Each of us owes it to our spouse, our children, our friends to be as happy as we can be. Anyone can be unhappy; it takes no courage or effort. True achievement lies in struggling to be happy. 为了我们的配偶、孩子、朋友，我们每一个人都有责任尽可能感觉幸福。任何人都能感到不幸福，这样做既无需勇气，也无需努力。努力使自己感觉到幸福才是真正的成就。 《有关幸福的简单事实》。没想到即便是在做英语阅读理解也能够发现关于幸福的话题。难道是因为我过于关注了吗？还是由于对幸福的追逐本来就不分国界？......
A simple truth about happiness
If you are waiting for it, you have missed the point
Each of us owes it to our spouse, our children, our friends to be as happy as we can be. Anyone can be unhappy; it takes no courage or effort. True achievement lies in struggling to be happy.
The concept that we have to work at happiness comes as news to many people. We assume it's a feeling that comes as a result of good things that just happen to us, things over which we have little or no control.
But the opposite is ture: happiness is largely under our control. It is a battle to be waged and not a feeling to be awaited.
To achieve a happier life, it's necessary to overcome some obstacles, three of which are:
Most of us compare ourselves with anyone we think is happier—a relative, an acquaintance or, often, someone we barely know. I once met a young man who struck me as particularly successful and happy. He spoke of his love for his beautiful wife and their daughters, and of his joy at being a radio talk—show host in a city he loved. I remember thinking that he was one of those lucky few for whom everything goes effortlessly right.
Then we started talking about Internet. He blessed its existence, he told me, because he could look up information on multiple sclerosis—the terrible disease torturing his wife. I felt like a fool for assuming noting unhappy existed in his life.
Almost all of us have images of how life should be. The problem, of course, is that only rarely do people's jobs, spouses and children live up to these imagined ideals.
Here's a personal example: no one in my family had ever divorced. I assumed that marriage was for life. So when my wife and I divorced after five years of marriage and three years after the birth of our son, my world caved in. I was a failure in my own eyes.
I late remarried but confided to my wife, Fran, that I couldn't shake the feeling that my family life had failed. She asked me what was wrong with our family now(which included her daughter from a previous marriage and my son). I had to admit that, aside from the pain of being with my son only half the time (my ex-wife and I shared custody), our family life was wonderful.
"then why don't you celebrate it?" she asked.
That's what I decided to do. But first I had to get rid of the image of a "perfect" family.
"missing tile"syndrome
one effective way of damaging happiness is to look at something and fixate on even the smallest flaw. It's like looking up at a tiled ceiling and concentrating on the space where one tile is missing. As a bald man told me, "whenever I enter a room, all I see is hair."
Once you've determined what your missing tile is, ecplore whether acquiring it will really make you happy. Then do one of three things: get it, replace it with a different tile, or forget about it and focus on the tiles in your life that are not missing.
I've spent years studying happiness, and one of the most significant conclusions I've drawn is this: there is little correlation between the circumstances of people's lives and how happy they are. A moment's reflection should make this obvious. We all know people who have had a relatively easy life yet are essentially unhappy. And we know people who have suffered a great deal but generally remain happy.
The first secret is gratitude. All happy people are grateful. Ungrateful people cannot be happy. We tend to think that being unhappy leads people to complain, but it's truer to say that complaining leads to people becoming unhappy.
The second secret is realizing that happiness is a byproduct of something else. The most obvious sources are those pursuits that give us lives purpose—anything from studying insects to playing baseball. The more passions we have, the more happiness we're likely to experience.
Finally, the belief that something permanent transcends us and that our existence has some larger meaning can help us be happier. We need a spiritual or religious faith, or a philosophy of life.
Whatever your philosophy, it should include this truism: if you choose to find the positive in almost every situation, you will be blessed, and if you choose to find the awful, you will be cursed. As with happiness itself, this is largely your decision to make.
有关幸福的简单事实
如果你在等待幸福，你便是坐失良机了
为了我们的配偶、孩子、朋友，我们每一个人都有责任尽可能感觉幸福。任何人都能感到不幸福，这样做既无需勇气，也无需努力。努力使自己感觉到幸福才是真正的成就。
对于很多人来说，我们需要努力感觉幸福的这种说法可能是前所未闻的。我们认为幸福是一种遇上好事后的感觉，而这些好事是不受或者几乎不受我们控制的。
但事实正好相反：幸福在很大程度上处于我们的控制之中。它是一场要进行的战斗，而不是一种可以等待来的感觉。
要获得更幸福的生活，必须克服一些障碍，其中三种是：
与他人作比较
我们大多数人都爱拿自己与任何我们认为比我们幸福的人作比较——亲戚、熟人，或者常常是我们勉强算是认识的某个人。我曾经遇到过一位年轻人，他给我的印象是他特别成功、幸福。他谈起他对美貌妻子和他们的女儿的爱，谈起在一个他热爱的城市做电台脱口秀主持人的快乐。记得我当时认为他是那些少数幸运儿之一，对于他们来说，每件事都不费吹灰之力就能办好。
然后我们开始聊起互联网。他说他感谢互联网的存在，因为他可以查询有关多发性硬化症的信息—一种折磨着他妻子的可怕疾病。我觉得自己就象一个傻瓜，竟会认为他的生活中没有任何不幸的事存在。
完美的形象
几乎我们所有人的脑子里都有理想生活该是什么样的景象。问题往往是人们的工作、配偶、孩子很少能达到这些想像出来的理想状况。
下面是一则我个人的例子。我的家庭中以前从没有人离过婚。我一直以为婚姻就是一辈子的事。因此，当我和妻子在结婚5年、儿子出生3年后离婚时，我的世界坍塌了。在我自己的眼中，我是个失败者。
后来我又结了婚，但我对妻子弗兰吐露说，我无法摆脱我的婚姻生活失败了的感觉。她问我，我们现在的家庭（包括她前一次婚姻生的女儿和我的儿子）有什么问题没有。我不得不承认，除了因为只有一半的时间能和儿子在一起（我前妻和我分享监护权）而感到的痛苦之外，我们的家庭生活很美满。
"那你干吗不为此而庆贺呢？"她问道。
那正是我决定要做得失事情。但首先我得摆脱脑子里"完美"家庭的形象。
"缺瓦"综合症
破坏幸福的一个有效的方式就是看某样东西时，连最小的缺陷也都盯着不放。这就象抬头看铺了瓦的屋顶并将注意力集中在缺了一片瓦的地方。如同一个秃顶的人对我说过的："不管什么时候走进一个房间，我看到的就只有头发。"
一旦确定了你缺的瓦片是什么，就该研究得到它是否真的会使你感到幸福。然后做以下三件事中的一件：得到它，用不同的瓦片取代它，或者干脆忘掉它并将注意力集中在你生活中不缺瓦片的那些地方。
我花了许多年来研究幸福，我得出的最重要的结论之一是：人们的生活境况与他们的幸福程度之间几乎没有什么关系。略加思索就很清楚了。我们都知道有些人生活比较舒适但实质上不幸福，我们也知道有些人受了很多苦却总能保持快乐心境。
第一个秘诀是感激。所有幸福的人都心怀感激。不知感激的人不可能幸福。我们习惯认为感觉不幸福会导致人们抱怨，其实更确切的说法是抱怨会使人变得不幸福。
第二个秘诀是认识到幸福是某种别的东西的副产品。幸福最明显的来源是那些给我们生活带来目的的追求——从研究昆虫到打棒球，任何事都行。热情越高，我们可能感受到的幸福也就越多。
最后，相信有某种永恒的东西超越我们，相信我们的存在具有某种更大的意义，这可以使我们更幸福。我们需要一种精神或宗教的信仰，或者是一种生活的哲学。
不管你的原则是什么，它应该包括这样一个不言而喻的道理：如果你在几乎所有环境里都决定注意积极的东西，你会感到幸福；但如果你决定注意糟糕的东西，你会大吃苦头。就象幸福一样，这在很大程度上也取决于你自己。
你可以使用这个链接引用该篇文章 http://publishblog.blogchina.com/blog/tb.b?diaryID=966227