past couple of years, it seems to me like I have been a little addicted to reading self-help books:

Well, I must admit that I am quite surprised that, despite having read this many books revolving around the same question of “What should I do with my life?”, The Happiness Trap managed to completely move me and infuse my mind with new, exciting and practical ideas.

It is particularly interesting to compare this book with Martin Seligman’s Learned Optimism, because the subject matter is quite similar, while the tools each book contains are based on different psychological theories. The Happiness Trap uses Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and Learned Optimism uses Cognitive Therapy. This table compares them on the surface:

Feature The Happiness Trap Learned Optimism
Focus Acceptance and Mindfulness Challenging Negative Thoughts
Techniques Mindfulness Meditation, Values Clarification, Committed Action ABC Model (Adversity, Beliefs, Consequences), Disputing Negative Thoughts
Goal Live a life in accordance with one’s values, even in the presence of difficult emotions Develop a more positive and realistic outlook on life

I have personally tried both sets of techniques and I must say that ACT seems to work better for me. It turns out, I don’t enjoy arguing with myself and proving myself wrong. This kind of exercise worked better for me in the context of Feeling Good, probably because these exercises relied on using pen and paper instead of responding live to our thoughts. Maybe it’s because I lack practice as a debater. Whatever the case, by a wide margin, I would rather simply be present, listen to my mind’s worries, like listening to a worried friend, and give it compassion and guidance in return. Still, both sets of techniques can be useful, and I will probably revisit cognitive therapy tools somewhere down the line. Your mileage may vary!

This book is filled, and I mean filled, with diverse and practical ideas to try out in one’s life in order to feel in better control of our actions, our destiny, and to feel more purposeful. Some standout exercises for me include the “sleepy hedgehog,” where we treat painful thoughts and emotions like a sleepy hedgehog that unexpectedly ends up on our lap. In order not to hurt ourselves or the hedgehog, the best strategy is simply to stay calm and let the hedgehog fall asleep so we can keep doing what we were doing. If we try to toss it, it will surely wake up alerted and leave a few nasty stings on our hands.

Does that exercise sound silly to you? It did sound silly to me at first. But in truth, when the bad times came, and there was no escaping the painful thoughts assailing my mind, having the picture of the sleepy hedgehog made those experiences much more bearable to me. It helped me “drop anchor” and decide what was the correct move to make in accordance with my values, rather than my impulses.

Another notion I enjoyed is the idea to only work on a single life domain at a time. I must say that I tend to want to work on too many things at once, and as a result there’s a nagging feeling of never getting anything done. Making real lasting improvements in one’s life is difficult, and it is probably unrealistic to hope to improve our health, relationships, work-life balance, and hobbies all at once. It’s much better to aim for one clear goal at a time. For example, this year I have focused on my health, and this had ramifications in all other domains of my life. I didn’t have to plan nearly as much as I had anticipated. The true key was to be consistent in my efforts.

Finally, I enjoyed the “Healing the Past” exercise enough to copy it here in full, in case I would like to revisit it. It seems to me like a powerful way to connect our conscious with our unconscious:

Imagine yourself traveling back in time to your childhood or teenage years. Then imagine the “you of today” giving the “younger you” the support they didn’t have at that time. (Instead of going back to the traumatic event, go back to sometime after it occurred.)

Tell this younger you that they don’t need anyone else to validate that experience because you know. Ask this young person if there’s anything they need or want from you. In imagination, you can give them anything they want. Tell this young person anything you think they need to hear to help them understand what has happened and to help them stop blaming themselves. Once you have a sense that this younger you has accepted your caring and kindness, it’s time to bid farewell. Give them a gift of some sort to symbolize the connection between you. Say goodbye and let them know that you’ll come back to visit again.

Then, as you go about your day, think of how you can treat yourself like your inner child.

Overall, this was a well-written, easy to follow self-help book that I definitely see myself recommending in the future. It is filled with diverse ideas centered on the worthy goal of living in accordance to our individual values, and I believe it has the power to bring any attentive reader closer to achieving that goal. In other words, if you’re looking at improving your mind in dealing with all kinds of unexpected situations, I believe that reading this book is a toward move.

Félix rating:
👍👍

⭐ Star Quotes

Part I : Why Is It Hard to Be Happy?

Chapter 1 : Life Is Difficult

  • (p. 7) Out minds can conjure up a fantasy image of the person we’d ideally like to be and then compare us to that!
  • (p. 8) Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is based on the assumption that if you’re not happy, you’re normal.
  • (p. 8) ⭐ It’s virtually impossible to create a better life if you’re not prepared to have some uncomfortable feelings.
  • (p. 9) 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.
  • (p. 9) ⭐ When we clarify what we stand for in life and start acting accordingly, then our lives become infused with meaning and purpose, and we experience a profound sense of vitality.
  • (p. 10) Your mind isn’t trying to make your life harder, it’s just trying to keep you safe, protect you from pain.

Chapter 2 : The Choice Point

  • (p. 14) ⭐ Any activity can be a toward move or away move, depending on the situation.
  • (p. 16) Almost every recognized psychological disorder is due to the basic process of difficult thoughts and feelings hooking us and pulling us into away moves.
  • (p. 19) Treat everything as an experiment.
  • (p. 20) You will know you’re at a choice point when your mind gives you reasons to skip an experiment.
  • (p. 20) Allow your mind to say whatever it wants, but don’t buy into it; let it chatter away like a radio playing in the background while you get on with the experiment.

Chapter 3 : The Black Hole of Control

  • (p. 30) ⭐ [Don’t compare yourself to how other people seem.] Most people are not open or honest about the struggle they go through with their own thoughts and feelings.
  • (p. 32) [When you STRUGGLE or OBEY], the solution is the problem.
  • (p. 39) Experiential avoidance (the ongoing attempt to avoid or get rid of unwanted inner experiences) leads to excessive use of struggle strategies.
  • (p. 40) The happiness trap is the idea that to increase our happiness, we must try hard to avoid or get rid of unwanted thoughts and feelings. Paradoxically, the more effort we put into this STRUGGLE, the more difficult thoughts and feelings we create for ourselves.
  • (p. 44) It’s not just the things you do that matter; it’s also your motivation for doing them.

Chapter 4 : Dropping the Struggle

Part II : How to Handle Difficult Thoughts and Feelings

Chapter 5 : How to Drop Anchor

  • (p. 61) Anchors don’t control storms.
  • (p. 64) It doesn’t matter how skilled, knowledgeable, experienced, or talented you are; if you can’t stay focused on what you’re doing, you won’t do it well.
  • (p. 65) The less attention we give to what we’re doing, the less satisfaction or pleasure we get from doing it.

Chapter 6 : The Never-Ending Stories

  • (p. 71) Negative thoughts are never, in and of themselves, harmful or bad for you.
  • (p. 72) ⭐ The brain doesn’t change by subtraction. There is no delete button in the brain. It changes by addition—by laying down new neural pathways on top of the old ones.
  • (p. 73) Negative thoughts are only problematic when we react to them in OBEY mode.
  • (p. 74) [If there’s nothing useful to do at any moment with your hands, you just let them sit there. Do the same with your thoughts.]
  • (p. 75) Your mind is like an overly helpful friend. It’s often trying so hard to help you that it can actually become a nuisance.
  • (p. 79) Our thoughts are not orders we need to obey; we don’t have to do what they tell us to do.
  • (p. 81) Identify your mind’s favorite stories and give them names. When your stories show up, acknowledge them by name.
    • the “loser” story
    • the “my life sucks” story
    • the “I can’t do it” story

Chapter 7 : Off the Hook

  • (p. 85) Whether your thoughts are true or not isn’t the issue. The question is, are you letting them push you around?
  • (p. 86) Although at times self-critical thoughts kick us into action, often they have the opposite effect: we feel guilty, stressed, depressed, frustrated, or anxious, and we end up demoralized or demotivated.
  • (p. 86) Thoughts that criticize you, insult you, judge you, put you down, or blame you are, in the long term, likely to lower your motivation rather than increase it.
  • (p. 90) “Thanks Mind. I appreciate the feedback. I know you want to chat, but sorry, I have other things to do. I know you’re tying to help, but it’s okay, I’ve got this covered.”
    • Mean this playfully, with warmth, lightness and humor. Don’t be sarcastic or aggressive against your mind, because that can easily pull us into conflict with our thoughts.
  • (p. 94) While unhooking can sometimes make you feel better, that’s not the goal. [The goal is to calm down in order to choose a toward move.]

Chapter 8 : Frightening Images, Painful Memories

  • (p. 103) ⭐ Exposure is the single most powerful intervention in the entire field of psychology; nothing has larger effects on human behavior. It allows you to lay new neural pathways on top of the old ones.

Chapter 9 : The Stage Show of Life

  • (p. 109) ⭐ Let your thoughts and images come and go in the background, as if they are cars passing by outside your house.

Chapter 10 : Leaving the Comfort Zone

  • (p. 114) ⭐ Life inside the comfort zone is definitely not comfortable. It should be called the misery zone, stagnant zone, or missing-out-on-life zone.
  • (p. 114) ⭐ A big list of common life values.
  • (p. 117) It might be impossible to achieve your goal… but you can still live your values.
  • (p. 118) Values are instantly empowering in a way that goals can never be, because we can always live out values in little ways, no matter what life is like.

Chapter 11 : The Values of Kindness

  • (p. 128) Don’t try to delete your old neural pathways that give rise to harsh self-talk. Lay down new ones on top of them to bring in self-kindness.
  • (p. 129) A useful self-compassion catchphrase is “This really hurts. Be kind.”

Chapter 12 : Hooked on a Feeling

  • (p. 138) Although we have little control over our feelings, we have huge amounts of control over our actions.
  • (p. 139) Sadness communicates that we have lost something important. It illuminates the importance of rest and recuperation after a loss.
  • (p. 140) Guilt illuminates the importance of how we treat others and the need to repair social bonds.
  • (p. 140) When strong emotions arise, we can often extract their wisdom with two simple questions:
    • What does this emotion tell me really matters?
    • What does this emotion suggest I need to attend to?

Chapter 13 : The Struggle Switch

Chapter 14 : Making Room

Chapter 15 : TAME It with Kindness

  • (p. 160) “Urge surfing” is treating our urges like waves, and surf them until they dissipate. Most urges—from the start to the end of one “wave”—last about three minutes.

Chapter 16 : Being Present

  • (p. 164) The more absorbed you are in your thoughts, the less engaged you are in the activity.
  • (p. 169) Boredom arises when we get hooked by the story “there’s nothing of interest here.”

Chapter 17 : Reinhabiting Your Body

Chapter 18 : Worrying, Ruminating, Obsessing

Chapter 19 : The Documentary of You

  • (p. 193) Your mind makes an incredibly biased documentary about who you are—cutting out over 99.99% of everything you’ve done in your life—and says “This is you, who you are.” The subtitle is “I’m not good enough.” The problem is, we believe we are that documentary.
    • A documentary about you is not you, whether it’s false or true.

Chapter 20 : Healing the Past

Chapter 21 : The Art of Appreciation

  • (p. 204) ⭐ Treat pleasant feelings the same way as your difficult ones:
    • acknowledge them
    • allow them
    • let them freely come and stay and go in their own good time

Part III : How to Make Life Meaningful

Chapter 22 : A Life Worth Living

  • (p. 213) ⭐ The values-focused life will always be more fulfilling than the goal-focused life because we get to appreciate every step of the journey as we move toward our goals (even if we don’t achieve them).
  • (p. 216) ⭐ Values are not rules.
  • (p. 219) You will know if your values are really yours if you find that when you act on them you get a sense of being more like the person you want to be.

Chapter 23 : One Step at a Time

  • (p. 222) Don’t get overwhelmed by trying to work on too many things at once. Focus on a single domain at a time:
    • work
    • love
    • play
    • health
  • (p. 227) Any goal that is about not doing something is a dead person’s goal (corpses are brilliant at not doing things). Convert it to a “live person’s goal.” If you don’t do X, what will you do instead?

Chapter 24 : The HARD Barriers

  • (p. 233) As we move toward a more meaningful life, we will push against HARD barriers:
    • Hooked
    • Avoiding discomfort
    • Remoteness from values
    • Doubtful goals
  • (p. 234) ⭐ A value is like your body: even if you’ve totally neglected it for years, it’s still there, and it’s never too late to make use of it.
  • (p. 237) We don’t have to wait until the reason-giving machine goes silent (or turns into a cheerleader) before we take action.

Chapter 25 : Difficult Decisions

Chapter 26 : Breaking Bad Habits

  • (p. 244) Bad habits are the things we do repeatedly that take us away from the life we want.

Chapter 27 : Staying the Distance

  • (p. 252) Over time, saying yes to our obstacles will gradually become easier, more habitual.
  • (p. 255) Asking “What should I do with my life” is a recipe for misery. The question is too big to answer. Far more useful questions are, in this one domain of my life (see chap 23), what do I want to do for:
    • the next few hours?
    • the next few days?
    • the next few weeks?
    • the next few months?
  • (p. 255) Tools to help us with sustaining our new patterns of behavior, The Seven R’s:
    • Reminders
    • Records
    • Rewards
    • Routines
    • Relationships
    • Reflecting
    • Restructuring the environment

Chapter 28 : Breaking the Rules

  • (p. 260) ⭐ As long as we avoid what we’re scared of, we never have a chance to learn that we can handle it.
  • (p. 266) Any given value is a two-way street: it describes how we want to treat ourselves and others.

Chapter 29 : Ups and Downs

  • (p. 268) You can never know in advance whether you will achieve your goals; all you can do is keep moving forward in a meaningful direction.
  • (p. 269) ⭐ Success in life means living by your values.
  • (p. 270) There’s no point in beating yourself up when you screw up or fail to follow-through. Guilt trips and self-criticism don’t motivate you to make meaningful changes; they just keep you stuck, dwelling on the past.
  • (p. 273) ⭐ Acceptance and Commitment Therapy assumes that
    • no matter what problems you encounter, you can learn and grow from them
    • no matter how dire the circumstances, you can find at least some measure of fulfillment in living by your values
    • no matter how many times you wander off the path, you can always get back on track and start again

Chapter 30 : A Daring Adventure

  • (p. 275) The three overarching principles of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (be careful not to turn these into rules to OBEY!):
    • Be present: Focus your attention on what’s important and engage in what you do
    • Open up: Unhook from your thoughts and feelings, allow them to be as they are and let them flow through you
    • Do what matters: Act effectively, guided by your values.
  • (p. 279) ⭐ Life gives most to those who make the most of what life gives.