Tag: happiness

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Health Mental Health Personal Growth Work

Assuming no change is an option

Replied to The devil you know | everything changes by Mandy Brown (everything changes)

I had spent months chewing on the various dangers and risks of each step I could take, and had not at all considered the dangers and risks of staying put.

I can see now that I was, in fact, making several mistakes. Principal among them was that I considered no change at all to be a viable option. It wasn’t, and not only because the present circumstances were untenable, but also because they were not static.

The second, related, error was that I assumed that all the risk was in moving, that by definition staying put was the prudent option.

Continue reading “Assuming no change is an option”
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Featured Writing

A dream of leisure

Liked Against Mythologizing the Practice of Writing by Amber Sparks (Why Be Happy When You Could Be Writing)

These “how I write” pieces, for example, have almost nothing to do with being a writer, and the reasons they’re shared have very little to do with being a writer. They’re actually about the dream of being freed from economic anxiety and the wheel of capitalism, and from the various demands on us from our families and loved ones. They’re a dream of “being just a writer,” which is less a dream about writing than a dream about leisure.

I think part of finding happiness is wading through the mystique we’ve swathed something we want in and uncovering what it is we truly want at the core, then accepting that want, whether it’s what we expected or not. Sparks is onto something, that many like the idea of having written, or dream of the mellow, artistic lifestyle of an idealized writer’s life, but the writing itself may be superfluous. Sometimes you think you want something, then realize you were mythologizing your conception of it, believing it would fulfill some other need — but figuring out that need itself is more useful than imagining what-ifs.

Continue reading “A dream of leisure”
Categories
Lifestyle Work

The work is not enough

Liked The Work is Not Enough by Anne Helen Petersen (Culture Study)

When your life is this precariously balanced, weekends aren’t for rest or reflection, not really. They’re for cramming in the things you had no time for during the week…then catching up or setting up or meal planning or doing enough laundry in preparation for the week to come.

I mention all of these piling-up tasks and distractions and annoyances not because they’re particularly unique or spectacular but because the essence of them might be relatable: each task, on its own, feels imminently solvable and completable.

For most of us, the thing that’s easiest to jettison is the thing that’s most precious to you — because letting it go ostensibly affects you and you alone. A hobby, a personal goal, a book club, a walk, a nap, all so readily sacrificed. But those are the things that allow us to stand up straight as we carry the weight of everyday annoyances and tasks.

See also: Rest is Resistance and How to Keep House While Drowning

But achieving control is not the same as achieving happiness.

Emphasis mine.

This is totally a mindset I have to be careful about.

Categories
Lifestyle Mental Health

Keep a “savor list”

Liked The science (and skill) of actually enjoying your life – Chris Bailey (chrisbailey.com)

The definition is in the name: on this list is everything you like to regularly savor—from fancy take-out lattes, to time with your kids, to wine-fueled board game nights with your spouse.

I like this framing — savoring — rather than the idea of rewarding myself, because I don’t want to withhold nice things from myself. Other people can buy a cookie as motivation to write, but I just eat the cookie immediately 😂 I’m already hard enough on myself in many ways. Giving myself simple pleasures should be just that: a pleasure, not an incentive. I don’t want to tie my happiness to productivity — I’m trying to extricate myself from that mindset.

Categories
Art and Design Cool Mental Health

Looking at art makes your brain happier

Liked Canadian Doctors Will Soon Be Able to Prescribe Museum Visits as Treatment by Molly EnkingMolly Enking (Smithsonian Magazine)

Hélène Boyer explains that museum visits have been shown to increase levels of serotonin, a neurotransmitter colloquially known as the “happy chemical” due to its mood-boosting properties…According to Boyer, the uptick in hormones associated with enjoying an afternoon of art is similar to that offered by exercise…

Also in Brussels this year

So there’s a chemical reason I like going to museums 😂

Curious if anyone has studied whether the effects hold from a virtual visit 🤔

Categories
Personal Growth Self Care Society

Finding joy by rejecting a scarcity mindset

Liked WHY MISERY LOVES COMPANY (AND HOW TO AVOID BECOMING BITTER) (aestheticsofjoy.com)

When we view our lives through the lens of abundance, we live in a state of flow. Success is not taken from others, but created with others.

Like the idea of “an abundance-based community” — her example is authors, who “realiz[e] that readers are not a scarce resource to be squabbled over, but a community to be cultivated. The goal is not to get people to read one book over another, but to get more people reading period.”

I dig the rising tide lifts all ships idea, even if it’s hard to remember sometimes with my own work.

[S]top saying “I’m so old,” which effectively hides another scarcity statement: “I have so little time left.”

Oops, I am guilty of this 😅 She’s got a point though…

Categories
Mental Health

Happiness and unhappiness should be measured separately

Bookmarked Happiness Is Two Scales by Uri (Atoms vs Bits)

The common way to talk about happiness is as a single scale: unhappy at one end, neutral in the middle, happy at the other end. I think that model is wrong.

If someone (including yourself) is struggling with low well-being, it’s important to ascertain which of two problems are happening:

  • not enough happiness
  • too much unhappiness

This is interesting and resonates with where I am now:

Removing unhappiness doesn’t actually increase happiness, it just…. removes unhappiness, which is good but unrelated.

Now that I am free of a stressful situation, I have space to add more happiness, but filling that opening with positive feelings isn’t a given.

Categories
Getting Shit Done Mental Health

Rethinking time to build happiness

Listened A New Way to Think About Your Time | Ashley Whillans by Ten Percent Happier from Ten Percent Happier

What if one of the keys to happiness is how intentional you are with your time?

Ashley Whillans is an Assistant Professor at Harvard Business School and author of the book Time Smart. Her groundbreaking research has led her to radically reevaluate how she spends her own time. Her goal is to help you move from time poverty to time affluence.

In this conversation, we talk about:

how to do a time audit

funding time, finding time, and reframing time

the surprising extent to which prioritizing time over money predicts happiness–and what to do if you usually do the opposite

how to handle time confetti

the value of canceling meetings

Decision conflict (?) when you feel like you should be doing something else

Time confetti — social media and tech notifications break up our time into little pieces instead of a longer chunk

Be careful not to let yourself fall into a rabbit hole of meaningless activities like cleaning out your inbox — set a time limit

Find or fund time (pay someone else to do activities that aren’t meaningful to you), or reframe activities to find meaning

Do a time audit to figure out what activities are sucking up your time

Time affluence — feeling in control of how you spend your time

Optimal target = using but not straining skills

Look for ways to give back to make your time feel more meaningful

Block time for meaningful activities, plus a quick planning session early in the week to figure out how you’re going to spend your time

Build breaks into your day to make up for the breaks that have disappeared in the world of virtual meetings where you switch context rapidly with no transition time

Set an intention of what you want to do that day in the morning

Place physical reminders of meaningful activities you could do / to act with intention in places around your house

People who value time over money tend to be happier

Pay attention to when your default activity is work

Also important to incorporate your values outside of work, even when it’s meaningful (like spending time with family and other leisure activities)

“Time Smart” by Ashley Whillans

Categories
Lifestyle Reflection Relationships

How many times will you go there, see them, do that again?

Bookmarked Opinion | How Covid Stole Our Time and How We Can Get It Back by Tim Urban (nytimes.com)

Depressing Math is especially depressing when you’re living through a pandemic. Covid hasn’t taken away our weeks, but it has robbed us of our favorite activities — experiences that are already in short supply.

A reminder to savor life and time with family and friends

Categories
Music

Played Wermland by Detektivbyrån

Listened Wermland by Detektivbyrån from Detektivbyrån

14 track album

Forgot this album existed! I was rooting through my last.fm data to figure out which albums I’ve listened to the most (actual albums not just one or two songs I played a ton), and this was surprisingly high up. Last.fm says I listened to it last year sometime but 🤷‍♀️ Before that hadn’t listened to it since 2013.

Generation Celebration and Neonland are still my favorite tracks. I feel like Neonland is the sound of happiness.