James Rickardson

speaker

278 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2019 last heard Jul 2019

James Rickardson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

No recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

All In The Mind · On happiness—notes from prison · 21 Jul 2019 podcast

On the one hand I think happiness is a choice.

I think you can choose to be happy.

I'm a little bit leery of the word happy.

I think it's a bit too superficial.

And I'm not even sure that happiness is the most interesting of the emotions that we can all experience.

I think contentment is probably a higher one myself.

But you do have a choice, and it's the way in which you see the world.

And if you see the world as being the glass half full, half empty, I mean, then chances are

you're not going to be very happy.

If you see the glass half full or even a bit more than being half full, then the chances of you being happy are much greater.

I also think that again, living in our consumer society, that if you pitch your expectations in life to below what you earn

So you've got a bit of a buffer zone.

You're okay.

But I think that what happens in our society all too often is that if you're earning $100,000 a year and you're spending $110,000 a year, you're always going to be frustrated and anxious, and how am I going to find the extra ten thousand?

And can I get another credit card?

And so on.

So I think a lot of it comes down to modifying one's desires such that they're in sync with the reality of your life.

Do you know what I mean?

And at every stage in your life we'd probably all wish that we were richer or better looking or younger or whatever, which is just a recipe for unhappiness.

And of course we live in a culture which thrives on unhappiness.

Showing 201–220 of 278 · page 11 of 14