Dr. Gilbert’s TED Talk about happiness and synthetic happiness was interesting, however, I feel like it’s an old topic. Everyone knows that money isn’t a guaranteed ticket to happiness, happiness comes from meaningfulness. The only thing that I found interesting was the synthetic happiness he was talking about. Personally, I’m not sure if I like the term synthetic happiness. If you feel happy, if you feel good, isn’t it real? Is there really a difference between when something makes you happy and when you just feel happy? I know the things that make me happy and I know it because I feel it. I’m happy when I enjoy a cup of the nice Colombian coffee my friend sends me, I’m happy when I feel the bass from my music in my chest, I’m happy when I hear the grumble of my V8 on the highway on ramps. Most of all I’m happy when I see my girlfriends face and here her voice on my phone even though we are separated by 861 miles. I argue that there is no synthetic happiness, there is just happiness. If something makes you happy, then it really doesn’t matter how. That’s not the only disagreement that I have, Dr. Gilbert spends some time on tests conducted at Harvard, the university he teaches at, and uses them as anchor points for his lecture. My issue here is that I just can’t accept everything he says here as this is his own work. Not only is there the possibility that he may try to make the experiment seem more important than it really is, but also he may himself believe that the experiment shows great and important results. When you make something yourself, you inherently see it in great light, and tend to miss the flaws. I would like to look more in depth at the projects Dr. Gilbert referenced to get a better understanding of the data and results.

I will say this, however, Dr. Gilbert’s point about being mindful in how we pursue happiness so that we don’t inherently destroy ourselves or hurt those around us is something I can agree with (for the most part, I do tend to speed a little, I like to go fast). We need to know what makes us really happy and what is just a cheap thrill (the difference to me being what does it every time and what needs to be bigger and better every time to work). If we pursue too much, we tend to lie, cheat, and be greedy, and that only leads to sorrow, not happiness.

I really think Gilbert is on to something here. This TED talk gives me a lot of hope because the idea that we create our own happiness is kind of awesome. I’m not going to lie, until watching this video, I was one of the skeptics who believed that synthetic happiness isn’t the same as natural happiness. I’m only 19 but I feel like I’ve already spent a large portion of my life searching for that true happiness and, unfortunately, it seems like I could never quite achieve it. From the evidence he gave us though, I’m starting to see it from a different perspective. I always just assumed that when we don’t get what we want, we just settle and lie to ourselves that we’re happy with the end result and eventually just start to believe the lie, but it’s never really real. That’s why the studies Gilbert spoke of with the Monet prints were so surprising to me, especially the one with the amnesia patients. They literally believed that the print they didn’t know they owned was better than the one they first picked out of the set. Showing that their synthesized happiness of having a certain thing, turned into a real preference for it. The real lesson I took from this talk was, be happy with what you have even if at first you’re pretending to be…eventually, it will become real happiness. The fact that this is scientifically proven also makes it much easier for me to believe. Now that I have this little gem of knowledge, I’m going to start applying to my life anytime things don’t quite go my way by just telling myself that eventually I will be happy about this, I just need to give it time. I think Gilbert is pretty credible, not only does he have the endorsement of being on a TED talk, but he uses multiple studies and graphs to prove his point. We aren’t just relying on his word.  In his bio, it also says that he is a Harvard Psychologist researching happiness. To be frank, even if he wasn’t a very credible source, I would still like to believe what he has to say, because I think it will definitely help me in my life long search for happiness.