Self-importance is key to unhappiness (video)

Getting free of self-importance is the key to happiness: Polly Young-Eisendrath

(TEDx Talks) TEDxMiddlebury, Aug. 18, 2013. Dr. Polly Young-Eisendrath, Ph.D. discusses the idea that we can control and manage our lives as counter to our happiness. After considering the true meaning of happiness, she highlights several uniquely human emotions — shame, guilt, envy, and jealousy — that pose as obstacles to this happiness and offers solutions to overcome these emotions.

ABOUT: Polly Young-Eisendrath is a speaker, writer, Jungian analyst, and mindfulness teacher. She is a long-time practitioner of Zen Buddhism and vipassana (insight meditation) in the tradition of Jewish Buddhist teacher Shinzen Young (through which she is a certified teacher). She has published many chapters and articles on Buddhism, psychotherapy, spirituality, resilience, and Jungian psychology. She is also clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Vermont and in independent clinical practice in central Vermont. Her 14 published books have been translated into more than 20 languages, including The Self-Esteem Trap, The Resilient Spirit, Women and Desire, and The Cambridge Companion to Jung. She is working on a spiritual memoir called Love Broken Open.

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