Happiness – Author Discovers the Secret

David Hertes – the author of Be Happy NOW! – is shaking up the world of happiness theories by announcing a ground-breaking new concept for lasting happiness.

“My theory is the art of happiness because it is radical in its simplicity,” says the 48-year-old author.

After years of unhappiness Hertes decided to do something about it. “I was at a point where everything was wrong with the world and I really hated everything; from my job to the community where I lived. I wasn’t a very happy guy back then. I wanted a happier life.”

His journey toward happiness began. Hertes read books and attended seminars on anything happiness related, from Rational Emotive Therapy to Counting Your Blessing to An Attitude of Gratitude and many other Think Positive philosophies.

“The more I learned what makes people happy, the more I realized that emotion really stems from thinking – change your thoughts and you can change your emotion.”

Over the years, by applying his newly found knowledge Hertes increased his level of happiness substantially. However it was not an easy task. “Although it sounds simple, thinking positive is a very frustrating thing to do. First, in many situations it is difficult to figure out what the positive thing is. Secondly, no sooner would I think positive then – bam! – negative thoughts were back inside my head. It seemed like I was in a never ending battle with my mind for control of my thoughts.” A battle all the happiness philosophies credited to the same source; patterns in the subconscious mind. Negative patterns that must be replaced with positive patterns if happiness were to be attained.

After many years of practicing the think positive philosophies, though much happier, it was still a struggle to keep the negative thoughts at bay. “The Positive Thinking philosophies definitely are helpful, but I finally realized that they are limited. Their weakness is in that they do not tell us specifically how they work. If fact, they are quite vague. Exactly how does positive thinking effect emotion? Exactly how do we replace a negative pattern with a positive one? And when I am unhappy, exactly what do I change in my thinking to become happy?”

Hertes decided there had to be a more concrete, less effort, way to achieve happiness. A way that could be learned quickly and would work equally well in all situations. Because emotion is connected to thinking, he theorized that to control our emotion it was paramount that we first understand how the mind connects emotion to thought. And after three years of research Hertes discovered that connection. A connection so simple it enables us to quickly achieve happiness no matter what our situation. “I probably would have discovered it sooner had it not turned out to be so simple.”

Hertes discovered how the mind makes its determination of when to produce happiness; a simple little process he calls the Reality/Want Relationship. In a nutshell, the mind compares our wants to our reality. When reality and want match our minds produces happiness; when reality and want are unmatched our minds produce unhappiness. The “how to be happy” secret is in knowing how to control this reality/want relationship.

“When we understand the reality/want process – which is what my book is about – our emotion is completely in our hands because we are working directly with our minds’ emotion generating process. With this knowledge, when we feel unhappy, we know exactly what is happening and thus know exactly what in our thinking we have to change to get back to happiness. And best of all, we can do it in mere moments.”