ppreciation
Showing posts with label happiness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label happiness. Show all posts
Friday, 13 January 2023
Sunday, 7 November 2021
5 Things You Don’t Need to Be Happy and Fulfilled
And the underlying feelings you actually want.
I agree with the basic criticisms of self-improvement.
You don’t need any of the common goals, status markers, or achievements promoted by the industry. In reality, you don’t even want them. We think we want the goals and material items themselves, but we really want the underlying feelings they provide.
It’s a tricky battle.
On the one hand, you technically don’t need to do anything to feel happy. You could just make a conscious decision to do it. Eastern philosophy teaches this ethos and claims that desire causes suffering.
David Hawkins, the author of spiritual books like Power Vs. Force, said that:
“The person who suffers from inner poverty is relentlessly driven to accumulate on the material level.”
On the other hand, it can be difficult to just conjure up positive feelings out of thin air. Goals and outcomes serve a purpose, too, because you need to grow and evolve to reach certain outcomes.
Let’s take a look at some things you don’t technically need to live a good life and break down some of the underlying feelings that you really want in the first place.
You Don’t Need A Bunch of Money
Research shows that additional happiness levels fall off after about $75,000 a year. I’ve experienced it myself. I’ve moved up several tax brackets in the past five years and the money itself didn’t make me any happier.
I went to the mall the other day. I remember how I used to feel when I couldn’t afford much. I’d walk around and ‘window shop,’ feeling pity and the strong desire to buy what I couldn’t have. When I went to the mall the other day, I could’ve gone on a massive splurge. But I didn’t. I didn’t care. I didn’t want anything.
While money doesn’t make you happy, it does provide a few benefits and it does help you feel certain positive emotions:
- Freedom: Money gave me back control over my time. While money doesn’t make you happy, per se, having more time to pursue the things you enjoy can have a massive benefit in your life.
- Peace of mind: 41% of Americans can’t afford a $1,000 emergency. Money can alleviate your anxiety and lower stress. While I can’t afford a private jet, it feels great to know I can go to the grocery store and buy as much as I need anytime I want. It’s nice to no longer stress about my bills.
- The growth needed to make money: Money is often a byproduct of doing something worthwhile and rewarding like starting a business. How you make your money is just as important as how much you make.
- Addition by subtraction: The main benefit of making money doing what you enjoy is the ability to avoid all the things you don’t want to do — work a job you hate, commute (which has been proven to cause stress), suffer intolerable bosses or hostile environments, etc.
Naval Ravikant provides the recipe for success using money:
“People who live far below their means enjoy a freedom that people busy upgrading their lifestyles can’t fathom.”
You don’t need to be filthy rich, but making enough to live on through a profession or business you enjoy can change your life.
You Don’t Need to “Find Your Passion”
You’ve seen the cliches in the self-improvement industry about finding your passion: “Do what you love and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.”
You don’t need to do what you love to enjoy what you do for a living. And passion doesn’t necessarily come from work you love but rather work that you enjoy because you get good at it.
Cal Newport makes this argument in his book So Good They Can’t Ignore You:
“Passion comes after you put in the hard work to become excellent at something valuable, not before. In other words, what you do for a living is much less important than how you do it.”
He also said:
“If you want to love what you do, abandon the passion mindset (“what can the world offer me?”) and instead adopt the craftsman mindset (“what can I offer the world?”).”
Also, there are some other elements of what you do for a living that can lead to happiness and fulfillment without needing to have the passion and ultimate bliss:
- Autonomy: Daniel Pink, author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us says “Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another. And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives.” Find something that gives you the freedom to create and you’ll be more motivated while you’re working.
- A sense of meaning: You can find a sense of meaning by making $30,000, $300,000, or $30,000,000. How do you get that sense of meaning? You do work you enjoy, work you want to get good at, work that gives you autonomy and a sense of agency, work that makes a positive impact on other people.
- A positive work environment: For some, this could mean self-employment with control over your hours. For others, this could mean finding a company with a culture and values that align with yours. Overall, you want to work in an environment that doesn’t cause needless stress, anxiety, and dissatisfaction.
You Don’t Need Everyone to Like You
There’s a popular quote:
“When you’re 20 you care what everyone thinks, when you’re 40 you stop caring what everyone thinks, when you’re 60 you realize no one was ever thinking about you in the first place.”
You don’t need everyone to like you. In fact, attempting to get everyone to like you leads to people-pleasing behaviors that cause you to be less likable.
You can’t entirely avoid reacting to the way others perceive you. You’re wired to notice and measure little social status cues because they were critical to your ancestor’s survival. But, you can overcome that wiring and understand that ultimately you decide what people’s opinions about you mean to you.
The best way to get other people to like you is to learn how to like yourself. People are attracted to people who are secure in who they are, independent of the opinions of other people. Ironically, the less you care about whether or not people like you, the more people end up liking you.
Does this mean that you should behave however you want and be rude, aloof, or dismissive? Not at all. You can be kind, generous, and open-minded without needing to pander to anyone in the process.
Some tips for building a positive self-perception instead of what others think about you:
- Do the things you enjoy regardless of whether or not you think they’re ‘cool’ to the outside world — hobbies, career, business ideas, etc.
- Monitor your own relationship with yourself. Catch yourself when you get into patterns of negative self-talk. Take time to journal, meditate, and get a better understanding of your thought patterns.
- Instead of focusing on yourself and what other people think about you, focus on other people. Get curious about their interests. Listen. Focus not on saying the right things to get them to like you, but just having a genuine interest to understand who they are, period.
You Don’t Need (Or Even Want) to Be Famous
A corollary of the above. You don’t need massive levels of status or fame to be successful. We now live in a culture where we measure each other by numbers.
On the one hand, social media is a great place for communication and connection. On the other hand, it can cause us to focus on metrics that don’t matter as much as the substance of the content we put out there.
If you chase status, likes, and engagement to the point you have to become someone that you’re not to get fame, people end up liking the caricature of you, not the real you. Ask many famous people and they will tell you how much of trap fame can be:
“I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.” — Jim Carrey
So, what can you pursue if fame isn’t the answer? Pursue building a tribe instead.
Seth Godin, the author of Tribes, put it well:
“The secret of leadership is simple: Do what you believe in. Paint a picture of the future. Go there. People will follow.”
Do I want every single human on planet earth to read my writing? No. Would I like to have a large audience? Yes. I already do. And I’m most proud of the fact that I have the right people in my tribe instead of having everyone in my tribe. I write about the subjects that fascinate me and also intersect with the interests of certain readers. I want to connect with like-minded people.
That’s what you ultimately want, too. You want to feel like you’re making an impact on others. And you can do that without the whole world knowing your name.
You Don’t Need Your Life to be a Movie
In general, you don’t need to live a magic rockstar, dream fairytale life to feel happy and fulfilled. You could live that way and be happy, but it’s not a requirement.
Again, you really want the underlying feelings behind the glitz and glamour.
What are some of these feelings?
You want a sense of adventure. You can get that without traveling to 70 different countries on a private jet. There are many different ways to live an adventurous life that cost little to nothing.
You want to feel like your life matters. You don’t need a bunch of money and status to do that. If you live in a way that’s aligned and congruent, you’ll feel a sense of meaning. I’ve come across people with tons of money who aren’t aligned. I’ve come across those with ‘humbler’ professions and less money that are completely aligned.
You want a feeling of accomplishment, growth, and the pride that comes from following through with your goals. You can have that with a variety of different goals. I often think of the artisans and little shop owners who aren’t rich but have the satisfaction of knowing they make a living directly from their creative energy.
I don’t know you. I can’t tell you exactly which mixture of inner-work and worldly outcomes will provide the feelings you’re looking for. But I do know that going entirely in one direction or the other won’t help.
Yes, you don’t want to be in a never-ending chase for desire. But you’re also a human being with wants and needs.
At the end of the day, you’re the best person to decide whether or not you’re happy, fulfilled, and successful. Trust your instincts, make wiser decisions as time goes on, learn from your mistakes, seize the day every day. I’m pretty sure you’ll be pretty damn happy.
Ayodeji is the author of Real Help: An Honest Guide to Self-Improvement.
Sunday, 11 July 2021
Are You Swimming With or Against the Current of Life?
The story of the green sea turtle
In his book The Cafe on the Edge of the World, John Strelecky tells the story of a man in a hurry.
The man, a busy professional also named John, is stuck in a massive traffic jam en route to his much needed vacation. When he tries to circumvent the roadblock, he gets lost and, running out of fuel, energy, and growing ever hungrier, turns in to a cafe in the middle of nowhere — The Cafe of Questions.
Inside the cafe, John gets a delicious breakfast, but he is also confronted with a series of uncomfortable, oddly well-timed questions, such as “Why are you here?” “Do you fear death?” and “Are you fulfilled?” The waitress, cook, and fellow guests seem to be able to read his mind, and they all make him reflect deeply on the path in life he has chosen thus far.
At one point in the book, the waitress, Casey, sits down in John’s booth and tells him the story of the green sea turtle. She too was once on vacation, she says. Snorkeling off the coast of Hawaii, she spotted a green sea turtle right next to her in the water. This being the first time she ever saw one, she was excited and decided to follow the little guy for a while.
“To my surprise, although he appeared to be moving pretty slowly, sometimes paddling his flippers and other times just floating, I couldn’t keep up with him. I was wearing fins, which gave me propulsion power through the water, and didn’t have on a buoyancy vest or anything that would slow me down. Yet he kept moving farther from me, even though I was trying to keep up. After about ten minutes, he lost me. Tired, disappointed, and a little embarrassed I couldn’t keep up with a turtle, I turned back and snorkeled to shore.”
The next day, Casey returned to the same spot, and again, she found and tried to keep up with another green sea turtle. As she realized that turtle too was about to lose her, she stopped paddling and just floated in the water.
“As I was floating on the surface, I realized something: When the turtle was swimming, it linked its movements to the movements of the water. When a wave was coming at him, he would float, and paddle just enough to hold his position. When the pull of the wave was from behind him though, he’d paddle faster, so that he was using the movement of the water to his advantage. The turtle never fought the waves. Instead, he used them.”
Casey, on the other hand, had been paddling the whole time. This was easy enough when the tide was in her favor, but the more she fought the incoming waves, the less energy she had to capitalize on the outgoing ones later.
“As wave after wave came in and went out, I became more and more fatigued and less effective. Not the turtle though. He kept optimizing his movements with the movements of the water. That’s why he was able to swim faster than I could.”
If you’re like me — and John — at this point in the story, you’ll wonder: That’s great — but what does it have to do with me and my life? Actually, a whole lot, as Casey will explain in a second.
Have you ever felt like you’re fighting an uphill battle? As if for every two steps forward, life somehow pushes you one step back?
It happens to all of us. We do our best to fulfill our duties as responsible adults, and yet, it seems we must fight tooth and nail to make room for the few people and activities that are truly important to us. Why is that?
Well, as the green sea turtle might tell us: “You’re swimming against the current of life. Why don’t you try swimming with it?”
After Casey gives him some time to think about the story, John interprets it as follows:
“I think the turtle — the green sea turtle — taught you that if you aren’t in tune with what you want to do, you can waste your energy on lots of other things. Then, when opportunities come your way for what you do want, you might not have the time or strength to spend on them.”
Casey smiles, for she knows the power of grasping an important lesson out of one’s own thinking, and then she adds some more context to John’s insight:
“Each day, there are so many people trying to persuade you to spend your time and energy on them. Think about just your mail and email. If you were to participate in every activity, sale, and service offering you get notified of — you’d have no free time. And that’s just mail and email. Add on all the people who want to capture your attention for television time, online activities, places to eat, travel destinations…You can quickly find yourself living a life that’s just a compilation of what everyone else is doing, or what people want you to be doing.”
Casey then explains that since she observed the turtle moving effortlessly through the water, she has taken a new perspective on life: The incoming waves represent all the people, activities, and things that clamor for a share of her attention, time, or energy but don’t contribute to what she really wants to do in life. In essence, they block her from fulfilling her purpose. Meanwhile, the things and people that support Casey living in sync with her calling are like outgoing waves — they carry her towards her destiny.
That’s the lesson of the green sea turtle, and even though it’s a big one to swallow with his pancakes, John decides to chew on it for a while. I hope you will too.
When Casey leaves John to ponder her story, he asks her for pen and paper. On the back of his napkin, he calculates that if he spends 20 minutes a day flicking through unimportant mail for 60 years, that’s over 300 days of his life — almost an entire year, wasted on one incoming wave.
What about all the others? What about TV commercials, mindless radio listening, and people trying to network with him for their advancement? And those are just the distractions John didn’t choose. He too is human. He’ll distract himself as well along the way.
John is shocked. He tells Casey about his discovery. While she reminds him that not all mail is junk — and not all distractions are wasted time — she does admit:
“It can get you thinking. That’s why my time with the green sea turtle made such a big impact on me.”
When you feel like all you do is struggle, ask yourself: “Am I swimming with the current of life? Or am I desperately paddling against it?”
Do you focus too much on distractions? Are you allowing the wrong activities and people to take up your time? If so, it is no wonder every hour you spend on hobbies and friends you love feels like an hour you must mine from the hardest rock with your bare hands.
At the same time, for every distraction you ignore, one ally will look your way. Wait for the right wave, the right circumstances to arrive, and then ride it with everything you’ve got. If the knitted beanie trend is fading, maybe wait a year to start your knitting business. If a friend offers you a small book deal to tell a story you’ve always wanted to tell, go for it!
After years of high-paying but also highly stressful jobs, John Strelecky decided to finally fulfill his childhood dream of traveling the world. When he came back, he wrote the book he needed to read; he gave himself the message he needed to hear.
Since then, that message has been shared millions of times around the world: Don’t swim against the current of life. Focus on the right people, the right activities, and the right things. Only then will it carry you to your dreams.
It’s just one of many metaphors in his book, but I have no doubt that, somewhere on the edge of the world, a green sea turtle once taught Strelecky that lesson — and from that very same turtle, we can still learn to navigate the seas of life today.
I write for dreamers, doers, and unbroken optimists. For my best articles & book updates, go here: https://niklasgoeke.com/
Tuesday, 18 May 2021
What truly keeps people happy in such unhappy times
Photo by Bruce Mars on Unsplash
When they are lucky, they are happy, and when they are unlucky they are sad, but all arcs of their lives bend towards joy
A new question is in the air. What must you do to find joy in these times? It is a question that presumes you are sad, that even insists you are sad. So it looks you in the eye even if you have not lost someone dear, and you are not enduring the torture of caring for someone, which today could include the task of dragging a bleak, industrial oxygen cylinder. Even if you have been spared for now, there is an assumption that you are slowly sinking in second-order melancholy. After all, there is death all around, and a sense of inevitability.
So, what are people doing to make themselves feel better? Nothing much.
Most people do nothing special to feel happy. They are just happy. When they are lucky, they are happy, and when they are unlucky they are sad, but all arcs of their lives bend towards joy. In happiness they are not amateurs; they don’t over-articulate joy. Their whole lives are built around being happy. So what they now do is stick to a semblance of a routine, and surrender to habits. They work, chat, watch a lot of television, watch T20, read, play badminton on the street assuming it will keep them fit, lament that the gyms are shut as though they used to go every day, and they eat a lot of fast carbs. As before. They did all this more or less the same way before the pandemic. A typical Indian does many things in a single day to be happy in different ways without even knowing the motive. And most people achieve happiness because the bar is so low.
There are others who are happy in a more complex way, which they consider a higher order of happiness, a self-assigned high place in a secret caste hierarchy of living. They don’t need to be entertained by a story, or a piece of news, or by sugar. In not expecting happiness in all three meals a day, or every hour, they imagine they have liberated themselves from animal biology. Thus, when happiness does occur, they feel it more than the others because it is so much rarer. They, too, were exactly like this before the pandemic, and they too have not gone in pursuit of happiness. They too are pros at happiness.
There is an old golden piece of advice in long-distance running. Don’t buy new shoes for the race day. It is the novice who runs a race in new shoes. Seasoned runners don’t do anything different on race day; they stick to everything that is old, including their water bottles and bandanas and watch straps, everything that is deeply familiar to their skin.
Most people who have gotten away from the pandemic so far without being directly struck by tragedy do not feel the obligatory sorrow that the question in the air presumes because they found joy in what is familiar to them, in their habits, and in staying true to who they are. They don’t even ask questions about how to be happy in a pandemic, or at least ask this in a serious way. They are just happy. So where has the question come from?
The question has emanated from people who talk the most about happiness. People who have for long been dejected, long before the pandemic. They have some interest in the answer, but they love questions more than answers. Most people who say, “Have you felt so dark before, so helpless before, so hopeless before," know that the answer is yes, they have felt so sad before, in different circumstances. The articulation of ‘how to be happy’ is often an articulation of sorrow.
The question has also come from psychologists and psychiatrists.This is because they are ‘qualified’ to have answers to such questions, which they then transmit. That is how the question has come to linger in the air.
Not everyone finds joy in bleak times by just being themselves. Some people are donating money to noble causes for the first time. Even people who know that every taxpayer is a philanthropist cannot help donating, because it brings them joy.
Some have decided not to feel the pain of other people, and they read news of the unfolding misery as though it is some kind of realistic fiction happening in another dimension. This form of protection from sorrow is more common than people are ready to admit.
Some have found comfort in becoming the guardians of appropriate sorrow. They condemn jokes and festivities, and the overt public happiness of the Indian Premier League (IPL). I am confident that they privately do watch Netflix “in these bleak times", but they find other people’s public display of joy disgusting. They are like that grim relative every family has, who expects everyone to be in mournful silence when he is ill. Oddly enough, many of the people who oppose IPL matches as insensitive are surely among those who condemn thugs who enforce homage to a departed politician or actor by closing half a city down. This sanctimony, too—this expectation that everyone should be like you, be as emotional as you—is a way of manufacturing comfort from ambient fear.
But a majority of people find happiness through regular means, like by seeking entertainment, such as the IPL tournament. However, they are wary of the guardians of appropriate sorrow. They fear being perceived as bad people. So they have become secretive even about watching cricket. And when they want to share something good that has happened to them, they break the news with the preface, “In these sad times, finally some good news", without realizing that in ‘bleak times’ the last thing people want to know about is something good happening to other people.
Thursday, 18 March 2021
3 Ways Emotionally Intelligent People Deal With Negative Feelings
Dealing With Negative Feelings
Whatever you are not changing, you are choosing.
Photo by Wolfgang Hasselman
Throughout the day, we experience many situations where we react on an emotional basis. When we encounter situations we consider bad, we tend to mismanage our lives, and we often don’t consciously realize our behavior.
When we’re soaked up in negative emotions, we tend to say things we don’t mean, act unwisely, and make poor decisions.
Emotionally intelligent people know specific ways to handle emotional charges healthily. They know that every time they feel angry, hopeless, jealous, or regretful is a possibility to transform their lives.
Understanding emotions.
Every mental activity results in a specific physical sensation. This is what we call an emotion. Emotions are combinations of both mental experiences and physical impacts. This composite expresses the entirety of your health at a given moment.
The endocrine system produces hormones in response to your experiences. The more radical your experiences are, the more intense your body will react through releasing certain hormones. This results in strong emotions of deep sadness, vigorous hate, or profound happiness and bliss.
Even if some people you know seem to be happy all the time, they aren’t. From a physiological point of view, it is impossible to feel blissfully happy all the time, nor is it natural at all to feel overly emotional by default. That’s because happiness — as well as pleasure, joy, anger, stress — are, after all, emotions. The released hormones dissolve in the body over time and return to their normal level.
To put it bluntly, emotions are just temporary hormone mixes flushed within our body triggered by certain life experiences. Zen Buddhists remind us that humans are content, calm, and centered in the natural state of being.
That’s why each emotion is special, valid, and deserves full acknowledgment. That’s why becoming aware of this psychological mechanism of our bodies is so crucial.
Once you’re emotionally charged and aware of it, you can respond instead of reacting, which are two different things: Reacting is an automatic behavior. It’s exactly when we let our emotions dictate our actions. Responding is being mindful of our words and actions while moving forward.
Three supportive ways to handle emotions.
We are, after all, emotional beings, and we have to accept this reality.
A boost of pleasure emotions or stress emotions always has a certain trigger of mental activity and/or physical influences. That’s why emotions are excellent teachers in life. They help us understand what our life is about, what we want to see in our lives, and what we don’t enjoy.
It all boils down to some specific patterns emotionally intelligent people are aware of and stick to in their daily lives. Here are three of them:
They don’t act influential when they’re emotionally charged.
Our emotions heavily influence how we decide, speak, and act.
Probably you already had moments where you said something to a person you didn’t mean that way. You were just pushed by your anger and said it just to hurt that person.
You probably made promises to people on a day you felt awesome. But then, a few days later, you don’t feel in good shape to keep them.
Maybe a friend asked you out, and you agreed to meet. But then, a few days later, you’re not in the right mood to meet, and so you cancel it.
Maybe you have a bad day, and all the work you put into your project seems to be pointless after all, and you think about quitting.
The rule behind these scenarios we all know is easy:
Never reply when you are angry. Never make a promise when you are happy. Never make a decision when you are sad.
It may feel unnatural at first, but this rule helps us to become more aware when we try to see things objectively. By this rule, we avoid hurting others, making stupid decisions, or acting counterproductively.
They use their emotions as teachers.
A common but highly counterproductive way to deal with emotions is to ignore them. It seems to be the fastest way to get rid of them in the short term. But it won’t help you one bit to ignore your emotions, especially when they are recurring.
It’s not about just getting over your emotions. It’s about listening carefully to what they are trying to tell you about your experience.
A negative emotion reveals an unhealed part of yourself.
The things that bother you the most aren’t there randomly. They are your own mind that tries to identify what in your life can and must be transformed, changed, and fixed.
Emotions always have a reason and are created by your thoughts. Negative emotions can be traced back to specific thoughts that occupy your mind.
Once you identify why something is triggering you so much, you can understand it, release it, and form a positive life change out of it. Remember:
Whatever you are not changing, you are choosing.
Anger can help you to see your priorities more clearly. It tries to move you into action.
If you are jealous of someone, it helps you to understand what you truly want in your life. Even though you don’t want exactly what they plan, the anger you experience is about the fact that they are allowing themselves to pursue something while you are not.
Embarrassment is a feeling when we know that we didn't behave in a way we’re proud of. It can be a sign that we didn’t accept ourselves completely for who we are or not having the full confidence that we’re doing the best we can with what we have.
Regret shows us what we absolutely need to create. We tend to regret what we did not do more than to regret what we did. It is a sign that we need to live up to our expectations more importantly.
Every emotion has a deeper cause that wants to be acknowledged and understood. Facing and resolving them will always contribute to your evolution.
They always choose growth over ease.
After a tough working day, we can watch Netflix or work on our heart projects. Ticking another to-do on our lists and working for ourselves will result in similar amounts of dopamine as watching Netflix. Still, the decision is ours.
It’s easier to watch a TV series than to work on our project.
It’s easier to order our favorite fast food than to cook a fresh dinner.
It’s easier not to pay attention to the people around us than to positively impact them and treat them well.
It’s easy to grumble about everything that bugs us instead of profoundly taking care of ourselves.
So often, the short-term dopamine is too seductive to ignore. Nevertheless, only little growth lies in the road that was conceivably easy to trot.
Whether you excessively watch Netflix or use the time to make progress in your craft — the action you choose to take will lead to a completely different impact on your life mission and your freedom.
Whether you eat fast food or prepare your healthy dish — it will have a completely different impact on your health and physical well-being in the long-term.
Whether or not you pay genuine attention to the people around you and listen carefully to what they say and mean — it will have an immense impact on the quality of your relationships and the love and care you receive in your life.
Always choose growth over ease.
It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t eat, breathe, relax from time to time. It also shouldn’t mean you must sacrifice a beautiful today for a beautiful tomorrow.
It simply means you must take responsibility for your actions.
Each decision to do or not do something will inevitably stack to a certain outcome. It is the micro shifts you do day by day that will pay out — or trouble you — in the end.
Remember: Your body responds to your experiences by releasing certain hormones. Let positive emotions be the reward of supportive and powerful actions dedicated towards your growth in the long run.
In a nutshell
Emotionally intelligent people know specific ways to handle emotional charges healthily. It all boils down to some specific patterns emotionally intelligent people are aware of and stick to in their daily lives:
- Don’t act influential when you are sucked into emotions: Never reply when you are angry. Never make a promise when you are happy. Never make a decision when you are sad.
- Use your emotions as teachers, since they reveal unhealed parts of yourself: Once you identify why something is triggering you so much, you can understand it and release it and form a positive life change out of it. Remember: What you aren’t changing, you are choosing.
- Always choose growth over ease. It is the micro shifts you do day by day that will pay out — or trouble you — in the end. Your body responds to your experiences by releasing certain hormones. Let positive emotions be the reward of supportive and powerful actions dedicated towards your growth in the long run.
In short: Redo what makes you happy and resolve what doesn’t.
Written by
I write about Personal Growth, Mindset, Happiness • Let’s keep in touch on social media — michaelrauscher.com • Be my email friend michaelrauscher.substack.com
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Friday, 5 February 2021
The Happiness Project: Finding Joy in Tough Times
Click the link above to read the full article:
This is a very long article but has some valuable advice how different people deal with hard times!
In
a time like this, what does happiness look like? A dozen
culture-shapers offer their very personal perspectives on searching for
joy and finding meaning in life.
Happiness—and, at times, its absence—sits right in the center of so much that we do. We refer to it constantly in passing—as a goal, a state of mind, an outcome, an invocation, and so on—and we tend to do so as though we know exactly what we are talking about, and as though we know for certain that everyone else around us is talking about the same thing. But do we? And are they?
Although this article isn't about the strange and troubling year that we have just been through, it was, in part, inspired by it. At the height of the first lockdown—when people found themselves sundered, fending off unexpected anxieties and fears—I found myself thinking about happiness, and noticing from our collective distanced conversation just how individual, idiosyncratic, and mysterious our ideas of happiness seem to be.
I wanted to dig deeper into exactly that—into the very different and often contradictory ways we talk about, search for, and experience happiness. To that end, I spoke to 12 very different people. All of them are famous in some way, and each was chosen as a person with interesting life experiences who might articulate a distinct viewpoint. There is a youthful singer-songwriter (Phoebe Bridgers), an acclaimed new playwright (Jeremy O. Harris), a World Series-winning baseball player (Mookie Betts), a TV presenter and comedian (Samantha Bee), an actor recently turned TV show host (Drew Barrymore), two very different venerated actors in their later years (Anthony Hopkins, Goldie Hawn), a rapper (Roddy Ricch), a comedian who rebuilt his career after tragedy (Tracy Morgan), an activist who spent much of the previous decade in jail (Chelsea Manning), a film director and artist (David Lynch), and a writer (Roxane Gay). They were not, for the most part, selected as people who I expected to have any particular expertise on the subject of happiness, other than the expertise that we all have by virtue of having been either happy or not happy in our lives.
Monday, 11 January 2021
A choice to be happy
Photo by Larm Rmah on Unsplash
| Jan 9 |
We often complain for the wrong reasons.
We assume there’s something terribly wrong with us. We worry that we don’t have it all figured out when other (more smart) people, get to enjoy life.
We’re just bored.
In times like these, remind yourself of three key truths:
Be grateful. (Yes, again.) If you have enough money to buy food and pay the rent, if you have a device that allows you to read these words, you’ve got it good. Real good.
Take care of your physical being. Perhaps most of your problems boil down to a lack of sleep, proper food, and fresh air. As Tim Ferriss once joked, “If you think you have an existential crisis, try taking a shower and a nap.”
Don’t plan too much. In a world, we don’t understand (COVID and all), keep your zoom to the minimum. 2020 has taught me that planning is irrelevant on a planet that can change in a blink. I now know what I am going to do this week. I have a vague understanding of what I am doing this month. But that’s it.
At the end of the day, happiness – like confidence, love, worry, or guilt – is just a choice.
So make a choice to be happy, regardless of what’s happening.
You owe it – at least, to yourself.
Thursday, 31 December 2020
Sensitive people bring a major happiness habit to the workplace – and it’s all to do with empathy
Mimi Thian on social or copy the text below to attribute.
Around 20% of us are Highly Sensitive People – and the emotional awareness that goes hand-in-hand with this personality type is vital to workplace happiness.
We’re conditioned to think that Alpa personalities get ahead at work. Those who scoot up the career ladder with ease, we believe, are arrogant, loud and directive – in fact, people with psychopathic tendencies are assumed to make better leaders.
But, at a time when our personal and professional lives are colliding more and more, a more nuanced set of management traits may be called for. And within that scope lies the unsung skillsets of so-called Highly Sensitive People (HSPs).
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A term coined by Jungian psychotherapist Dr Elaine Aron in her seminal book The Highly Sensitive Person, HSP describes a type of person who is highly attuned to their internal and external environments.
Around 15-20% of the population count as HSPs. According to the UK’s Counselling Directory, the acute sensitivity it brings can present challenges in “our bright and fast-paced society”. For example, “you may find you’re easily overwhelmed, struggle to manage stress and need more alone time to recalibrate”.
But it’s also a characteristic that comes with a series of key advantages, including a rich inner life, sensitivity to subtleties and emotional reactivity.
It’s this last ability that emotional intelligence expert Harvey Deutschendorf picks up on in a discussion about the benefits that HSPs bring to the workplace this week.
“HSPs are very caring, empathetic, and emotionally responsive to the needs of others,” he writes in an article for Fast Company.
“Heightened perception, insight, and intuition allow the Highly Sensitive Person to notice nonverbal cues and pick up subtle nuances. Due to a higher level of sensitivity, when HSPs are in the right environment, they tend to thrive and exhibit many valuable workplace traits such as enhanced perception, empathy, creativity, and detail-orientation.”
What this means in real-world terms is that the HSPs are highly attuned to the feelings of others at work – they’ll notice if a team member is down, or they may be able to preempt tension, even without anyone saying anything.
Only 40% of leaders are only “proficient or strong” in this kind of empathy; and yet research by consulting company DDI found that it is a number one leadership skill.
“My experience with my clients and seeing where they struggled was largely not because of skills or technology, but because of the lack of a culture of empathy that allowed them to do their jobs,” explains the company’s CEO Michael Brenner. “That really got in the way.
“We think we need to be mean in order to get ahead. But it’s really the opposite,” he added. “It’s the leaders that focus on empathy. It’s the companies that focus on a culture of empathy that drive more innovation and more really frankly, rewarding careers for the people that work there.”
The DDI report found that empathy is a critical driver of management performance; and given the close relationship of happiness and productivity, this makes a lot of sense.
If your manager is able ask the right questions about how you are doing and the challenges that lie in your way, you – along with you entire team – are more likely to feel appreciated as a result.
“I think my lack of ego has made me a better manager and team player,” says digital manager Josie.* “I always make a point of celebrating everyone’s achievements (rather than singling out my own). I’ve been thanked by employees for my empathy and understanding, and my trustworthiness and willingness to help out means I’ve made some excellent friends over the years, too.”
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Not only does higher levels empathy bring happiness to the workplace, it’s also a channel of happiness in and of itself.
A 2019 study from the University of Oulu in Finland found that compassion was linked to a greater sense of wellbeing, a more positive mood, stronger social connections and increased life satisfaction.
So the next time you worry about being “too sensitive” in the workplace, remember that sensitivity comes with a powerful sidekick of empathy. And that will benefit everyone.
Images: Getty
*Names have been changed
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