It seems to be human nature to compare everything. I see my two daughters doing it every day; “but she has more sweeties dad!”. Heaven help me if I don’t ensure that both girls have exactly the same size piece of cake. Adults are not immune and past studies of happiness have shown, rather cynically, we’re happiest when we’re doing better than our peers. This is a rather secular point of view on happiness and does not include any spiritual dimension that might mitigate against our urge to buy a bigger TV. Anyway, the point is that we do tend to compare what we have with what our peers have, and if we think they are better off we are miserable. Continue Reading »

I’ve just read one of Seth Godin’s recent posts (you can find it here – http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/04/are-you-rational.html). His view is summed up in the last line of his post; “There’s room for both rational and irrational decision making, and I think we do best when we choose our path in advance instead of pretending to do one when we’re actually doing the other. The worst thing we can do is force one when we actually need the other.”
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