Entries by tag: happiness
Let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.
- Kahlil Gibran
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.
- Kahlil Gibran
Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and crotchety–
best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light–
good morning, good morning, good morning.
Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.
- Mary Oliver
Starting out,
I thought life was terribly complex,
and in some ways it is.
But contentment can be pretty simple.
- Anna Quindlen
“Everything is interconnected. Gratitude improves sleep. Sleep reduces pain. Reduced pain improves your mood. Improved mood reduces anxiety, which improves focus and planning. Focus and planning help with decision making. Decision making further reduces anxiety and improves enjoyment. Enjoyment gives you more to be grateful for, which keeps that loop of the upward spiral going. Enjoyment also makes it more likely you'll exercise and be social, which, in turn, will make you happier.”
--UCLA Neuroscience researcher Alex Korb
Four Rituals that Make You Happy:
(in summary, and as suggested by science to date)
1. Be grateful.
2. Name negative emotions.
3. Make good enough decisions.
4. Touch people.
SOURCE: http://theweek.com/articles/601157/neuroscience-reveals-4-rituals-that-make-happy
SOURCE: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23861354
Pers Soc Psychol Rev. 2013 Aug;17(3):248-72. doi: 10.1177/1088868313495593.
Targeting the good target: an integrative review of the characteristics and consequences of being accurately perceived.
Human LJ1, Biesanz JC.
Abstract
A person's judgeability, or the extent to which a person is easy to understand, plays an important role in how accurately a target will be perceived by others. Research on this topic, however, has not been systematic or well-integrated. The current review begins to remedy this by integrating the available research on judgeability from the fields of personality perception, nonverbal communication, and social cognition. Specifically, this review summarizes the characteristics that are likely to promote judgeability and explores its potential consequences. A diverse range of characteristics are identified as predictors of judgeability, all relating to three broader categories: psychological adjustment, social status, and socialization. Furthermore, being judgeable has a variety of potential, largely positive, consequences for the target, leaving good targets poised for greater personal and interpersonal well-being. Nevertheless, many questions on this topic remain and it is crucial for this relatively understudied topic to receive more systematic empirical attention.
KEYWORDS:
accuracy; expressivity; judgeability; person perception; well-being
PMID: 23861354 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Pers Soc Psychol Rev. 2013 Aug;17(3):248-72. doi: 10.1177/1088868313495593.
Targeting the good target: an integrative review of the characteristics and consequences of being accurately perceived.
Human LJ1, Biesanz JC.
Abstract
A person's judgeability, or the extent to which a person is easy to understand, plays an important role in how accurately a target will be perceived by others. Research on this topic, however, has not been systematic or well-integrated. The current review begins to remedy this by integrating the available research on judgeability from the fields of personality perception, nonverbal communication, and social cognition. Specifically, this review summarizes the characteristics that are likely to promote judgeability and explores its potential consequences. A diverse range of characteristics are identified as predictors of judgeability, all relating to three broader categories: psychological adjustment, social status, and socialization. Furthermore, being judgeable has a variety of potential, largely positive, consequences for the target, leaving good targets poised for greater personal and interpersonal well-being. Nevertheless, many questions on this topic remain and it is crucial for this relatively understudied topic to receive more systematic empirical attention.
KEYWORDS:
accuracy; expressivity; judgeability; person perception; well-being
PMID: 23861354 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Having a relaxed mind is very useful in meditation. Relaxation is the foundation of deep concentration. When the mind is relaxed, it becomes more calm and stable. These qualities in turn strengthen relaxation, thus forming a virtuous cycle. Paradoxically, deep concentration is built on relaxation.
A similar mechanism works in the practice of mindfulness. I found lightness to be highly conducive to mindfulness. Lightness gives rise to ease of mind. When the mind is at ease, it becomes more open, perceptive, and nonjudgmental. These qualities deepen mindfulness, which in turn strengthens lightness and ease, thus forming a virtuous cycle of deepening mindfulness.
--Chade-Meng Tan in Search Inside Yourself; The Unexpected Path to Achieving Success, Happiness (and World Peace), (a 2012 book on meditation by an emotionally intelligent Google engineer), page 69.
A similar mechanism works in the practice of mindfulness. I found lightness to be highly conducive to mindfulness. Lightness gives rise to ease of mind. When the mind is at ease, it becomes more open, perceptive, and nonjudgmental. These qualities deepen mindfulness, which in turn strengthens lightness and ease, thus forming a virtuous cycle of deepening mindfulness.
--Chade-Meng Tan in Search Inside Yourself; The Unexpected Path to Achieving Success, Happiness (and World Peace), (a 2012 book on meditation by an emotionally intelligent Google engineer), page 69.
Happiness, sadness, surprise, fear, disgust and anger. I have to admit, I have seen all these emotions on the faces of nonhuman primates, and some other mammals as well. Can you name another emotion? Or ten more? And do they break down to just this six??
What I thought of:
Jealousy. Is anger and fear and sadness.
Ecstasy. Is happiness and surprise.
Boredom. Is disgust and sadness. Or not an emotion, but rather a state of disinterest, a lack of focus or flow.
Confusion. Is not an emotion? Is a cognitive state of uncomprehending.
Maybe?
What I thought of:
Jealousy. Is anger and fear and sadness.
Ecstasy. Is happiness and surprise.
Boredom. Is disgust and sadness. Or not an emotion, but rather a state of disinterest, a lack of focus or flow.
Confusion. Is not an emotion? Is a cognitive state of uncomprehending.
Maybe?
We are all, to some extent, crazy. If you come to know any human being well enough, you eventually gain access to the basement where the traumas and wounds and deprivations are stored; rummage in there for a while, and you begin to understand the neuroses and fixations that shape his or her personality. The successful, reasonably happy people I've known are nuts in a way that works for them. Those who struggle and suffer fail to turn their preoccupations to some meaningful use. Next week, the American Psychiatric Association release the latest version of its bible of mental illnesses, the DSM-5, which catalogs about 300 categories of crazy. Critics of all kinds have lined up to assail this dictionary of disorders as subjective and lacking in scientific validity--assembled primarily to justify the prescribing of pills of dubious value.
About 50 percent of the population, the APA admits, will have one of its listed disorders at some point in their lives. Shy, like Emily Dickinson? You have "avoidant personality disorder." Obsessed with abstractions and numbers? You have "autistic spectrum disorder," like Isaac Newton. Suffer form "narcissistic personality disorder," with some hypersexuality thrown in? You must be a politician. To be skeptical of these neat categories isn't to deny that minds get broken, stuck, or lost, and need help finding their way out of misery. But psychotherapy remains an art, not a science; there is no bright line between nuts or not. If you're an old lady who lives amid piles of newspapers and personal treasures, you have "hoarding disorder." If you're a CEO who exploits sweatshop labor to pile up countless billions, you're on the cover of Forbes.
--William Faulk (editor-in-chief) in The Week, May 24, 2013 issue.
About 50 percent of the population, the APA admits, will have one of its listed disorders at some point in their lives. Shy, like Emily Dickinson? You have "avoidant personality disorder." Obsessed with abstractions and numbers? You have "autistic spectrum disorder," like Isaac Newton. Suffer form "narcissistic personality disorder," with some hypersexuality thrown in? You must be a politician. To be skeptical of these neat categories isn't to deny that minds get broken, stuck, or lost, and need help finding their way out of misery. But psychotherapy remains an art, not a science; there is no bright line between nuts or not. If you're an old lady who lives amid piles of newspapers and personal treasures, you have "hoarding disorder." If you're a CEO who exploits sweatshop labor to pile up countless billions, you're on the cover of Forbes.
--William Faulk (editor-in-chief) in The Week, May 24, 2013 issue.
Another person discovers that having too much stuff is a burden on one's life.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/opinion/sunday/living-with-less-a-lot-less.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&
In a recent study, the Northwestern University psychologist Galen V. Bodenhausen linked consumption with aberrant, antisocial behavior. Professor Bodenhausen found that “Irrespective of personality, in situations that activate a consumer mind-set, people show the same sorts of problematic patterns in well-being, including negative affect and social disengagement.” Though American consumer activity has increased substantially since the 1950s, happiness levels have flat-lined.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/opinion/sunday/living-with-less-a-lot-less.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&
In a recent study, the Northwestern University psychologist Galen V. Bodenhausen linked consumption with aberrant, antisocial behavior. Professor Bodenhausen found that “Irrespective of personality, in situations that activate a consumer mind-set, people show the same sorts of problematic patterns in well-being, including negative affect and social disengagement.” Though American consumer activity has increased substantially since the 1950s, happiness levels have flat-lined.
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