It's All in Your Head LP: Thinking Your Way to Happiness

231 Pages·2007·3.721 MB·English

by  Stephen M. Pollan, Mark Levine

By Stephen M. Pollan
and Mark Levine
BEST- SELLING AUTHORS OF
SECOND ACTS AND DIE BROKE
It’s All in
Your Head
( (
Thinking Your Way to Happiness
The
8 Essential Secrets
to Leading a Life
Without Regrets

(
To my grandchildren.
—Stephen Pollan
To Rocky and Winston.
—Mark Levine
MORAL
Happiness is a how, not a what; a talent,
not an object.
—HERMANN HESSE
Contents
Acknowledgments, vii
Prologue, ix
CHAPTER 1: It’s All in Your Head, 1
CHAPTER 2: You’re Just Where You’re Supposed to Be, 23
CHAPTER 3: It Gets Better, 48
CHAPTER 4: Own Your Success, 69
CHAPTER 5: You Don’t Have to Go It Alone, 90
CHAPTER 6: There’s No Time Like Now,
So Take the Action, 112
CHAPTER 7: Your Best Is Enough, 132
CHAPTER 8: The Past Is Past, 156
CHAPTER 9: Tomorrow Is Too Late, 178
CHAPTER 10: Out of Your Mind, 201
Epilogue, 207
APPENDIX: How to Be Happy, 209
Postscript 215
About the Authors
Other Books by Stephen M. Pollan and Mark Levine
Credits
Cover
Copyright
About the Publisher
Acknowledgments
A book like this draws not only on people with whom we’ve
spoken, but on books we’ve read, movies and television shows
we’ve watched, music we’ve heard, and art we’ve seen. To come
up with a comprehensive list of all the sources and influences
that helped us write this book is, as a result, impossible. Instead
we’re forced to highlight only a handful of influences. We apol-
ogize, in advance to all those we’ve left out.
Thanks to the friends, family, and clients who allowed us to
draw on the stories of their lives as examples in this book.
Thanks to David Allen, Saint Augustine, Hannah Arendt,
Marcus Aurelius, Honoré de Balzac, John Barrymore, Walter
Benjamin, Ambrose Bierce, Jorge Luis Borges, Urie Bronfen-
brenner, Frank Buchman, Frances Burney, Samuel Butler,
Julius Caesar, Albert Camus, Angela Carter, Miguel de Cer-
vantes, Martin Charnin, Joseph Conrad, Mason Cooley,
Nathaniel Cotton, Faye J. Crosby, Robertson Davies, Charles
Dickens, Diogenes, Leo Durocher, Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Epictetus, Gustave Flaubert, Anne Frank, Baltasar Gracián,
Robert Grudin, Hermann Hesse, Eric Hoffer, Oliver Wendell
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Holmes Sr., Thomas Henry Huxley, Eugène Ionesco, William
James, Susan Jeffers, Thomas Jefferson, Janis Joplin, Franz
Kafka, Yoshida Kenk o¯, Ernest Kurtz, Philip Larkin, D. H.
Lawrence, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dominic Maruca,
Margaret Mead, Thomas Moore, O. Herbert Mowrer, Fridtjof
Nansen, John Henry Cardinal Newman, Blaise Pascal, Alastair
Reed, François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Jean Rostand,
Wendy Coppedge Sandford, Arthur Schopenhauer, George
Bernard Shaw, Baruch Spinoza, Publius Syrus, Henry David
Thoreau, Roderick Thorp, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Oscar
Wilde, Thornton Wilder, Frank Lloyd Wright, Steven Wright,
and Stefan Zweig for lending us their words of wisdom.
Thanks to Steve Hanselman for helping to inspire this book.
Thanks to Joe Tessitore, Libby Jordan, Herb Schaffner, Knox
Huston, Paul Olsewski, and Keith Pfeffer of Collins for their vi-
sion and encouragement throughout the project. In fact, we’d
like to thank everyone at HarperCollins. For years we talked
about finding a home with a publisher. Thanks to the extraordi-
nary people at HarperCollins, past and present, we’ve now had
a happy home on 53rd Street for seven years and as many
books.
Thanks to our agent, Stuart Krichevsky, and Shana Cohen
and Elizabeth Coen of the Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency
for their unflinching help and support. We’re always told how
rare it is for authors to have as close and lasting a relationship to
an agent as we have with Stuart. That’s a testimony to his skill,
vision, humor, and above all, patience.
Thanks to our wives, Corky Pollan and Deirdre Martin
Levine, for their understanding and love.
PROLOGUE
A Hindu legend says we were all once gods. But eventually we
abused our powers. Brahma, the chief god, decided to punish
us by taking away our divinity. Brahma called a meeting of the
other chief gods to figure out where to hide our holiness. One
god suggested hiding it deep beneath the earth. “No,” Brahma
said, “man will just figure out a way to tunnel miles below the
surface.” Another god suggested hiding our holiness at the bot-
tom of the ocean. “No,” Brahma responded, “man will just
learn how to dive to the seabed.” A third god came up with the
idea of placing our divinity on top of a towering mountain.
“No,” Brahma said, “man will just climb every tall mountain on
the planet until he finds it.” Stumped, the other gods told
Brahma they gave up—there didn’t seem to be any place to
hide our holiness and keep it out of our reach. “Wait,” Brahma
said with a smile. “I’ve got it. We’ll hide man’s holiness deep
within himself—he’ll never think to look for it there.” Since
then, we’ve spent ages digging below the earth, diving to the
sea floor, and climbing tall mountains, looking for something
that’s already within us.