The Ripple Revolution (tm)

Posts tagged happy

Gretchen Rubin: The Ripple Revolution Podcast

May 21, 2013 Written by Curt Rosengren

When best-selling author Gretchen Rubin’s book, Happier at Home hit the New York Times best-seller list earlier this year, it found some familiar company – her first happiness-focused book, The Happiness Project. As of now, The GretchenRubinHappiness Project has been on the bestseller list for over two years!

For each book, Gretchen spent a year focusing one month at a time on exploring and implementing different areas related to happiness, then wrote about what she learned.

Listen to this interview with Gretchen and learn:

  • The power of focusing on “ordinary happiness”
  • How getting a handle on everyday life often allows people to make bigger changes
  • How our home environment can make a difference in our lives
  • Why self-knowledge is a key to happiness
  • The importance of negative emotions in living a happier life
  • The importance of mindfulness and paying attention
  • Why you should enjoy the fun of failure
  • The power of perspective in overcoming fear, uncertainty, and doubt
  • The importance of being discerning about what you allow into your brain
  • Three questions to ask to decide whether the news you’re watching/reading adds anything to your life
  • Tips for starting your own Happiness Project

Download the podcast mp3

Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast and want to be sure you don’t miss the upcoming podcasts listed below, please subscribe to the podcast feed.

Listen to more great interviews at the Ripple Revolution Podcast Archive!


–

Join the Ripple Revolution TM

Brought to you by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst TM

Time for a career change? Start with The Occupational Adventure Guide 

Energize your life, Personal development
,

Cotton candy, fruits & vegetables, & happiness

March 13, 2013 Written by Curt Rosengren

What makes you happy? And what do cotton candy and fruits and vegetables have to do with it? I’ll get to that in a bit, but first I want to take a look at one way of thinking about the routes we attempt to take on our quest for happiness (and which ones work and which ones don’t).

In his book Authentic Happiness, Martin Seligman describes three distinctly different routes to happiness: The Pleasant Life, The Good Life, and The Meaningful Life (also described as Eudaemonia). As this article summarizing the findings of two studies on happiness describes it:

“First the Pleasant Life, consisting in having as many pleasures as possible and having the skills to amplify the pleasures. This is, of course, the only true kind of happiness on the Hollywood view. Second, the Good Life, which consists in knowing what your signature strengths are, and then recrafting your work, love, friendship, leisure and parenting to use those strengths to have more flow in life. Third, the Meaningful Life, which consists of using your signature strengths in the service of something that you believe is larger than you are.”

The research described in the article took a look at which of these approaches had the greatest impact on people’s happiness. The first study looked at life satisfaction. The result?

“He found that both the Good Life and the Meaningful Life were related to life satisfaction: the more Eudaimonia or the more Meaning, the more life satisfaction. Astonishingly, however, the amount of pleasure in life did not add to life satisfaction.”

Another study looked the impact of activity driven by “hedonic motives” vs. “eudaimonic motives.”

She devised a scale reflecting hedonic motives (i.e., pursuing pleasure, enjoyment, and comfort) and a scale reflecting eudaimonic motives (i.e., pursuing personal growth, development of their potential, achieving personal excellence, and contributing to the lives of others). Eudaimonic pursuits were significantly correlated with life satisfaction whereas hedonic pursuits were not.

So, any way you slice it, pursuing pleasure seems to be a poor path to sustained happiness. On the other hand, making a difference by serving something greater than yourself, as well as personal development, appear to be more reliable routes.

And now, as promised, cotton candy and fruits and vegetables. The popular culture definition of happiness – the Pleasant Life – is a little bit like cotton candy for the soul. Nice, fun to eat, but ultimately not a lot of substance and not particularly nourishing or sustaining. The Meaningful Life, on the other hand, is more like fruits and vegetables for the soul. Maybe not as sexy in the eyes of popular culture, but much deeper and long-lasting.

Just like your body can’t thrive on a diet of junk food, your mind and heart can’t thrive on an exclusive diet of pleasure seeking. They need the deep nutrition provided by meaning.

What are you doing to develop yourself? How are you making a difference? How are you getting outside your own little ego-bubble and focusing on something beyond yourself?

The more you do, it seems, the happier you’ll be.

–

Join the Ripple Revolution TM

Brought to you by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst TM

Time for a career change? Start with The Occupational Adventure Guide

Energize your life, Making a difference, Personal development
, , , ,

How to be happy (according to science)

March 12, 2013 Written by Curt Rosengren

In recent years science has been aiming its exploratory eye at the question, “What makes us happy?” A roundup of some of the emerging trends, Science of Happiness: 7 Habits of Happy People, distills the findings into these seven themes:

Relationships: “People who have one or more close friendships are happier.”

Caring: “People who volunteer or simply care for others on a consistent basis seem to be happier and less depressed.”

Exercise: “Regular exercise has been associated with improved mental well-being and a lower incidence of depression.”

Flow: “If we are deeply involved in trying to reach a goal, or an activity that is challenging but well suited to our skills, we experience a joyful state called ‘flow.'”

Spiritual Engagement & Meaning: “Studies demonstrate a close link between spiritual and religious practice and happiness.”

Strengths & Virtues: “…the happiest people are those that have discovered their unique strengths (such as persistence and critical thinking) and virtues (such as humanity or justice) and use those strengths and virtues for a purpose that is greater than their own personal goals.”

Positive Thinking: Optimism & Gratitude: “Grateful people have been shown to have greater positive emotion, a greater sense of belonging, and lower incidence of depression and stress.”

I know I have a bit of a one-track mind on this, but I can’t help seeing how these fit into the Ripple Revolution way of thinking (which is, in summary: You are at the heart of any positive impact you make. Feeling more energized means you have more to put into making a difference. Making a difference in turn feels good and energizes you. The energy loop continues.)

All the things listed here serve to strengthen and happify your own experience of life. And some of them (like caring for others and applying strengths and virtues towards a purpose greater than their own goals) relate directly to making the world a better place.

And the experience of caring for people / working toward something greater than yourself in turn feeds you, giving you a more fulfilled and energized experience of life. And guess what you can do with that? Yup! It gives you more to put back out into the world.

Be sure you check the page out at the link above. Each of the categories has a link to a page that takes a deeper look at what researchers have found.

–

Join the Ripple Revolution TM

Brought to you by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst TM

Time for a career change? Start with The Occupational Adventure Guide

Energize your life, Making a difference, Personal development, Uncategorized