Dr. Valentin Fuster talked about... happiness

This week, I had the opportunity to attend a lecture by Dr. Valentin Fuster, one of the leading cardiologists in the world.

At the conference, we learned the factors that could cause a heart attack or brain damages; we learned that obesity is the leading cause of death in the world, in both developed and poor countries or developing; and we also learned that the habits of life, not genetics, are the cause of most strokes.

But the most important thing to me in the lecture was the relationship established by Dr. Fuster between health and happiness. From his point of view, a society that always wants more and more and doesn’t appreciate its achievements, is a society that runs a serious risk of falling ill. Therefore, Dr. Fuster put special emphasis on two things: how to understand the happiness and how to promote a culture of health from childhood.

Talking about happiness, Dr. Fuster gave us some beautiful definitions:

• “Happiness comes from our own attitude. If your mental attitude is correct, even in a hostile atmosphere, you feel happy” (Dalai Lama)
• “Success is getting what you want. Happiness is accepting what you get” (Dale Carnegie)
• “Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing , you will be successful” (Alberto Schweitzer)
• “Happiness is when what you think, you say, and you do are in harmony” (M. Gandhi)

Talking about to promote health from childhood, he started his lecture in the same way that he finished: describing the roadmap to get a healthy heart and a healthy brain. With young people, it’s important to motivate them to live with healthy criteria; with people in its mid life, the objective is to promote a healthy life style; and with elder people, the objective is to keep their mind awake.