The Money Mustache Community
General Discussion => Welcome and General Discussion => Topic started by: lhamo on January 07, 2024, 11:33:56 AM
-
Over on his journal @tj mentioned that this online course at Yale is currently available for free via coursera:
https://www.coursera.org/learn/the-science-of-well-being
I recall reading elsewhere that this is the most popular course at Yale.
The course is supposed to take 19 hours. Syllabus is set up for a 10 week run.
I've signed up and will probably just follow the syllabus over 10 weeks. Anybody else want to give it a try? We can discuss further here.
PS: There is also an option to pay $49 to get a certificate. Not something I need/want, but maybe useful for others
-
So this would be the discussion group thread? I think it sounds like fun!
-
I signed up for it. Didn't even have to give Coursera any new personal information - I clicked the "forgot password" and was given a password reset link, so I must have signed up for Coursera at some point in the past.
-
The same professor also hosts "The Happiness Lab" podcast, and there are now several years of backlog. IMO, season 1 was very good while later material became mildly repetitive.
-
Over on his journal @tj mentioned that this online course at Yale is currently available for free via coursera:
https://www.coursera.org/learn/the-science-of-well-being
I recall reading elsewhere that this is the most popular course at Yale.
The course is supposed to take 19 hours. Syllabus is set up for a 10 week run.
I've signed up and will probably just follow the syllabus over 10 weeks. Anybody else want to give it a try? We can discuss further here.
PS: There is also an option to pay $49 to get a certificate. Not something I need/want, but maybe useful for others
This is fantastic! thanks so much for posting this, I am in!
For the freebie version, of course, ><
-
I'm in as well! Just signed up.
-
Great! I think this will be a fun way to do the course. There are discussion fora built into the course site already, but here we have a lot of shared values/similar mindsets that might make the discussion more relevant/interesting for all of us.
Thanks for mentioning it on your journal @tj ! If we enjoy this process for this theme maybe we can have a follow on with another relevant free course.
-
I just joined as well. I agree that it will be fun to do together. While in there I looked at my completed courses and the last one was from 2012. Time really flies.
-
Good suggestion - I've signed up
-
Love this idea! Just signed up.
-
Do you have to be in the US to sign up?
-
Thanks, I’ve just signed up so count me in. I will need some accountability to make me do the work.
@RetiredAt63 , I’m in australia and could sign up no problems.
-
Thanks, I’ve just signed up so count me in. I will need some accountability to make me do the work.
@RetiredAt63 , I’m in australia and could sign up no problems.
Thanks!
-
I've always wanted to be able to tell people about my Yale coursework. Count me in!
-
I took this course in spring of 2020, and it was one of the best things I've ever done for myself. I am someone who often skips over the activities in self-help books and such, thinking that I get the general idea, no need to actually do the stuff. Luckily, in this instance I did every single activity, and I got so much more out of it as a result. I think I was especially lucky to stumble across the course at the height of Covid; just what the doctor ordered!
I am generally a pretty happy, upbeat and optimistic person, but this course helped put the frosting on my cake, so to speak. I think it is life-changing.
-
Registered! Are we thinking one module per week to stay relatively synced?
-
@lhamo thanks so much for suggesting this!
So I clicked on the strengths survey, and I had already completed it (in 2019 - when I was still working). I wonder if I'd have different findings if I were able to take it again...
-
I took this course in spring of 2020, and it was one of the best things I've ever done for myself. I am someone who often skips over the activities in self-help books and such, thinking that I get the general idea, no need to actually do the stuff. Luckily, in this instance I did every single activity, and I got so much more out of it as a result. I think I was especially lucky to stumble across the course at the height of Covid; just what the doctor ordered!
I am generally a pretty happy, upbeat and optimistic person, but this course helped put the frosting on my cake, so to speak. I think it is life-changing.
Rosa, that is a strong recommendation coming from you! Maybe I should try this.
-
Another one, I'm in
-
Let's aim to do one module a week -- that seems do-able for most people.
Sometimes I really wish this forum had nested comments...
-
Course is now open. I've completed all the week 1 videos/reading but I'm still not clear on my Rewirement homework. My strength was an important thing I practiced every day at work but I'm not sure I see how it applies to my retired life. Figure out a way to apply it in my current life, is that my homework?
-
I'm in too! Thanks for sharing this.
-
I’ve joined the coursera class, and have started the first week. Being happier always sounds like a good idea!
-
I'm in!
-
Course is now open. I've completed all the week 1 videos/reading but I'm still not clear on my Rewirement homework. My strength was an important thing I practiced every day at work but I'm not sure I see how it applies to my retired life. Figure out a way to apply it in my current life, is that my homework?
I think so? This website might be helpful: https://www.viacharacter.org/topics/articles/tips-for-using-each-character-strength-in-a-new-way (https://www.viacharacter.org/topics/articles/tips-for-using-each-character-strength-in-a-new-way)
(I'm also struggling a bit with this -- my top strength was "prudence." The next one was "judgment." I mean, seems right, but exercising prudence and judgment just doesn't sound nearly as fun as using "humor" or "appreciation of beauty.")
-
I am in.
A lot of the material seems to be translated to german. Interesting!
-
I heard about it. Maybe I will join if it's still possible this weekend.
btw. I listend to 2 podcasts from this similar topic podcast (Huberman lab podcast) and it was quite good.
https://www.youtube.com/@hubermanlab
-
Course is now open. I've completed all the week 1 videos/reading but I'm still not clear on my Rewirement homework. My strength was an important thing I practiced every day at work but I'm not sure I see how it applies to my retired life. Figure out a way to apply it in my current life, is that my homework?
I think so? This website might be helpful: https://www.viacharacter.org/topics/articles/tips-for-using-each-character-strength-in-a-new-way (https://www.viacharacter.org/topics/articles/tips-for-using-each-character-strength-in-a-new-way)
(I'm also struggling a bit with this -- my top strength was "prudence." The next one was "judgment." I mean, seems right, but exercising prudence and judgment just doesn't sound nearly as fun as using "humor" or "appreciation of beauty.")
Very helpful link thank you! I'm Judgment, Honesty and Prudence as my top 3 so I assume we are new best friends Shuchong? : ) Anyway comforting to hear I'm not the only one struggling with the homework and its not clear to me how practicing a strength leads to happiness but I'll mull it over and try to give some effort to do my homework. Thanks again.
-
I'm in, I might even be able to talk my new supervisor into accepting this as independent study hours
-
@lhamo thanks so much for suggesting this!
So I clicked on the strengths survey, and I had already completed it (in 2019 - when I was still working). I wonder if I'd have different findings if I were able to take it again...
I would do it again! If I had taken this while I was working, I am almost positive that qualities that I needed to be more disciplined about in order to succeed at my job would have shown up MUCH higher on the list. But now that my time is my own, if I am not enjoying something there is no real need to keep doing it.
-
I'm in. I've listened to the Happiness Lab off and on for a while.
-
I'll try to follow along, signed up for the course. I've heard smatterings of the Happiness Lab podcast, when my wife has played some on car trips, but since I missed most of the early ones, and these were just random ones she hadn't listened to yet, I didn't really get much out of them at the time.
-
I'm in. I just listened/read the first weeks lectures and did the surveys. My top 5 strengths are:
1. Judgement
2. Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence
3. Love of Learning
4. Perspective
5. Prudence
Judgement and Prudence made me laugh, those are accurate but makes me feel like a curmudgeon. I do see their value though.
I found it hard to answer the happiness surveys as I'm not sure how I felt about some of the questions and always hovered around the neutral value.
I've enjoyed Laurie's podcast in the past so seems like a fun way to spend some time each week.
-
I signed up and I'm looking following along with the course with this group.
My top strength was also Judgment. I'm a professor, so I guess that fits. On the other hand, my "lesser strengths" (I guess "weakness" isn't something they want to say) included love of learning, which doesn't seem ideal for an academic.
One of my other "lesser strengths" is zest. That's probably the area I want to improve the most.
-
I signed up. I am embarrassed to admit that I signed up for this a few years ago and never watched anything past the first intro video.
-
I signed up. I am embarrassed to admit that I signed up for this a few years ago and never watched anything past the first intro video.
I'm with you @FIRE Artist ...I signed up at some point years ago and looks like I did a few segments and then abandoned ship. Will restart now with this crew to hopefully keep me on track :)
-
I'm in. I just listened/read the first weeks lectures and did the surveys. My top 5 strengths are:
1. Judgement
2. Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence
3. Love of Learning
4. Perspective
5. Prudence
Judgement and Prudence made me laugh, those are accurate but makes me feel like a curmudgeon. I do see their value though.
I found it hard to answer the happiness surveys as I'm not sure how I felt about some of the questions and always hovered around the neutral value.
I've enjoyed Laurie's podcast in the past so seems like a fun way to spend some time each week.
Interestingly none of my top 5 are in your top 5.
My top 5:
-Honesty
-Kindness
-Perspective
-Fairness
-Self-Regulation
My lesser strengths:
-Social Intelligence
-Leadership
-Spirituality
-Zest
-
My top 5 are:
Humour,
Creativity,
Forgiveness,
Humility,
Gratitude.
All of which feel about right, those are things I am good at. Although oddly enough, a few weeks ago I realised that while I am often silly, and can joke about pretty much everything, one thing that I never joke about is my Inner Critic. My plan for the week is to get better at ridiculing her, she is a Mean Girl and I'm taking her far too seriously.
-
Hmm... I really struggle with these types of assessments.
I find a lot of the questions difficult to answer as someone who has been in major leadership and healthcare roles. Not being totally truthful with people is a huge part of being in a leadership role. You have to have a good poker face, you can't let a team know that you are stressed out of your mind and considering axing 20% of them while they cry to you that they're already overburdened because that's what needs to be done temporarily to get to a place where you can make things better for the remaining ones in the end.
Quite hilariously: leadership, teamwork, and honesty were my lowest strengths, which is literally the funniest thing ever if you know me and my background. I'm literally an expert at leadership and teambuilding, and my approach is to be much more authentic and honest than is the norm. But the way the questions were phrased, with absolutes like "I always" triggered me to be like "n'ah, I'm totally willing to do the opposite of that if it's truly for the longterm benefit of the team and the business."
It's like a "dark traits" assessment I did recently. I'm very well known for being an extremely kind person and very emotionally generous to pretty much anyone in my orbit. But because I've had to learn how to be willing to shut that off and be cruel or cause pain, say to a toxic staff member who must be alienated to protect the team, I scored something like 99th percentile for Sadism. I literally spit my tea out laughing when I saw the result. My results were hysterical, I was either close to 100% for traits or close to 0%.
ETA: Oh! I almost forgot, another low strength of mine was "perseverance" which is beyond absurd for me. However, I answered from the perspective that as someone who has just stupid levels of "stickwithitness" I've had to actively learn how to abandon tasks more readily, and I'm extremely proud of my ability to walk away from things that I've committed to doing if that turns out to be the best option. But it's hard for a question to capture the difference between someone who struggles to follow through on tasks and someone who is very intentional about not completing tasks.
The problem is obviously me and how I answer these assessments, and whether I think about things from a personal life identity or a professional identity, because those are essentially two different people by virtue of the kind of work I do.
The happiness one was easy though, shockingly it showed what I already know, that I'm generally a really happy person who is very satisfied with my life. But that is about the most self-evident thing you could assess about me.
ETA 2: My biggest strength was Love, which sounds right for me. Those were the easiest questions to answer. But if a stranger read my results they would think I'm a super lovey, funny, creative artist type who has a hard time following through on tasks, poor leadership skills, and doesn't work well on teams.
-
I signed up. I am embarrassed to admit that I signed up for this a few years ago and never watched anything past the first intro video.
I'm with you @FIRE Artist ...I signed up at some point years ago and looks like I did a few segments and then abandoned ship. Will restart now with this crew to hopefully keep me on track :)
Ditto here. I do better with the pressure of a group, so hopefully this time will go better.
Thanks OP for getting this rolling.
-
I've just signed up and will try to get to the week 1 stuff this weekend. I've actually just come from the burnout journal and was almost going to post there but it felt like too much. So it feels weird to be joining in here now.
However, in December I applied for a stint in a rehab clinic for burnout and as often is the case, just having sent off that application (as well as having a week's holidays and then another couple of days off at Christmas, both spent with family) seems to have freed up enough space that I keep finding myself thinking about things I could start doing. At least I have enough knowledge now to know that it would be a really bad idea to start doing any of those things at this time instead of concentrating on trying to get back in the habit of things like cooking and eating at home, washing dishes and tidying up every once in a while.
This course seems like a manageable amount of stuff that probably ties in well with the goal of trying to improve my mental health while skating on thin ice when it comes to being in the middle of a burnout and depressive episode.
On a side note, I'm delighted that I remembered my coursera password straight away. It has been seven or eight years since I did the "Greening the Economy" certificate.
-
Keep in mind that there are many ways to do these kinds of assessments. My results on the well being ones would have been VASTLY different if I had used how I was feeling/acting 6-8 weeks ago when I was at the bottom of a very bad SAD- + situation-induced depressive cycle. I have now snapped out of that and am in the "up" part of the wave (the more I observe myself and my moods the more I think I am at least mildly bipolar, if that is a thing...). Also the traits would have come out TOTALLY differently if I answered according to how I acted/saw myself when I was working versus now that I am the FIREd empress of my realm and time. I'm actually really good at meeting deadlines and living up to my commitments when I'm being paid to do it and when I know other people are depending on me. When it is just my own shit? Not so much -- I can let most everything slide. I even found out yesterday I missed a utility bill payment on my new house last cycle! It must have come when I was traveling and I didn't see it, and I don't have autopay set up yet. No penalty, so I just need to clear it up.
Anyhoo, I tried to answer the traits questions based on how I currently am, not who I was in the past, and the results were quite unexpected:
Top traits
Perspective
Kindness
Love
Fairness
Humor
Bottom traits:
Teamwork (I actually enjoy working in well-functioning teams and am very good at teamwork, but now that I'm retired I don't like to put up with other people's bs so I guess my answers reflect that)
Perseverance (now that I'm retired I just don't have to keep doing things I dun wanna...)
Self-regulation (evening snacking habit, looking at you!)
Spirituality (I think this is at the bottom because I have been listening to so much anti-high-demand religion stuff these days....)
My PERMA score was a 6.5 and my Happiness score was a 3.29 I guess I goal for this process is to raise both of those numbers, both short- and long-term. Again, I need to be aware that with my brain chemistry I am probably going to see some cycling in those numbers. If I had answered according to how I felt 6-8 weeks ago the PERMA probably would have been in the 3s and the Happiness in the 2s. This was kind of a weird depressive cycle for me because I pretty much knew what was behind it (seasonal depression + some situational stuff I could not control at the moment but knew would eventually resolve one way or another) and rather than fighting it I just kind of decided to ride it out. I spent most of November and December camped out on my bed watching youtube videos. Tried to get decent sleep but didn't force myself to get out and walk or eat a better diet. Just kind of wallowed. Last week I was able to make some big decisions that put a more concrete timeline on the resolution of the situational stuff, and that gave me the energy to start working on the other pieces. I'm back up to walking 4-5k steps most days. I started taking more control of my life -- made a bunch of appointments for medical stuff and logistical stuff and started reaching out to friends to have more social time. I'm actively working on my house remodel stuff. I'm probably going to start a small business. Things are feeling much better.
Taking this course and starting this thread are part of the upswing. Thank you all so much for joining me on the journey.
-
I'm Judgment, Honesty and Prudence as my top 3 so I assume we are new best friends Shuchong? : ) Anyway comforting to hear I'm not the only one struggling with the homework and its not clear to me how practicing a strength leads to happiness but I'll mull it over and try to give some effort to do my homework. Thanks again.
Prudence and Judgment people unite! We can go... make good, considered choices together after having examined all angles?
I actually started this course back at the height of Covid though I never did the homework. Since then, I've moved from NYC to the middle of nowhere, and "appreciation of beauty" is much higher for me. I think of character as this immutable thing mostly separate from your environment, but perhaps that's not true. A lot of us are saying that where we are and whether we're working changes our strengths quite a bit, which is fun to think about.
-
I'm Judgment, Honesty and Prudence as my top 3 so I assume we are new best friends Shuchong? : ) Anyway comforting to hear I'm not the only one struggling with the homework and its not clear to me how practicing a strength leads to happiness but I'll mull it over and try to give some effort to do my homework. Thanks again.
Prudence and Judgment people unite! We can go... make good, considered choices together after having examined all angles?
I actually started this course back at the height of Covid though I never did the homework. Since then, I've moved from NYC to the middle of nowhere, and "appreciation of beauty" is much higher for me. I think of character as this immutable thing mostly separate from your environment, but perhaps that's not true. A lot of us are saying that where we are and whether we're working changes our strengths quite a bit, which is fun to think about.
It certainly changes where we focus our energies and what we're most aware of.
I remember feeling the ground shift underneath me when I read the phrase "only unmet needs are motivating."
Meaning, the things we focus on most, the strengths we prioritize most are driven by whateve needs we have that are least being met.
Change the landscape of your needs and how they are met and you radically alter the way in which you engage with the world.
We have this sense that what's important to us is unchanging, but that's simply not true. It changes all the time relative to our circumstances, because if a need is easily and readily met with minimal effort, meeting it doesn't feel important. Take away that easy source of need satisfaction and suddenly your entire world view and sense of self will change. Likewise, suddenly have the capacity to meet a need easily and the same thing can happen, like when you retire and suddenly have all of this freedom to meet needs that couldn't be met if your career was a barrier.
If you start viewing your whole sense of life, purpose, motivation, and strength through a lense of asking what needs aren't actually being met, it fundamentally alters your conceptualization of yourself within your own world.
-
@Metalcat, how did you get so g-damn wise?
You are going to be such an awesome therapist....
-
@Metalcat, how did you get so g-damn wise?
You are going to be such an awesome therapist....
The thing is, it's a stupidly simple concept that intuitively makes sense when you think about it for even half a frickin' second, but I remember, quite literally my entire conceptualization of myself blew up when I read that and I don't even remember where I read it.
That's when I started putting together my ideas about change and priorities. How priorities aren't the things you are pressuring yourself to do, they're the things you already do.
What actually matters to us most? It's not the needs that are unmet, it's the needs we make sure that we always meet. We *feel* motivated to meet the unmet needs, but we *are* actually putting out energies into the needs we *are* actually meeting. They just don't necessarily feel all that important because they're met.
I've had a lot of people do inventories of what they *actually* do to meet their own needs. Not what they want to be doing, not what they "should" be doing, but what they actually do, what needs they actually meet on a daily basis.
When you sit down and look honestly at what you *actually* put your energy towards, it can be really shocking to see what your priorities truly are and what you've made central within your life compared to what you *think* is most important.
At least, it's been pretty shocking to most people I've made do it. Granted, those are usually folks who are working their asses off, but struggling to feel like they're living their best lives.
Happily retired, mellow folks here may not have those same issues and disconnects.
-
My PERMA score was a 6.5 and my Happiness score was a 3.29
My PERMA score was 6.75 and my happiness score was 2.46 I guess I have some room for improvement. :D
-
Oh, I forgot to share my other scores.
Perma: 8.70
Happiness: 4
Just goes to show that life can be both brutally hard and frickin' awesome at the same time.
Also, a really stressful week just played out hugely in my favour against very steep odds, and I got A LOT of seriously fantastic support along the way, so I'm feeling pretty jazzed about my life at the moment.
-
I've just signed up, and worked through the first week.
Top strengths are: Fairness, Forgiveness, Curiosity, Appreciation of Beauty and Creativity.
Bottom are: Zest, Spirituality, Leadership, Humour,
My PERMA was 6.31 and my Happiness score 2.67 so some work to be done there! But I already know my job is not a good fit and I'm trying to move towards something more fulfilling.
I struggled with the traits questions as well. I didn't score very highly for perseverance, but that's because I've spent a lot of time diligently teaching myself that its okay to let things go and change your mind when stuff doesn't work for you anymore! I was once that person who HAD to finish a book I started, now I know life is too short to read mediocre books.
-
I'm signing up now, thanks for bringing this to the attention of the forum community!
-
1. Hope
2. Honesty
3. Love
4. Social Intelligence
5. Curiosity
Bottom = Appreciation of Beauty & Excellence, Creativity, Teamwork, and Spirituality.
PERMA = 8.33
Happiness 3.38
I'm curious about some of the Happiness score questions and how their bias affects my results. For instance, I don't believe I have a purpose (vs. haven't found it yet), nor do I think it important that I do "important" things each day.
It all depends what lens through which you see things as "purposeful" or "important."
If I have a day where what's best for my overall well being and happiness is to binge watch TV and play fetch with my dog, that is, in fact, very important to do.
My purpose is to live my best life. That's VERY important to me.
So yes, I find virtually all of my days filled with purpose and extremely important things to do.
Today, I very much need to rest and recover from an insane week, and it's VERY important that I feel no pressure to accomplish anything today.
-
I don’t think a self-inventory is the best way to figure out my strengths because I tend to choose most things in the middle range, and can’t commit to things being very unlike me and very like me. But these aren’t far off.
Top strengths: Love of Learning, Fairness, Judgment, Creativity, Humor
PERMA: 6.63 Happiness: 3.63
-
This is a good time for me to be taking this class because I definitely have the blahs, and my scores reflect this:
PERMA 5.25
Happiness 2.33
I think that I normally feel quite a bit better than this. It's an accurate snapshot of this moment but I know that most of the time I am bouncing down the sidewalk behind my frisky dog glowing with happiness while pondering all I've been able to accomplish and what a nice life I've made for us. Lol. Seriously. Anyway I'm glad to be along on this adventure and am looking forward to seeing my scores go up!
-
1. Hope
2. Honesty
3. Love
4. Social Intelligence
5. Curiosity
Bottom = Appreciation of Beauty & Excellence, Creativity, Teamwork, and Spirituality.
PERMA = 8.33
Happiness 3.38
I'm curious about some of the Happiness score questions and how their bias affects my results. For instance, I don't believe I have a purpose (vs. haven't found it yet), nor do I think it important that I do "important" things each day.
It all depends what lens through which you see things as "purposeful" or "important."
If I have a day where what's best for my overall well being and happiness is to binge watch TV and play fetch with my dog, that is, in fact, very important to do.
My purpose is to live my best life. That's VERY important to me.
So yes, I find virtually all of my days filled with purpose and extremely important things to do.
Today, I very much need to rest and recover from an insane week, and it's VERY important that I feel no pressure to accomplish anything today.
Thanks for that perspective. I share your thoughts that what I do and feel is very important to me and I live my life with the purpose of optimizing that, but I assumed a lens with the test that happiness is found in finding a purpose in service of others or bettering the world. Bit of a trigger from discussions in real life about RE, I think.
Interesting that you would make that assumption about the test itself.
-
I am in as well. I took the assessments today. The PERMA one was easier for me to take than the other happiness one... I have a very hard time answering questions like "If you were keeping score, would your life come out ahead or behind?" Score of what? So not how I think about things.
I asked my partner take the assessments too, and two of my top strengths were among his lowest. Opposites attract?
My strengths: social intelligence, perspective, honesty, gratitude, and hope.
I've been told before that "social intelligence" is untrustworthy! IE knowing how to say the right thing to someone else, and saying things that make other people feel good. I see the point where it could be used for manipulation, but that's not what I'm going for.
Excited about taking this class.
-
I am in as well. I took the assessments today. The PERMA one was easier for me to take than the other happiness one... I have a very hard time answering questions like "If you were keeping score, would your life come out ahead or behind?" Score of what? So not how I think about things.
I asked my partner take the assessments too, and two of my top strengths were among his lowest. Opposites attract?
My strengths: social intelligence, perspective, honesty, gratitude, and hope.
I've been told before that "social intelligence" is untrustworthy! IE knowing how to say the right thing to someone else, and saying things that make other people feel good. I see the point where it could be used for manipulation, but that's not what I'm going for.
Excited about taking this class.
Yeah, I bristled at that phrasing too, but a lot of those questions were worded to detect inauthentic or pathological answers. That question could have been designed to catch narcissism or grandiosity or something of the sort.
Although, as a healthcare professional, I find it pretty easy to assess who is doing well, who isn't, and where I stack up against the herd.
There are a lot of fucked up, unhealthy, miserable folks out there just struggle to get through each day. A LOT.
-
Top traits: Judgement, Prudence, Perspective, Kindness, Love. (Two wisdoms, two humanities and a temperance)
Bottom: Curiosity, Forgiveness, Zest, Spirituality.
I'm surprised with curiosity showing up at the bottom, and maybe more so about kindness and love showing up at the top. Does not fit with my perspective on myself. In any case, it is going to require some thinking about how to handle the first week's homework of putting those five things to use.
-
The strengths test was interesting. My top strength is "love," and the explanation is "Valuing close relations with others, in particular those in which sharing & caring are reciprocated; being close to people." But I recall all of the questions on this strength being about your ability to express love. Am I wrong? I definitely am very able to express love, abundantly and often, but I wouldn't say my top trait is valuing close relations with others. I actually feel like a perpetual loner. But thinking about it further, one of my best friends once described me by saying that the main thing to know about me is that "when [CannotWAIT] loves, she loves with her whole heart" and I've always thought that was the nicest compliment I've ever had. So maybe I have a wrong impression of myself. I don't know, it's confusing.
Anyway, the other top four are:
2. Appreciation of Beauty & Excellence: Yes, for sure, I am a born aesthete.
3. Judgment: Interesting how many of us here have this and prudence in our top 5! I don't really identify with this though. Not sure what to make of it.
4. Curiosity: I would have thought this would be my #1 trait. I definitely feel like curiosity has been the defining feature of my life. I like this about myself and don't see a downside.
5. Prudence : "Being careful about one's choices; not taking undue risks; not saying or doing things that might later be regretted." Omg this is so true, especially when you think about it in terms of "strength," because I have really built up the muscle that keeps my mouth shut. For example, my ex-husband's behavior at the end of our marriage and through our divorce was absolutely shocking, but it was important to me to be able to look back on my own behavior with pride and I never said a single unkind word throughout all of it. It was not easy! A word that has surprisingly often been used to describe me is "gracious," which makes me sound like a genteel Southern lady, which I am emphatically not, but I guess maybe it's what this test is picking up. I think the flip side of prudence is that I overthink fucking everything and have let a lot of my life slip by while I was being careful about my choices and not taking undue risks. I think prudence is a major issue in my life, for better and for worse.
-
I'm enjoying reading everyone's reflections on the tests and how they resonate..or don't. Haven't done a quiz like this for a long while.
My top ones were
1) Appreciation of Beauty & Excellence
2) Creativity
3) Love of Learning
4) Gratitude
5) Curiosity
I love nature and am artistic so these made sense to me..
It was fitting that Self-regulation & Perseverance were among my bottom traits, I do feel lacking in those skills and try to work on boosting them. I feel like perseverance is an important one..I can start a million projects and many get abandoned part-way into the process. It's not something I'm proud of!
-
I'm enjoying reading everyone's reflections on the tests and how they resonate..or don't. Haven't done a quiz like this for a long while.
My top ones were
1) Appreciation of Beauty & Excellence
2) Creativity
3) Love of Learning
4) Gratitude
5) Curiosity
I love nature and am artistic so these made sense to me..
It was fitting that Self-regulation & Perseverance were among my bottom traits, I do feel lacking in those skills and try to work on boosting them. I feel like perseverance is an important one..I can start a million projects and many get abandoned part-way into the process. It's not something I'm proud of!
Yes, perseverance was my absolute bottom one and it's true and has been since childhood. And unfortunately it's one I do care about (as opposed to, say, my next-to-bottom one, spirituality). It makes me feel bad about myself. I think it's actually the flip side of curiosity though and I like that about myself, so it's a paradox. If I weren't so interested what's around the next corner it would be easier to stay here and finish this one thing I'm supposed to be working on!
-
The strengths test was interesting. My top strength is "love," and the explanation is "Valuing close relations with others, in particular those in which sharing & caring are reciprocated; being close to people." But I recall all of the questions on this strength being about your ability to express love. Am I wrong? I definitely am very able to express love, abundantly and often, but I wouldn't say my top trait is valuing close relations with others. I actually feel like a perpetual loner. But thinking about it further, one of my best friends once described me by saying that the main thing to know about me is that "when [CannotWAIT] loves, she loves with her whole heart" and I've always thought that was the nicest compliment I've ever had. So maybe I have a wrong impression of myself. I don't know, it's confusing.
This comes back to met and unmet needs. Perhaps your need to love and be loved is well met and therefore not particularly motivating. You may be comfortable being a loner a lot of the time because you're very effective at meeting this very important need.
Perhaps you don't need a ton of connections because you are profoundly invested in the ones you have. Remember, there are A LOT of folks out there who don't have truly healthy, deep intimacy with anyone, not even their spouses.
-
I'm enjoying reading everyone's reflections on the tests and how they resonate..or don't. Haven't done a quiz like this for a long while.
My top ones were
1) Appreciation of Beauty & Excellence
2) Creativity
3) Love of Learning
4) Gratitude
5) Curiosity
I love nature and am artistic so these made sense to me..
It was fitting that Self-regulation & Perseverance were among my bottom traits, I do feel lacking in those skills and try to work on boosting them. I feel like perseverance is an important one..I can start a million projects and many get abandoned part-way into the process. It's not something I'm proud of!
Yes, perseverance was my absolute bottom one and it's true and has been since childhood. And unfortunately it's one I do care about (as opposed to, say, my next-to-bottom one, spirituality). It makes me feel bad about myself. I think it's actually the flip side of curiosity though and I like that about myself, so it's a paradox. If I weren't so interested what's around the next corner it would be easier to stay here and finish this one thing I'm supposed to be working on!
I find this interesting that you perceive curiosity as the opposite of perseverance. I don't experience these things as opposed at all. I have very intense curiosity and for me it drives a lot of my focus because I want to know more.
-
Yeah, I bristled at that phrasing too, but a lot of those questions were worded to detect inauthentic or pathological answers. That question could have been designed to catch narcissism or grandiosity or something of the sort.
Just took the 2 happiness tests. I was under the impression the wording was intentionally vague. As in "Your happiness is decided on what you measure for yourself, so we will ask you to bring your own measuring cup".
Anyway, my Authentic Happiness Test score was 2,42 and I can clearly see why. I mostly choose the "neutral" position, which was the 2/5.
I think there is both a cultural and personal difference between the gruntling German and the happy, smily American at work here.
For me neutral is the middle, and also the thing happiness tend to adjust itself to - key word is hedonic adaption.
The traits test is left, I wanted to do that after my Sunday walk, but just now a super dark cloud is incoming so maybe I move the walk back half an hour lol.
edit: Back from walk etc.
5 top strength:
Judgement
Love of Learning
Forgiveness
Fairness
Prudence
"Lesser Strength": Social Intelligence, Zest, Leadership, Spirituality.
Well, yes, I am about as spriritual as a stone. And I am not talking about "energy stones".
I guess my results are what you can expect from a shy, brainy, introvert nerd?
-
Hi
I have signed up and completed the first section my strengths are
Fairness
Appreciation of beauty and excellence
Prudence
Kindness
Love of learning
I would never have considered myself prudent, although I am not impulsive.
It is interesting to read all your strengths and look forward to completing the course
-
Joining in! This converges well with my nascent FIRE transition and according life reshuffle.
-
I think it's really amusing that so many of us had Spirituality as our lowest Strength. It was no surprise that it was my lowest, but I also had Appreciation of Beauty in my top 10. Beauty in nature is my definition of spirituality.
-
I think it's really amusing that so many of us had Spirituality as our lowest Strength. It was no surprise that it was my lowest, but I also had Appreciation of Beauty in my top 10. Beauty in nature is my definition of spirituality.
I scored pretty high on spirituality, specifically because I consider my love of nature spiritual
-
What a great idea! I just enrolled in the class and did the first week - doing this alongside people will hopefully compel me to actually keep up with it.
I feel like my happiness level goes through weird cycles, and I don’t *feel* nearly as subjectively happy as my numbers seem to objectively indicate (as much as this kind of rating system could be objective…).
My top strengths are:
Love
Love of learning
Humor
Perspective
Curiosity
That sounds reasonably like me. Like many of you, spirituality was ranked dead last for me - makes total sense for this atheist pragmatist. For the past two days I’ve been trying to notice when I actually use these strengths. I feel like I use them basically constantly? I guess the important thing is to actively realize it? I don’t know - I don’t super get the first week’s assignment, but we have been getting a good laugh out of me pointing out in a stentorian tone, “I’m making a joke, as my homework says I should.”
-
I laughed. And learned a new word.
Now I just need to learn a joke so I can tell it and say the same.
That aside, I think the problem with spirituality in the questionaire is that they always asked for your faith. "my faith makes what I am".
That is of course BS for an Atheist, especially when thinking about the white bearded imaginary friend in the clouds.
However spirituality (in the psychological sense) is different than that. For example you can feel "unity with the world around you" without any religion. The main problem is that everyone defines spirituality different though.
As a German I of course need to cite Goethe's Faust here:
„Kein persönlicher Gott mehr, keine Konfession, keine Glaubensgemeinschaft, keine Kirche, keine damit verbundene sittliche Weltordnung – aber das Gefühl einer Allheit und Allverbundenheit, emotionale Übereinstimmung mit dem Weltganzen, das Absolute als Chiffre für die Liebe.“
"No more personal God, no denomination, no community of faith, no church, no associated moral world order - but the feeling of allness and all-connectedness, emotional agreement with the world as a whole, the absolute as a cipher for love."
-
I laughed. And learned a new word.
Now I just need to learn a joke so I can tell it and say the same.
That aside, I think the problem with spirituality in the questionaire is that they always asked for your faith. "my faith makes what I am".
That is of course BS for an Atheist, especially when thinking about the white bearded imaginary friend in the clouds.
However spirituality (in the psychological sense) is different than that. For example you can feel "unity with the world around you" without any religion. The main problem is that everyone defines spirituality different though.
As a German I of course need to cite Goethe's Faust here:
„Kein persönlicher Gott mehr, keine Konfession, keine Glaubensgemeinschaft, keine Kirche, keine damit verbundene sittliche Weltordnung – aber das Gefühl einer Allheit und Allverbundenheit, emotionale Übereinstimmung mit dem Weltganzen, das Absolute als Chiffre für die Liebe.“
"No more personal God, no denomination, no community of faith, no church, no associated moral world order - but the feeling of allness and all-connectedness, emotional agreement with the world as a whole, the absolute as a cipher for love."
I totally agree. I had to stop and reframe the questions in my head as not being about a *religion* but the bigger concept of connectedness. My personal version of spirituality is very ontological, very much focused on the interconnectedness of nature, and heavily informed by the Indigenous influences from my childhood where a rock has as much spirit as a human, and where you can have as much of a relationship with a body of water as you can with another person.
Human-centered spirituality is quite young compared to more ontological versions.
I really enjoyed in my linguistics degree studying the structure of a lot of Canadian Indigenous languages, especially how it puts ontological spirituality at the very center of their way of thinking.
A lot of the languages don't really have nouns for a lot of things. Like eyeball isn't a body part, it's the "round thing that allows you to witness the divine event of the sun rising daily." In English that sounds long and cumbersome, but in the language the concept of "witness the divine event of the sun rising" is such a foundational concept that it's a tiny little word segment that can be thrown into any word that involves seeing of any sort.
-
I laughed. And learned a new word.
Now I just need to learn a joke so I can tell it and say the same.
That aside, I think the problem with spirituality in the questionaire is that they always asked for your faith. "my faith makes what I am".
That is of course BS for an Atheist, especially when thinking about the white bearded imaginary friend in the clouds.
However spirituality (in the psychological sense) is different than that. For example you can feel "unity with the world around you" without any religion. The main problem is that everyone defines spirituality different though.
As a German I of course need to cite Goethe's Faust here:
„Kein persönlicher Gott mehr, keine Konfession, keine Glaubensgemeinschaft, keine Kirche, keine damit verbundene sittliche Weltordnung – aber das Gefühl einer Allheit und Allverbundenheit, emotionale Übereinstimmung mit dem Weltganzen, das Absolute als Chiffre für die Liebe.“
"No more personal God, no denomination, no community of faith, no church, no associated moral world order - but the feeling of allness and all-connectedness, emotional agreement with the world as a whole, the absolute as a cipher for love."
I totally agree. I had to stop and reframe the questions in my head as not being about a *religion* but the bigger concept of connectedness. My personal version of spirituality is very ontological, very much focused on the interconnectedness of nature, and heavily informed by the Indigenous influences from my childhood where a rock has as much spirit as a human, and where you can have as much of a relationship with a body of water as you can with another person.
Human-centered spirituality is quite young compared to more ontological versions.
I really enjoyed in my linguistics degree studying the structure of a lot of Canadian Indigenous languages, especially how it puts ontological spirituality at the very center of their way of thinking.
A lot of the languages don't really have nouns for a lot of things. Like eyeball isn't a body part, it's the "round thing that allows you to witness the divine event of the sun rising daily." In English that sounds long and cumbersome, but in the language the concept of "witness the divine event of the sun rising" is such a foundational concept that it's a tiny little word segment that can be thrown into any word that involves seeing of any sort.
That all definitely makes sense, and can certainly intellectually rationalize re-interpreting the questions to align with some other version of outside-myself-ness, but even those don’t feel spiritual to me.
I guess I relate closer to the Romantics’ idea of the sublime as a kind of out of body experience of aesthetic awe - that’s what I feel both in beautiful natural settings and even more so around extraordinary artifacts of human achievement (the glaciers and volcano in Iceland were amazing but somehow the Duomo in Milan more so?). But even this feeling is very individual; it does not feel like “emotional agreement with the world as a whole” - I don’t think I’ve ever really had that. The closest I can remember is suddenly being overwhelmed at my wedding by the idea that generations and generations of Jewish people before me also stood under a huppah and said similar words to each other - but what moves me there is man-made history rather than the power of some external force.
In any case, I don’t want to think of myself as spiritual and prefer a term closer to aesthete. But maybe I’m overthinking a 10-minute personality quiz.
-
I laughed. And learned a new word.
Now I just need to learn a joke so I can tell it and say the same.
That aside, I think the problem with spirituality in the questionaire is that they always asked for your faith. "my faith makes what I am".
That is of course BS for an Atheist, especially when thinking about the white bearded imaginary friend in the clouds.
However spirituality (in the psychological sense) is different than that. For example you can feel "unity with the world around you" without any religion. The main problem is that everyone defines spirituality different though.
As a German I of course need to cite Goethe's Faust here:
„Kein persönlicher Gott mehr, keine Konfession, keine Glaubensgemeinschaft, keine Kirche, keine damit verbundene sittliche Weltordnung – aber das Gefühl einer Allheit und Allverbundenheit, emotionale Übereinstimmung mit dem Weltganzen, das Absolute als Chiffre für die Liebe.“
"No more personal God, no denomination, no community of faith, no church, no associated moral world order - but the feeling of allness and all-connectedness, emotional agreement with the world as a whole, the absolute as a cipher for love."
I totally agree. I had to stop and reframe the questions in my head as not being about a *religion* but the bigger concept of connectedness. My personal version of spirituality is very ontological, very much focused on the interconnectedness of nature, and heavily informed by the Indigenous influences from my childhood where a rock has as much spirit as a human, and where you can have as much of a relationship with a body of water as you can with another person.
Human-centered spirituality is quite young compared to more ontological versions.
I really enjoyed in my linguistics degree studying the structure of a lot of Canadian Indigenous languages, especially how it puts ontological spirituality at the very center of their way of thinking.
A lot of the languages don't really have nouns for a lot of things. Like eyeball isn't a body part, it's the "round thing that allows you to witness the divine event of the sun rising daily." In English that sounds long and cumbersome, but in the language the concept of "witness the divine event of the sun rising" is such a foundational concept that it's a tiny little word segment that can be thrown into any word that involves seeing of any sort.
That all definitely makes sense, and can certainly intellectually rationalize re-interpreting the questions to align with some other version of outside-myself-ness, but even those don’t feel spiritual to me.
I guess I relate closer to the Romantics’ idea of the sublime as a kind of out of body experience of aesthetic awe - that’s what I feel both in beautiful natural settings and even more so around extraordinary artifacts of human achievement (the glaciers and volcano in Iceland were amazing but somehow the Duomo in Milan more so?). But even this feeling is very individual; it does not feel like “emotional agreement with the world as a whole” - I don’t think I’ve ever really had that. The closest I can remember is suddenly being overwhelmed at my wedding by the idea that generations and generations of Jewish people before me also stood under a huppah and said similar words to each other - but what moves me there is man-made history rather than the power of some external force.
In any case, I don’t want to think of myself as spiritual and prefer a term closer to aesthete. But maybe I’m overthinking a 10-minute personality quiz.
n'ah, this is the exact shit that thousands of years of people have dedicated their entire lives to studying and trying to understand.
-
Top strengths for me:
1. Curiousity
2. Honesty
3. Love of Learning
4. Humor
5. Judgment
"Lesser" strengths:
21. Gratitude
22. Bravery
23. Zest
24. Spirituality
Authentic Happiness score: 3.13
I, too, struggle with the concepts of "purpose" and "importance". I have often told people that at this stage in my life, it is my goal to be as happy as possible and have as much "fun" as possible while dragging my spouse along. For the record, she is happy to be "dragged." :-)
-
Like others who have commented, I think my brain was probably derailed a bit by the outdated conceptions of words like "spirituality" and "purpose" that still linger in my head from working days. Late-stage capitalist corporate bureaucracy really does a number on your brain, folks! And I worked in non-profits! But at the intersection of philanthropy and government, which is a murky swamp to navigate.
I'm looking forward to seeing how much my scores/ranking of different traits change as I progress through the course -- which will at least partly be a function of opening my brain up to a different way of defining some of those concepts.
-
Like others who have commented, I think my brain was probably derailed a bit by the outdated conceptions of words like "spirituality" and "purpose" that still linger in my head from working days. Late-stage capitalist corporate bureaucracy really does a number on your brain, folks! And I worked in non-profits! But at the intersection of philanthropy and government, which is a murky swamp to navigate.
I'm looking forward to seeing how much my scores/ranking of different traits change as I progress through the course -- which will at least partly be a function of opening my brain up to a different way of defining some of those concepts.
Oh hell yes.
I have so many conversations with people about this, and it's profoundly disturbing a lot of the time.
-
For those of us who got perseverance in our lesser strengths: https://tilde.town/~dozens/sofa/
-
Top Strengths:
1. Kindness
2. Love of Learning
3. Perspective
4. Curiosity
5. Humility
For the homework of using them in new ways, I've only come up with the first three days' worth. I hope to come up with the rest of the week as we go.
Monday: Love of Learning - Do some continuing education relevant to my volunteer work.
Tuesday: Kindness - Support a family member with setting up the support structure for some life changes. I count this as "kindness" rather than "pushing them" because they directly asked for help with setting it up. I'll need to be mindful of letting them guide, though.
Wednesday: Curiosity - Try a new food flavor. This should be fairly easy to integrate because Wednesday is a grocery shopping day.
-
This has already been super rewarding reading all the thoughtful responses – thanks to @lhamo and everyone.
I struggle with the vagueness of some of the questions (e.g, how often do I get something I want—are we talking holistic fulfillment or a microwave oven?). But really my difficulty with these tests is that (similar to something @Metalcat expressed above) I have a very regimented separation from my work life and personal life. If examined side-by-side, they would probably be considered two very different people. So it was hard to know which “me” I was answering for. But I tried to be thoughtful and did my best to answer. Results:
PERMA: 4.38; AH: 2.54 (good lord)
Top 5 Strengths:
1. Humility
2. Gratitude
3. Judgment
4. Perseverance
5. Perspective
Bottom 4 Strengths:
21. Zest
22. Hope
23. Teamwork
24. Love
The Love one was a bitter pill to swallow. But as @cannotWAIT said, I viewed most of the questions as how well you EXPRESS love. And I took that maybe too literally as TELLING someone. I do not come from a “let’s tell each other you love them” background, but as my spouse like to say, I express my love in many unsaid ways by constantly thinking about and doing things to help those I love. Or maybe I’m just a raging D-bag….
-
For those of us who got perseverance in our lesser strengths: https://tilde.town/~dozens/sofa/
This is... revolutionary
-
For those of us who got perseverance in our lesser strengths: https://tilde.town/~dozens/sofa/
Wow. OMG. My immediate response to this is to think that it is a dangerous pandering to my lack of perseverance. Which suggests I have been brainwashed why what the writer calls the "societal pressure to stick to things until the bitter end."
Food for thought. Now I want to quit everything.
-
For those of us who got perseverance in our lesser strengths: https://tilde.town/~dozens/sofa/
Wow. OMG. My immediate response to this is to think that it is a dangerous pandering to my lack of perseverance. Which suggests I have been brainwashed why what the writer calls the "societal pressure to stick to things until the bitter end."
Food for thought. Now I want to quit everything.
And you probably should.
That's what I said above. Nobody needs to take pride in sticking with things if they don't have a problem sticking with things.
I've been talking about this a lot lately, this particularly American presupposition that failure is some kind of default and everyone has to protect, viciously against it in order to "succeed."
We were talking in a few threads about this obsessive need to push kids towards success, because the default assumption is abject failure if they don't. I then posted some info about a suicide course I was doing and how this kind of thinking is actually pretty high risk for suicidality.
But what if we actually presume success and trust our own judgement?
What if we don't operate from the assumption that if left to our own devices and without extreme pressure that we'll somehow "fail?"
I personally found myself much more successful at the things that really mattered to me when I starting trusting my own judgement more and following through only on the things I really wanted to do.
I actually became rather ruthless about paring out work that didn't appeal to me or didn't feel truly important and I very quickly abandon things now when they don't feel like an extremely valuable use of my time.
In short, I became very frugal about my time and effort, really optimizing for what makes me happiest and matters most to me. I leaned heavily into trusting my own judgement and presuming success.
And what happened was that I got a lot more successful *and* successes came a lot easier because I wasn't wasting precious resources on working my ass off for the sake of working my ass off.
When you fundamentally trust yourself and your capacity to succeed at what matters, the stress pressure virtually disappears along with any sense of obligation to follow through on anything.
The drive to see things through then comes from an internal, intrinsic drive for the sake of the important outcome, not from a sense of obligation to continue. It ends up taking very minimal will power to do, well anything really.
-
Week 2 time!! I think a lot of the money doesn't correlate to happiness (after having enough to meet your basic needs) will resonate strongly with the MMM crowd. Homework this week is to practice "savoring" and "gratefulness" which I think I will enjoy and have no problem completing. The reference to hedonic adaptation reminded me of MMM's 2011 blog (https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/22/what-is-hedonic-adaptation-and-how-can-it-turn-you-into-a-sukka/). Anyway, thank you to this thread, class has been enjoyable so far.
-
I'm curious how the rest of you feel about the "purpose in life" questions that were on one of these tests, I think the "Authentic Happiness" one. What does "purpose" mean to you? Do you feel that you have one?
I have to admit that I have never even understood the concept of having a purpose in life. Does it mean a purpose that you cook up for your own life, or one imposed from above? For instance, if you think your purpose is to be a good parent, does that mean "God put me here to be a good parent" or does it mean "I think parenting is a noble endeavor and it's important to me to be good at it" or does it mean "I love my daughter Natalie and want to be the best parent to her"? What is the difference between having a purpose and having a desire or interest?
I kind of feel like the concept of "purpose" is similar to religious "faith" in that either you're wired to understand it or you're not. You can't just wake up one day and say "I'm going to have faith" and it's the same with feeling that you have a purpose to your life. I envy those who have faith and purpose because they seem really comforting, although I continue to be baffled as to what they actually are!
-
I'm curious how the rest of you feel about the "purpose in life" questions that were on one of these tests, I think the "Authentic Happiness" one. What does "purpose" mean to you? Do you feel that you have one?
I have to admit that I have never even understood the concept of having a purpose in life. Does it mean a purpose that you cook up for your own life, or one imposed from above? For instance, if you think your purpose is to be a good parent, does that mean "God put me here to be a good parent" or does it mean "I think parenting is a noble endeavor and it's important to me to be good at it" or does it mean "I love my daughter Natalie and want to be the best parent to her"? What is the difference between having a purpose and having a desire or interest?
I kind of feel like the concept of "purpose" is similar to religious "faith" in that either you're wired to understand it or you're not. You can't just wake up one day and say "I'm going to have faith" and it's the same with feeling that you have a purpose to your life. I envy those who have faith and purpose because they seem really comforting, although I continue to be baffled as to what they actually are!
There actually are people who wake up one day and suddenly become religious. There is no shortage of adult baptisms in the religious world.
-
I'm curious how the rest of you feel about the "purpose in life" questions that were on one of these tests, I think the "Authentic Happiness" one. What does "purpose" mean to you? Do you feel that you have one?
I have to admit that I have never even understood the concept of having a purpose in life. Does it mean a purpose that you cook up for your own life, or one imposed from above? For instance, if you think your purpose is to be a good parent, does that mean "God put me here to be a good parent" or does it mean "I think parenting is a noble endeavor and it's important to me to be good at it" or does it mean "I love my daughter Natalie and want to be the best parent to her"? What is the difference between having a purpose and having a desire or interest?
I kind of feel like the concept of "purpose" is similar to religious "faith" in that either you're wired to understand it or you're not. You can't just wake up one day and say "I'm going to have faith" and it's the same with feeling that you have a purpose to your life. I envy those who have faith and purpose because they seem really comforting, although I continue to be baffled as to what they actually are!
As I said above, I have a very solid sense of purpose, my purpose is to live my best life. What that looks like and how I achieve that is based on feedback from things I try to see how well or poorly they impact my key quality of life measures.
It's gotten very, very easy for me to make decisions since I boiled everything down to key indicators of success, as defined by me.
Note, none of them are based on work or accomplishments. Work and accomplishments can contribute to key indicators, but they are not, in and of themselves indicators of success.
-
For those of us who got perseverance in our lesser strengths: https://tilde.town/~dozens/sofa/
This is... revolutionary
Yes to the revolution! I love it so much.
Thanks for sharing @cannotWAIT --I felt like a poster child reading that and somehow felt a flush of happiness rather than any shame :)
-
For those of us who got perseverance in our lesser strengths: https://tilde.town/~dozens/sofa/
This is... revolutionary
Yes to the revolution! I love it so much.
Thanks for sharing @cannotWAIT --I felt like a poster child reading that and somehow felt a flush of happiness rather than any shame :)
Haha, me too! We've been doing it right all along! *high five*
-
I'm curious how the rest of you feel about the "purpose in life" questions that were on one of these tests, I think the "Authentic Happiness" one. What does "purpose" mean to you? Do you feel that you have one?
I have to admit that I have never even understood the concept of having a purpose in life. Does it mean a purpose that you cook up for your own life, or one imposed from above? For instance, if you think your purpose is to be a good parent, does that mean "God put me here to be a good parent" or does it mean "I think parenting is a noble endeavor and it's important to me to be good at it" or does it mean "I love my daughter Natalie and want to be the best parent to her"? What is the difference between having a purpose and having a desire or interest?
I kind of feel like the concept of "purpose" is similar to religious "faith" in that either you're wired to understand it or you're not. You can't just wake up one day and say "I'm going to have faith" and it's the same with feeling that you have a purpose to your life. I envy those who have faith and purpose because they seem really comforting, although I continue to be baffled as to what they actually are!
I read a quote not too long ago that really resonated with me: "Life has no purpose, only potential." I'm an atheist, so I think we find or create our own purpose (or not). I tend to agree with Metalcat that living my best life is a very fine purpose indeed.
-
I'm curious how the rest of you feel about the "purpose in life" questions that were on one of these tests, I think the "Authentic Happiness" one. What does "purpose" mean to you? Do you feel that you have one?
I have to admit that I have never even understood the concept of having a purpose in life. Does it mean a purpose that you cook up for your own life, or one imposed from above? For instance, if you think your purpose is to be a good parent, does that mean "God put me here to be a good parent" or does it mean "I think parenting is a noble endeavor and it's important to me to be good at it" or does it mean "I love my daughter Natalie and want to be the best parent to her"? What is the difference between having a purpose and having a desire or interest?
I kind of feel like the concept of "purpose" is similar to religious "faith" in that either you're wired to understand it or you're not. You can't just wake up one day and say "I'm going to have faith" and it's the same with feeling that you have a purpose to your life. I envy those who have faith and purpose because they seem really comforting, although I continue to be baffled as to what they actually are!
I read a quote not too long ago that really resonated with me: "Life has no purpose, only potential." I'm an atheist, so I think we find or create our own purpose (or not). I tend to agree with Metalcat that living my best life is a very fine purpose indeed.
Even being religious this can be ones purpose.
I studied religion for a long time with a particular focus on Canadian Indigenous spirituality and Islam, and there's a common thread to the world's history of religions and spirituality, which is a sense of connectedness.
The research is pretty solid on this that a sense of connectedness becomes more and more important to people as we age or as we face major hardships and health issues in life.
This is covered really well in the AMAZING book Being Mortal.
So religions keep popping up throughout history to try and address this fundamental human need for connectedness. Of course they end up being co-opted as tools of control and social coercion, but that's just how organization among humans tends to go.
But if ones purpose is quality of life, then connectedness is going to play a massive role in that. Now, whether that connectedness is focused on people, nature, the divine, whatever, is up to the individual to interpret.
My point is, whether deeply religious or staunchly atheist, the purpose of life can be to live really, really well. Because one actually kind of has to live really well in order to forge and sustain high quality connection.
Connection is a hell of a lot easier to cultivate if you are happy and healthy, and it synergistically supports health and happiness, and they self-perpetuate one another.
If someone is experiencing isolation and loneliness, that's a surefire indicator that something in terms of their overall wellness is WAY OFF.
-
Joining also. This is just the mind/life learning I need right now.
-
Neat - I've joined too! Not done week one yet.
-
Huh. My PERMA overall score is 8, but 'authentic happiness' score is 2.92. I'd have figured they would have aligned a little closer.
Honesty, Humour, and Judgement as my top strengths sounds about right. Apparently my #1 weakness is Teamwork though . . . which is weird. I've never had problems working in a team (and have had to for my entire working career), I just prefer working on my own when given the chance. Hope, and Love as the next two biggest weaknesses seem to track though. :P
-
I downloaded the app, which gives you access to more information about the character strengths, and I deduced from their little blurbs about each strength that hope and zest are the two that they've found to be most highly correlated with a happy life.
Zest was one of my lowest ones, which definitely feels true right now. And, interestingly, I got my partner to take the survey and he had zest as one of his lowest ones too, so we are perhaps reinforcing that in each other. Although mostly I perceive him to be "laid back" or "mellow," and I find it relaxing. Zesty people jangle my nerves.
-
I'm curious how the rest of you feel about the "purpose in life" questions that were on one of these tests, I think the "Authentic Happiness" one. What does "purpose" mean to you? Do you feel that you have one?
I have to admit that I have never even understood the concept of having a purpose in life. Does it mean a purpose that you cook up for your own life, or one imposed from above? For instance, if you think your purpose is to be a good parent, does that mean "God put me here to be a good parent" or does it mean "I think parenting is a noble endeavor and it's important to me to be good at it" or does it mean "I love my daughter Natalie and want to be the best parent to her"? What is the difference between having a purpose and having a desire or interest?
I kind of feel like the concept of "purpose" is similar to religious "faith" in that either you're wired to understand it or you're not. You can't just wake up one day and say "I'm going to have faith" and it's the same with feeling that you have a purpose to your life. I envy those who have faith and purpose because they seem really comforting, although I continue to be baffled as to what they actually are!
I read a quote not too long ago that really resonated with me: "Life has no purpose, only potential." I'm an atheist, so I think we find or create our own purpose (or not). I tend to agree with Metalcat that living my best life is a very fine purpose indeed.
Even being religious this can be ones purpose.
I studied religion for a long time with a particular focus on Canadian Indigenous spirituality and Islam, and there's a common thread to the world's history of religions and spirituality, which is a sense of connectedness.
The research is pretty solid on this that a sense of connectedness becomes more and more important to people as we age or as we face major hardships and health issues in life.
This is covered really well in the AMAZING book Being Mortal.
So religions keep popping up throughout history to try and address this fundamental human need for connectedness. Of course they end up being co-opted as tools of control and social coercion, but that's just how organization among humans tends to go.
But if ones purpose is quality of life, then connectedness is going to play a massive role in that. Now, whether that connectedness is focused on people, nature, the divine, whatever, is up to the individual to interpret.
My point is, whether deeply religious or staunchly atheist, the purpose of life can be to live really, really well. Because one actually kind of has to live really well in order to forge and sustain high quality connection.
Connection is a hell of a lot easier to cultivate if you are happy and healthy, and it synergistically supports health and happiness, and they self-perpetuate one another.
If someone is experiencing isolation and loneliness, that's a surefire indicator that something in terms of their overall wellness is WAY OFF.
Further along in the course, she talks about the things that are proven to increase human happiness, and social connections is one of them.
-
Oh interesting!
Strengths:
1. Judgement
2. Love of learning
3. Curiosity
4. Prudence
5. Bravery
Lesser strengths:
1. Appreciation of beauty
2. Teamwork
3. Perseverance
4. Humility
So apparently I'm a vain judgey loner nerd with no appreciation for beauty :)
This was actually pretty interesting. I'm not sure that I buy the Teamwork element, I think that's just a byproduct of being pretty ambivalent about teams - they're the right answer for some things and the wrong answer for others. The curiosity/prudence/bravery combo does feel about right to me, I spend a lot of time figuring out what seems to be going on and trying to do the best thing about it even when it's annoying.
Whoever proposed this course - thanks! It's been great so far.
-
I’ve read a bunch of happiness related books. I think I’m wired differently. I told my niece I hate my job, and my brother overheard and told my sister I’m quitting, which I’m not. Well I’m close to FI or at least Lean-Fi. My sister told me Dad, within earshot, that that means I’m mentally ill. She’s 65, well past dying with millions in the bank, enjoys working. She was “ people in India with no roof and 20 kids are happy” and then exchanged advice about how I need to meditate or do yoga, though lack of time to exercise is part of my unhappiness.
I think part of my brain compares everything to the best version. I worked in this career and was successful at the job and the exams, now I’m struggling with both. I lived 12 years in walkable cities and had arts available to me. Now I live with my senior parents in the suburbs. My Mom watches soap operas in her language 10 hours a day, basic conversation with them is a struggle. It’s not that I don’t love them, but I miss living alone.
I do practice gratitude for all I have, but I’m a glass half empty kind of person. I think it’s ingrained in my personality.
-
So, not to spoil things for those who still haven't done week 2 of the course, but the research referenced in that module indicates that roughly 50% of your happiness/life satisfaction level seems to be related to your genetic baseline. About 10% is related to life circumstances. That leaves about 40% that you can affect through your habits and thought patterns.
Caregiving for aging parents is HARD! But maybe there are some little tweaks you can make so that it isn't quite such a miserable experience. Are there any places you can get out to walk and enjoy nature? Even in the suburbs you might find things you enjoy, and getting out would get you some solitude/peace and quiet.
Are your parents still able to articulate memories about their lives and your life growing up? Maybe connecting with them in that way for an hour or two a day and getting some of those family history things down on tape or on paper would enrich all of your lives? And give your mom something to do beside watch the soaps.
-
So, not to spoil things for those who still haven't done week 2 of the course, but the research referenced in that module indicates that roughly 50% of your happiness/life satisfaction level seems to be related to your genetic baseline. About 10% is related to life circumstances. That leaves about 40% that you can affect through your habits and thought patterns.
Caregiving for aging parents is HARD! But maybe there are some little tweaks you can make so that it isn't quite such a miserable experience. Are there any places you can get out to walk and enjoy nature? Even in the suburbs you might find things you enjoy, and getting out would get you some solitude/peace and quiet.
Are your parents still able to articulate memories about their lives and your life growing up? Maybe connecting with them in that way for an hour or two a day and getting some of those family history things down on tape or on paper would enrich all of your lives? And give your mom something to do beside watch the soaps.
I have a lot of this in my life right now.
My mom at 64 had a catastrophic brain bleed that blew out nearly a fifth of her brain. She should not have survived, and should have major deficits, but literally just got her driver's license back less than a year after it happened because she's a freak of nature.
I'm getting to know this new person, which is challenging. She and I have a very complex history. But her long term memory is perfectly intact and she's a more reliable narrator now because she's less manipulative. So I'm learning SO MUCH about my family history that was never clear before because there was always an agenda to how she shared before.
Now I can just get a clear, chronological timeline of her insane and amazing life history, like how the hell she ended up on tour with a major European rock band at the age of 6???
It's been absolutely incredible to keep downloading all of this history that I've never had reliable access to.
-
Now I can just get a clear, chronological timeline of her insane and amazing life history, like how the hell she ended up on tour with a major European rock band at the age of 6???
Wait, what? You sure about that driver's license? ;)
My dad didn't have that luck and after a bleeding (which was already at the end of a string of stuff) he ended up bedridden with one half of the body barely moveable and all the time on heavy pain killers and still hurt. 4 painful years for everyone until the cancer came back and took him.
The doctors back at the time of the stroke already asked us if they should stop the machines and the next day he awoke from the coma.
Would have better for all if he had not waken up at that time. Stuff like this can really take down your happiness, that's for sure.
-
Just found this thread. Interesting idea. I'm behind- will check it out. Posting so I have reminders!
strengths:
1. Perspective
2. Love of learning
3. Hope
4. Prudence
5. Judgement
- these next ones seem related
6. Curiosity
7. Kindness
lesser: I agree with these
1. zest (yeah, I'm no cheerleader!)
2. perseverance (If bored or I find something is no longer useful I have no qualms about dropping it)
3. teamwork
4. spirituality
ETA:YES!
For those of us who got perseverance in our lesser strengths: https://tilde.town/~dozens/sofa/
-
With regards week 2, I feel like I'm ahead of the game with the exercises. I'm all about savouring experiences! The habit of stopping and taking account of a joyful moment is deeply ingrained in me. And I've been keeping a gratitude journal on-and-off for years.
Which is good, because I feel like I didn't use many of my strengths much last week. I am a little confused how you go about using 'Fairness' in day-to-day life.
-
With regards week 2, I feel like I'm ahead of the game with the exercises. I'm all about savouring experiences! The habit of stopping and taking account of a joyful moment is deeply ingrained in me. And I've been keeping a gratitude journal on-and-off for years.
Which is good, because I feel like I didn't use many of my strengths much last week. I am a little confused how you go about using 'Fairness' in day-to-day life.
If you download the app, it gives you access to a lot more information, including suggestions for exercising all of the various strengths.
-
I laughed. And learned a new word.
Now I just need to learn a joke so I can tell it and say the same.
That aside, I think the problem with spirituality in the questionaire is that they always asked for your faith. "my faith makes what I am".
That is of course BS for an Atheist, especially when thinking about the white bearded imaginary friend in the clouds.
However spirituality (in the psychological sense) is different than that. For example you can feel "unity with the world around you" without any religion. The main problem is that everyone defines spirituality different though.
As a German I of course need to cite Goethe's Faust here:
„Kein persönlicher Gott mehr, keine Konfession, keine Glaubensgemeinschaft, keine Kirche, keine damit verbundene sittliche Weltordnung – aber das Gefühl einer Allheit und Allverbundenheit, emotionale Übereinstimmung mit dem Weltganzen, das Absolute als Chiffre für die Liebe.“
"No more personal God, no denomination, no community of faith, no church, no associated moral world order - but the feeling of allness and all-connectedness, emotional agreement with the world as a whole, the absolute as a cipher for love."
I totally agree. I had to stop and reframe the questions in my head as not being about a *religion* but the bigger concept of connectedness. My personal version of spirituality is very ontological, very much focused on the interconnectedness of nature, and heavily informed by the Indigenous influences from my childhood where a rock has as much spirit as a human, and where you can have as much of a relationship with a body of water as you can with another person.
Human-centered spirituality is quite young compared to more ontological versions.
I really enjoyed in my linguistics degree studying the structure of a lot of Canadian Indigenous languages, especially how it puts ontological spirituality at the very center of their way of thinking.
A lot of the languages don't really have nouns for a lot of things. Like eyeball isn't a body part, it's the "round thing that allows you to witness the divine event of the sun rising daily." In English that sounds long and cumbersome, but in the language the concept of "witness the divine event of the sun rising" is such a foundational concept that it's a tiny little word segment that can be thrown into any word that involves seeing of any sort.
That all definitely makes sense, and can certainly intellectually rationalize re-interpreting the questions to align with some other version of outside-myself-ness, but even those don’t feel spiritual to me.
I guess I relate closer to the Romantics’ idea of the sublime as a kind of out of body experience of aesthetic awe - that’s what I feel both in beautiful natural settings and even more so around extraordinary artifacts of human achievement (the glaciers and volcano in Iceland were amazing but somehow the Duomo in Milan more so?). But even this feeling is very individual; it does not feel like “emotional agreement with the world as a whole” - I don’t think I’ve ever really had that. The closest I can remember is suddenly being overwhelmed at my wedding by the idea that generations and generations of Jewish people before me also stood under a huppah and said similar words to each other - but what moves me there is man-made history rather than the power of some external force.
In any case, I don’t want to think of myself as spiritual and prefer a term closer to aesthete. But maybe I’m overthinking a 10-minute personality quiz.
I have also had that feeling of overwhelming awe of beauty and the sublime, mostly at natural places, with music, but also esp when a child in church, the hushed group of people, the smell of the incense and chanting and chanting along, very moving. Part of that feeling of awe, does feel like a sense of feeling connected to something larger (esp live music, group setting) but maybe that's just the way my brain interprets it. Other times esp in nature, or like in water, the awe feels more like a sense of tinyness, I am so small but still is a feeling of deep meaning.
-
With regards week 2, I feel like I'm ahead of the game with the exercises. I'm all about savouring experiences! The habit of stopping and taking account of a joyful moment is deeply ingrained in me. And I've been keeping a gratitude journal on-and-off for years.
Which is good, because I feel like I didn't use many of my strengths much last week. I am a little confused how you go about using 'Fairness' in day-to-day life.
I am behind on you all! I found this thread last night and did week 1. Maybe I'll do week 2 today, so I can catch up.
What is weird, before I even read this post, thinking this morning, that an only constant is change. We had 9/11, we had the stock market crash, Covid, Ukraine vs Russia and now a middle east conflict (and many many personal events in between). That these things are not if but when, and to capture the good times, and the clear moments when you can.
I am not an especial fan of personality type surveys, esp as I know how much prior info, instructions can influence reponses, but mine are:
My scores: Overall Well-Being = 6.19
Your Authentic Happiness Score is: 3
My top 5 strengths are: Appreciation of beauty and Excellence
Love
Fairness
Curiosity
humility
Least strong traits:
self regulation
judgement
zest,
perservance.
the perservarance one esp was hard for me to answer. Objectively speaking, I have accomplished a lot. But I am also very much aware of the things I want to do, that I have not done or finished. I can sometimes work on many things at once, and then the things that float to the top get done, while other things languish. I have had sharp feelings of disappointment in the past of those unfinished projects. Now that I'm older, I feel, like, it's the nature of things.
-
Re: historical events, I found it interesting that the average well being score for Americans in the 1940s (peak WW2) was higher than more recently. People who were dealing with family members being drafted/sent off to war, food rationing, etc. were apparently happier than we are now. Would be interesting to know how representative those samples were, I guess.
Re: perseverance, I think it is one of those traits that our cultural background leads us to valorize, and in some contexts it is a good thing. The human who kept trying throwing different seeds in the ground until they ended up with edible grains? Thank you for sticking with that. The people who ran all sorts of experiments until they found the breakthroughs that now make our lives substantially better? Thanks for that, too. But do we need to valorize somebody's ability to keep writing TSP reports that never get read or used in any meaningful decision? Or someone who toughs it out in a toxic relationship because they think that is what is expected of them and necessary? Not so much. Maybe one of the things that brings a lot of us here/to the FIRE community is that we have a better sense of what is worth persevering FOR. Except those crazy folk in the multi-million OMY club.
-
Re: historical events, I found it interesting that the average well being score for Americans in the 1940s (peak WW2) was higher than more recently. People who were dealing with family members being drafted/sent off to war, food rationing, etc. were apparently happier than we are now. Would be interesting to know how representative those samples were, I guess.
Makes sense to me. In "shared disaster" times like that, you get an increased sense of community. You volunteer more. You stay in closer contact with friends and family. Probably the people most closely affected by the draft, death, etc. weren't happier, but overall? I can believe it.
I remember very fondly a natural disaster where, among other things, my town was without power for almost a week, so the number of people affected was very high. I was well supported by friends, my family reached out to make sure I was okay, I supported my friends. I volunteered. Hung out with people I normally wouldn't. Enjoyed quiet reading and reflection time. Listened to my solar-powered radio for community updates. I was happy.
The pandemic was different, since we were encouraged to interact with people at a distance, which (at least personally) lead to a lot less happiness.
-
If you download the app, it gives you access to a lot more information, including suggestions for exercising all of the various strengths.
Possibly I am being foolish, but I can't find a related app? I wandered around the VIA website for a while though, and found a couple of blog posts on using (https://www.viacharacter.org/topics/articles/tips-for-using-each-character-strength-in-a-new-way) strengths (https://www.viacharacter.org/topics/articles/road-map-to-strengths-use).
With regards disaster, there's a 'life cycle' of emotional impact (https://www.edusc.org/uploads/images/elongated-emotional-lifecycle-of-a-disaster_707.png) - the positive bit is near the start, as people engage in heroics and communities pull together, but it doesn't really last.
-
Re: historical events, I found it interesting that the average well being score for Americans in the 1940s (peak WW2) was higher than more recently. People who were dealing with family members being drafted/sent off to war, food rationing, etc. were apparently happier than we are now. Would be interesting to know how representative those samples were, I guess.
Makes sense to me. In "shared disaster" times like that, you get an increased sense of community. You volunteer more. You stay in closer contact with friends and family. Probably the people most closely affected by the draft, death, etc. weren't happier, but overall? I can believe it.
I remember very fondly a natural disaster where, among other things, my town was without power for almost a week, so the number of people affected was very high. I was well supported by friends, my family reached out to make sure I was okay, I supported my friends. I volunteered. Hung out with people I normally wouldn't. Enjoyed quiet reading and reflection time. Listened to my solar-powered radio for community updates. I was happy.
I feel similarly when there’s a big snowfall and many help shovel their neighbor’s sidewalks, or the driveways of elderly neighbors. That sense of community flourishes during shared struggle.
-
Possibly I am being foolish, but I can't find a related app?
It's mentioned in Week 1 in the Rewirement Tracking (https://www.coursera.org/learn/the-science-of-well-being/supplement/CVTLL/rewirement-tracking) module. The app name is Pattern Health and module includes details of how to log in.
-
Week 3 coursework completed! Homework is to do acts of kindness and/or social connection 7 times this upcoming week. Ok that might be a little hard for me as I'm kinda working on personal projects this week but I will keep my eyes peeled for opportunities. Most interesting part of the coursework this week for me was talking about reference points and how we select who to compare ourselves to. Again not surprisingly reminds me of MMM and how he encourages us to realize how fortunate we are and to practice optimism and this quote from MMM that I really like: "Happiness comes from many sources, but none of these sources involve car or purse upgrades." See you all in a week!
-
Still on Week 2 here, but it's going well and I am enjoying savoring and gratitude-ing.
Met up with a friend and took our dog on a winter walk through the woods. (My dog is never happier than when there is snow on the ground to roll in.)
At one point, my dog turned to face me and friend. He lifted a leg and peed on the side of the trail, beaming happiness at the both of us, as if to say "Isn't it a great day to be alive?!"
Hard to beat.
-
Yes I am just starting the savoring, gratitude week. I do often try to jot down a few notes before bed; will try to make it a habit even if just a few lines. The winter birds have arrived and they always cheer me up singing, hopping about, etc. Dark eyed juncos and cardinals are regulars in my yard.
-
I haven't been cheered up by jncos since the 90s.
-
The savoring and gratitude week has gone quite well. I think I already was basically doing savoring quite a bit anyway in my regular life - something I taught myself from previous forays into the "better living" space. But I think it's good to be reminded about how key metacognition is - noticing that you're savoring something and staying mindful about it is equally important to actually finding something to savor.
Things I've savored this week include a really gorgeous and odd-looking sunrise (a purple sky full of tiny cumulus clouds all tinged orange-pink - something out of a fantasy novel), a very fun walk with the family on a cold sunny day, laughing our heads off at an Improvised Shakespeare Company show (always an absolutely brilliant evening - strong recommend if they ever come to your neck of the woods), and how good my homemade granola came out this time.
I'm less good at writing down my gratitude, but we talk a lot about things we are thankful for at home, so I feel like I've sort of fulfilled that part of the week's homework?
-
I haven't been cheered up by jncos since the 90s.
Oh my god, I begged my parents for those hideous pants! Jncos and jamz were the height of summer camp fashion. Thank goodness my mom said absolutely not.
-
I haven't been cheered up by jncos since the 90s.
Oh my god, I begged my parents for those hideous pants! Jncos and jamz were the height of summer camp fashion. Thank goodness my mom said absolutely not.
They can still be yours today!
(https://jnco.com/cdn/shop/files/20230622_EcommShoot_JNCO_KenM_1279_600x_crop_center.jpg?v=1687989367)
https://jnco.com/collections/mens/products/thug-50-dark-stone (https://jnco.com/collections/mens/products/thug-50-dark-stone)
-
I think I'll just savor the image instead :)
-
I haven't been cheered up by jncos since the 90s.
Oh my god, I begged my parents for those hideous pants! Jncos and jamz were the height of summer camp fashion. Thank goodness my mom said absolutely not.
They can still be yours today!
(https://jnco.com/cdn/shop/files/20230622_EcommShoot_JNCO_KenM_1279_600x_crop_center.jpg?v=1687989367)
https://jnco.com/collections/mens/products/thug-50-dark-stone (https://jnco.com/collections/mens/products/thug-50-dark-stone)
I wanted those so badly when I was 15.
-
I haven't been cheered up by jncos since the 90s.
Oh my god, I begged my parents for those hideous pants! Jncos and jamz were the height of summer camp fashion. Thank goodness my mom said absolutely not.
They can still be yours today!
(https://jnco.com/cdn/shop/files/20230622_EcommShoot_JNCO_KenM_1279_600x_crop_center.jpg?v=1687989367)
https://jnco.com/collections/mens/products/thug-50-dark-stone (https://jnco.com/collections/mens/products/thug-50-dark-stone)
I wanted those so badly when I was 15.
At first glance they seem silly . . . but thinking about it further, they're kinda a modern take on the traditional Japanese hakama.
(https://arawaza.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/uniform-kendo-hakama-arawaza.jpg)
-
I did this course 3 years ago and it shifted my perspective of many things. I hope you guys will also enjoy the the experience
-
I haven't been cheered up by jncos since the 90s.
Oh my god, I begged my parents for those hideous pants! Jncos and jamz were the height of summer camp fashion. Thank goodness my mom said absolutely not.
In my day it was Gloria Vanderbilt (which we called Gloria isn'tbuilt) and Calvin kleins, with Levis never going out of style. I remember being proud of my first GV, walking around making sure my shirt was tucked in so people could see the back pockets! What possessed us back then, I don't know.
-
My course got slightly derailed in that I got COVID and so I wasn't keeping up on anything except taking 2 hour naps and watching bad tv on the couch.
I realize with my habit of journaling, I have been doing things similar to this. Tho I have been so busy with house stuff sometimes all it is a download of a to do list.
I really want to SHIFT. Things I am grateful for. In addition to modern medicines and hot showers, that I have a couple conditions that could have been disabling or life ending but weren't as bad as they could have been.
I have a friend who is both himself an esteem poet, and daily posts a beautiful poem by other poets. They are so beautiful and consciousness expanding
I was going to share one but I dk if I have rights to, but the first 2 lines are
Too many people to say hello to anyone starts the day
pale green cargo van through January gray on Millbrook
-
I am behind in the course, but for very good reasons -- been helping some family and friends with urgent downsizing/decluttering tasks. Won't go into the details here, but suffice to say that offering this kind of help has been incredibly rewarding to me in addition to being a great help to some people who otherwise would have been overwhelmed by the task. Feels good to be making a difference for some people I care about!
I'll get back to the coursework when I have a bit more time. Or not. Even just a few weeks in I have learned a lot and started to modify my behaviour/daily habits in ways that are making me much happier/healthier than I was just a few weeks ago.
-
I'm on Week 3, which talks a lot about the importance of reference points and comparisons. This was really valuable information to me. Despite having made a conscious choice to take my career in the direction of lower pay for lower stress, I still get aggravated when I hear how much other people--other people who could be me--are making. And that's because salaries and titles are easy to compare. Too bad we don't also publish statistics on hours worked, ill health from stress and sitting all day, commute times, strained relationships, etc. because it would be a lot easier to stay aware of my true wealth.
Anyway I have really been diving into the whole gratitude thing and it's very effective and kind of feeds on itself. And I realized that we can also help others to feel grateful, and this can be a great act of kindness. This morning I was waiting at the vet clinic and remembering when my dog was a puppy--I had him with me in a bookstore, and an older lady, very similar in looks and voice to Toni Morrison, gazed at him for the longest time, and then leaned in and said very slowly, "You are so fortunate." It made such an impression on me. I mean of course I adored my puppy and felt lucky to have him, but the way she said it, I realized what a luxury it is to have the time and money and living situation that will allow you to have a happy life with a dog. What if you couldn't afford it? What if you couldn't find housing that allowed pets? What if you had a family member who didn't like dogs, or was allergic? What if you had health problems that prevented you from being able to care for a dog? That woman gave me a great gift with her simple words.
I guess so far the class is really basically just stoicism repackaged, but it's a good way to spend some time revisiting the concepts.
-
I guess so far the class is really basically just stoicism repackaged, but it's a good way to spend some time revisiting the concepts.
I would say that it's more like scientific validation of a lot of stoicism and wisdom that older cultures didn't need quantitative research to understand, lol.
-
Week 4 coursework completed! Homework is to exercise and get a good nights sleep. For me an easy assignment as one of my surprise benefits of FIRE was how I now had the time to do these 2 things routinely. Focus in lecture this week was on strategies on how to overcome hedonic adaptation. As one can tell from my prior posts I feel the professor and this class really pair nicely with the MMM view for the majority of time so that made her Amazon prime shopping example so jarring. Wow. But as usual mostly good messages, savor what you have, seek experiences over expensive things, feel gratitude etc. etc. See you all next week!
-
*sorry long post but NYT Wellness letter had this about savouring so I wanted to share
How to savor life like an astronaut
By Jancee Dunn
Mike Massimino used to complain about the weather when he was growing up outside New York City. Then he went to outer space.
“In space, there is no weather,” he told me. “No atmosphere. No seasons. Nothing.”
And he missed it all. His new book, “Moonshot: A NASA Astronaut’s Guide to Achieving the Impossible,” is about what he learned as a veteran of two spaceflights. One big lesson was what he took for granted back home.
Now, even on the wettest, muggiest days, he enjoys the feel of rain on his face. “It’s a reminder that the planet is alive,” he said, “and how lucky I am to be on this planet.”
In other words, Massimino now takes the time to savor.
Savoring is the process of bringing mindful attention and awareness to the positive things in life, said Patrick R. Harrison, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who researches the topic.
And making a habit of savoring everything from small moments, like holding your partner’s hand in a movie, to major life events like watching a child graduate from high school, can yield mental health benefits, from increasing resilience to reducing stress.
You don’t have to go to outer space to appreciate the good parts of your life, though. Here’s how to do it.
Pause to notice details and sensations.
Try to fix a moment in your mind by labeling it, said Fred Bryant, a professor of social psychology at Loyola University Chicago who has researched savoring for nearly a half-century. Psychologists call this “encoding.” Tune into your senses, he said, and ask yourself: What positive sensations am I feeling right now? Why is this moment important to me? What do I see or hear?
“You can’t freeze a moment,” Dr. Bryant said. “But you can do the next best thing, which is to build a powerful memory of it.”
Dr. Harrison made an effort to label his experience when he recently became a father. While his wife was in labor, a nurse volunteered to hang up a string of twinkly lights in the hospital room.
“It was the middle of the night, and I noted how peaceful it was, and took in the soft glow of the lights, the warmth of my wife’s hand as I held it, how grateful I was to be with her in the room,” Dr. Harrison said.
Step out for a moment.
When Dr. Bryant realizes that he’s immersed in something that he should savor, like a birthday celebration, he will get up and leave.
“I will walk out of a restaurant and stand in the parking lot for a minute,” he said. He takes a moment to view the sight of his loved ones from a distance, then goes back in. Pulling back, even briefly, gives him instant perspective and deepens his appreciation.
I did this accidentally at a recent dinner with my parents. I went out to my car to retrieve my phone, and as I returned, I saw my folks, husband and kid laughing together in the dining room. Remember this, I thought.
Share good news.
If you receive happy news, Dr. Harrison said, contact a loved one and relish it together. This form of savoring is known as capitalizing, and it can help prolong positive feelings.
I used to go on “distress walks” when I had problems. But now, when I get a bit of good news, I revel in it by going on a “savoring walk” and calling one of my sisters or a friend.
Practice ‘mental time travel.’
Savoring isn’t limited to experiences that are happening right now. You can also try something called “mental time travel,” Dr. Bryant said, by focusing on the future or the past.
Dr. Bryant amps up his appreciation for the present by imagining himself in the future, pining for his current life. He has a 7-year-old granddaughter, and sometimes he’ll pretend that she is all grown up, has moved away, “and that I would give anything, just for one more day with her,” he said. Then he opens his eyes and tells himself that his wish is granted.
“I’m seeing her later today,” he said.
For Massimino’s part, he makes a daily practice of savoring everything he missed in space. He loves going to ballgames, being surrounded by a crowd (“space can be incredibly lonely”) and hearing the sound of birds.
“I even like the sound of car horns now,” he said.
-
I started, but I don't know if I'll be able to keep up because I'm taking some other classes for a degree. This might end up a backburner thing I do in a couple months.
Strengths Top 5
Curiosity
Honesty
Judgement
Bravery - I think this one might be skewed
Perspective
Bottom 5
Zest
Social Intelligence
Teamwork
Humor
Perseverance
I think my teamwork score is based on getting out of a toxic job earlier this year. My group loyalty for that nonsense is way down. Same with my perseverance score. I'm leaning into jettisoning some "shoulds" that don't match what makes me happy and being willing to explore without making myself finish things I don't want. It's a good time to embrace quitting things I don't value.
I'm not surprised by Zest either. I'm excited about life, but I'm not particularly high energy at the moment.
-
Love that bit about weather from the article above! It's one of the best bits of having a dog that loves walks. I get to really appreciate every season for different reasons.
Week 3 is showing me something about my socialness that I hadn't really considered. All the suggestions for acts of kindness are "buy a coworker a coffee", "give change to a homeless person"... ie things that rely upon you having physical encounters with other people. Working from home, my most reliable social connections are my partner and dog in my house. We see neighbors out sometimes... I have calls with some coworkers... but it's not the same. Even tonight! Our Friday night plans are to play mario kart with friends and catch up... ONLINE.
As a massive introvert, this mostly feels fine to me! But it shows that my regular visits to the library and our walks to our family's house a few blocks away are more special than I'd considered.
-
Love that bit about weather from the article above! It's one of the best bits of having a dog that loves walks. I get to really appreciate every season for different reasons.
Week 3 is showing me something about my socialness that I hadn't really considered. All the suggestions for acts of kindness are "buy a coworker a coffee", "give change to a homeless person"... ie things that rely upon you having physical encounters with other people. Working from home, my most reliable social connections are my partner and dog in my house. We see neighbors out sometimes... I have calls with some coworkers... but it's not the same. Even tonight! Our Friday night plans are to play mario kart with friends and catch up... ONLINE.
As a massive introvert, this mostly feels fine to me! But it shows that my regular visits to the library and our walks to our family's house a few blocks away are more special than I'd considered.
I'm a hardcore extrovert and most of my meaningful interactions with people are virtual.
I interact casually with the hundreds of people in my highrise, but that's pretty minimal in terms of valuable contact.
That said, I do prefer my time in Newfoundland where I spend A LOT more time in person having meaningful interactions, but that could be because I just like Newfies more.
But yeah, here I have a private balcony, while there I have a deck. If I'm outside there, it's just a matter of time before someone notices and comes by to sit down and talk with me, and probably tell me their life story.
-
Got a massage yesterday. Not only was that something to savor (it not only feels incredibly good but relieves my pretty much chronic pain in neck and back) it prompted a conversation with the therapist. That essentially if you are using poor poster 10 + hours of the day, even doing yoga 20 min a day is not going to "fix" that. And incorporating both new changes (squatting, moving different ways) as well as doing body checks and body awareness is something that children have, that we need to keep or regain.
-
That essentially if you are using poor poster 10 + hours of the day, even doing yoga 20 min a day is not going to "fix" that. And incorporating both new changes (squatting, moving different ways) as well as doing body checks and body awareness is something that children have, that we need to keep or regain.
As people age they lose the ability to move in ways that they do not regularly move. This isn't a natural or inevitable thing . . . it's just that our society has decided that old folks should only sit, stand, and lay down. Some types of sports can really help with this (yoga being a good one . . . and I find jiu-jitsu is surprisingly good too), but really you want to be thinking of ways to move your body in funny ways every day. Try squatting on your heels above the grass instead of sitting down on a park bench, hang from the monkey bars the next time you pass the kids playground in the middle of the day, hug your knee to your chest occasionally as you're sitting in your office chair, do a backwards summersault before you get out of bed in the morning, climb a tree or small retaining rock wall while on a hike (or go for a hike!), walk up/down a steep slope, etc. Just occasionally practicing a whole variety of movement patterns makes you much stronger, more flexible, and keeps you from that old age stiffness that seems to be a death knell for so many.
-
Backwards summersault? Are you telling people to kill themselves???
-
Backwards summersault? Are you telling people to kill themselves???
GuitarStv has an exceptionally able-bodied lens through which he perceives the world. It's cute, I enjoy reading his perspective on physical activity and knowing it would probably kill me.
-
You guys don't do somersaults?
-
You guys don't do somersaults?
Dude...no...and my physiotherapist would slap me if I tried.
-
You guys don't do somersaults?
I haven't done a somersault since I took Gymnastics in 3rd grade.
-
I'm enjoying the course so far, although I think I'd prefer a different format like a podcast or a book. I haven't been very good about keeping up with the rewire homeworks, although I have been trying to practice "savoring" a bit more, and I think that's been nice.
The material on "miswanting" and hedonic adaptation wasn't necessarily new to me, but it's been a nice reminder. I'm at a life stage where perhaps my biggest challenge is figuring out what I really want out of the rest of my life.
The insight I got from last week's material is that instead of putting lots of effort into achieving the "perfect life", I should put more effort into loving the life I have. Because if I'm not happy with the life I have, I probably won't be any happier once I've achieved the things I thought would make life "perfect."
I suppose the financial angle to the same insight is instead of putting effort into obtaining a fancier lifestyle, put your effort into being satisfied with your current (or even reduced) lifestyle. Because if you're not satisfied with your current lifestyle, you won't be satisfied at an inflated lifestyle.
-
Serendip, thanks for posting that about the astronaut. It's really interesting to me because my whole life long I have always been mystified by people who want to go to outer space. I always think it sounds horrible because what I like is cups of tea and sleeping dogs and the smell of the woods. The texture and rhythms of life on Earth are what interests me. And for the same reason have no use for the concept of heaven. I like it right here, thanks.
-
Week 5 complete (a few days late as I caught Covid for the first time, a super dodger no longer, sigh, but happy to be feeling better today). Focus this week was on acts of kindness, social connection, meditation, exercise, appropriate levels of sleep and, the one perhaps most consistent with us MMM folk, time affluence and the act of prioritizing your time over money. I thought it was especially good this week and I really enjoyed the two guest interviews.
Also thank you to the astronaut story in this thread - one of the many reasons I enjoy backpacking is this reset of letting you now, upon return to "real" life, now more easily savor/appreciate things many take for granted (a roof over your head, drinking water whenever you want it, a real kitchen, bathroom etc.). I would imagine this is even more pronounced for an astronaut.
See you all next week!
-
Serendip, thanks for posting that about the astronaut. It's really interesting to me because my whole life long I have always been mystified by people who want to go to outer space. I always think it sounds horrible because what I like is cups of tea and sleeping dogs and the smell of the woods. The texture and rhythms of life on Earth are what interests me. And for the same reason have no use for the concept of heaven. I like it right here, thanks.
I agree @Cannot Wait! --so much beauty in these textures and experiences that we get to live with and through. Space never appealed to me either.
A friend and I went to a sauna yesterday and I relished the moment...wood & heat & a view of trees. Simple and earthy.
Also agree with you @somers515 that backpacking really helps one appreciate the simple things like a hot shower :)
-
Serendip, thanks for posting that about the astronaut. It's really interesting to me because my whole life long I have always been mystified by people who want to go to outer space. I always think it sounds horrible because what I like is cups of tea and sleeping dogs and the smell of the woods. The texture and rhythms of life on Earth are what interests me. And for the same reason have no use for the concept of heaven. I like it right here, thanks.
I agree @Cannot Wait! --so much beauty in these textures and experiences that we get to live with and through. Space never appealed to me either.
A friend and I went to a sauna yesterday and I relished the moment...wood & heat & a view of trees. Simple and earthy.
Also agree with you @somers515 that backpacking really helps one appreciate the simple things like a hot shower :)
It's so true.
I used to be a chef and when anyone asks me what the best meal I've ever had in my life was, I don't even hesitate to think about it: bratwurst served on buns with nothing on them.
I was about 9 and had been out in the woods helping neighbours build a log cabin for many hours, it was early spring, there was still snow on the ground.
My dad and I had just met these new neighbours the day before and volunteered to help them. So there we all are, absolutely physically exhausted and I start smelling the best smell ever. I had never had bratwurst, and in that moment is was the most delicious thing I had ever, ever tasted, sitting around an open fire with new friends in the freezing cold, after a long day of hard labour.
The context of an experience is as or more important than the content of the experience.
-
The context of an experience is as or more important than the content of the experience.
Absolutely and I also notice that my best, most vivid memories are of times when I was more exposed to the elements, a little less cocooned in modern comfort--especially times when I was a little cold. Washing my face in the morning in the uninsulated bunkhouse of the ranch I was working on when I was 17. Smelling the woodsmoke in my dog's thick, cold fur after raking leaves. So much so that that, more than cost savings, is the reason I try to wait as long as possible to turn the heat on in the fall. It just makes me feel a little more alive.
-
The context of an experience is as or more important than the content of the experience.
Absolutely and I also notice that my best, most vivid memories are of times when I was more exposed to the elements, a little less cocooned in modern comfort--especially times when I was a little cold. Washing my face in the morning in the uninsulated bunkhouse of the ranch I was working on when I was 17. Smelling the woodsmoke in my dog's thick, cold fur after raking leaves. So much so that that, more than cost savings, is the reason I try to wait as long as possible to turn the heat on in the fall. It just makes me feel a little more alive.
Yep, this is why DH and I make a point of going outside in brutally cold weather. Everything about the experience of being outside is heightened by extreme cold, awareness of self, body, the air, movement. Hell, even sound travels differently in extreme cold. It's just incredibly easy to be in the moment.
-
I used to be a chef and when anyone asks me what the best meal I've ever had in my life was, I don't even hesitate to think about it: bratwurst served on buns with nothing on them.
The context of an experience is as or more important than the content of the experience.
Nonono, you have to put mustard on the Bratwurst. Bautzner Mittelscharf. But not too much, just that the mouth-watering tastiness of the Bratwurst combined with the crispiness of the fresh bun get's a little bit of punch to it.
There is a reason why this - the combination of bread and sausage - is Germany's most liked street food. Trust us on those two topics ;)
-
I used to be a chef and when anyone asks me what the best meal I've ever had in my life was, I don't even hesitate to think about it: bratwurst served on buns with nothing on them.
The context of an experience is as or more important than the content of the experience.
Nonono, you have to put mustard on the Bratwurst. Bautzner Mittelscharf. But not too much, just that the mouth-watering tastiness of the Bratwurst combined with the crispiness of the fresh bun get's a little bit of punch to it.
There is a reason why this - the combination of bread and sausage - is Germany's most liked street food. Trust us on those two topics ;)
That was kind of a key part of the point I was making, that the food wasn't ideal, the context made it the best meal ever.
I obviously would never choose a bratwurst on plain bread, nor would I ever choose a sausage as my favourite meal. That meal in that context was the most delicious I had ever had.
Hence the last line of my post.
-
I used to be a chef and when anyone asks me what the best meal I've ever had in my life was, I don't even hesitate to think about it: bratwurst served on buns with nothing on them.
The context of an experience is as or more important than the content of the experience.
Nonono, you have to put mustard on the Bratwurst. Bautzner Mittelscharf. But not too much, just that the mouth-watering tastiness of the Bratwurst combined with the crispiness of the fresh bun get's a little bit of punch to it.
There is a reason why this - the combination of bread and sausage - is Germany's most liked street food. Trust us on those two topics ;)
That was kind of a key part of the point I was making, that the food wasn't ideal, the context made it the best meal ever.
I obviously would never choose a bratwurst on plain bread, nor would I ever choose a sausage as my favourite meal. That meal in that context was the most delicious I had ever had.
Hence the last line of my post.
I know. But I could not waste this opportunity that we Germans are patriotic, even if we aren't far righters, who claim that only for themselvs.
-
I used to be a chef and when anyone asks me what the best meal I've ever had in my life was, I don't even hesitate to think about it: bratwurst served on buns with nothing on them.
The context of an experience is as or more important than the content of the experience.
Nonono, you have to put mustard on the Bratwurst. Bautzner Mittelscharf. But not too much, just that the mouth-watering tastiness of the Bratwurst combined with the crispiness of the fresh bun get's a little bit of punch to it.
There is a reason why this - the combination of bread and sausage - is Germany's most liked street food. Trust us on those two topics ;)
That was kind of a key part of the point I was making, that the food wasn't ideal, the context made it the best meal ever.
I obviously would never choose a bratwurst on plain bread, nor would I ever choose a sausage as my favourite meal. That meal in that context was the most delicious I had ever had.
Hence the last line of my post.
I know. But I could not waste this opportunity that we Germans are patriotic, even if we aren't far righters, who claim that only for themselvs.
Lol, I have a lot of German friends, and yes, I totally understand the particularly German compulsion to tell people the right way to do German things...or anything really. Ha!
-
Just stated today
Working on the strength exercise. My is creativity, curiosity, learning, kindness, honesty. Its going ti be interesting to find new way to use it this week
-
Week 6 done (back to my regular do-my-coursework-on-Tuesdays schedule). Focus this week was on now that we know what will actually make us happier how can we actually put it into action. Part of this week's course reminded me of the Getting Things Done method (take a goal, break it down into manageable tasks and set up a method to track those tasks so you will be prompted to do them at the appropriate time, freeing up your mind to focus on the here and now). It was interesting to hear a different way of approaching it, the focus in the class was on the WOOP method. https://woopmylife.org
Thanks again to this group, it's been fun hearing how we all are reacting to the class.
-
I am horribly behind on the course but it is because I have basically been rocking life and getting shit done and I am happier than I have been in a LOOONG time! Hope the same is proving true for many others still lurking on this thread.
-
Week 6 done (back to my regular do-my-coursework-on-Tuesdays schedule). Focus this week was on now that we know what will actually make us happier how can we actually put it into action. Part of this week's course reminded me of the Getting Things Done method (take a goal, break it down into manageable tasks and set up a method to track those tasks so you will be prompted to do them at the appropriate time, freeing up your mind to focus on the here and now). It was interesting to hear a different way of approaching it, the focus in the class was on the WOOP method. https://woopmylife.org
Thanks again to this group, it's been fun hearing how we all are reacting to the class.
I've done tons of work with people on making goals achievable, but my focus is largely on the concept of removing barriers.
If you want to be doing something, what are the barriers in the way of doing it?
This has lead to a whole way of designing our living space to facilitate doing more things that we want to do, and systems of organization. My approach is to always make the things I want to do as lazy and automatic as possible, and to put as many barriers as possible between myself and behaviours I don't want.
The goal is to make my desired lifestyle essentially as frictionless, easy, and automatic as possible.
-
I am horribly behind on the course but it is because I have basically been rocking life and getting shit done and I am happier than I have been in a LOOONG time! Hope the same is proving true for many others still lurking on this thread.
Sounds like you don't need the course. :)
-
I am horribly behind on the course but it is because I have basically been rocking life and getting shit done and I am happier than I have been in a LOOONG time! Hope the same is proving true for many others still lurking on this thread.
Sounds like you don't need the course. :)
Well, I DID when I started it -- I was in a pretty bad depressive slump. So it was a good kick start to get me out of it.
-
Happy to hear things are so much better for you @lhamo! Looking forward to house and/or new business updates in various threads.
-
I am still digging the class. I've been using the app which gives me my assignments, though admittedly I'm a bit behind on the lectures.
This week for me is meditation and a gratitude letter. I'm giving the meditation a go, and it seems easier than it has in the past when I've tried.
But I'm not coming up with any names for the gratitude letter. I suppose it could be anyone, though I'm not feeling moved in any particular direction just yet.
I did something like this a year or two back when I passed a new anniversary at my job. I sent a note to the person who hired me (and who was my manager for several years) thanking her for giving me the opportunity. She was/is a bulldog and in some ways had a negative reputation at work, but she protected our group fiercely and I always admired her. It felt really good to send that note.
-
Holy crap, week 5 has like three or four times the content of the other weeks! Good thing it's a long weekend! I wonder why it's distributed so unevenly. Lots of great information though. I loved Nicholas Epley's analogy of happiness being like a leaky tire, where you need to keep pumping it up. It's not like height, where if you grow taller, you stay tall. It's a mood swing.
I kind of wish she had a segment on what makes you the most UNhappy. She touches on it here and there--like bad grades don't make you as unhappy as you think they will. But what are the big things to avoid and which should we be less afraid of? Or what are the qualities of the things that make us most unhappy?
-
Holy crap, week 5 has like three or four times the content of the other weeks! Good thing it's a long weekend! I wonder why it's distributed so unevenly. Lots of great information though. I loved Nicholas Epley's analogy of happiness being like a leaky tire, where you need to keep pumping it up. It's not like height, where if you grow taller, you stay tall. It's a mood swing.
I kind of wish she had a segment on what makes you the most UNhappy. She touches on it here and there--like bad grades don't make you as unhappy as you think they will. But what are the big things to avoid and which should we be less afraid of? Or what are the qualities of the things that make us most unhappy?
That's the thing, as someone who has been through gobs of "bad" things that most would expect to make them unhappy, I have a lot of perspective on this.
I've been extremely unhappy, but mostly due to things that people tend to think they want, and I've found profound happiness during experiences where pretty much everyone would assume you would be miserable.
Unhappiness, in my experience, is largely driven by a lack of connection and authenticity.
I'm seeing this too with my clients, it's not so much the bad things happening that makes people miserable, but the way in which experiencing bad things tends to push people to pull away from the people they care about, often due to embarrassment or self-consciousness, or the ever-present pressure to look like we've got it all together.
I'm starting a supervision group for my peers because I talk to so many of them about the same imposter syndrome they all have, but they all think they're alone in how they're struggling.
It's the need to *appear* a certain way that drives isolation and makes the very normal struggles of life toxic instead of sources of connection, which they very much can be when people know how to be vulnerable with one another.
-
Definitely lack of connection and authenticity makes painful things more painful, and having connection and authenticity makes painful things less painful. I strongly believe that one of the best things we can do to make the world a better place is be open about what a mess our lives are and as a result I am a huge oversharer of my own fuckups and personal disasters. Lol. But I'm talking about the underlying things, like failures of our own making (failure to finish a dissertation, failed business venture) vs bad shit happening out of the blue (car accident, stock market crash) vs loss that happens in the natural course of life (gradually losing everyone you know as you age, losing your own abilities). Sure there's a ton of circumstantial variability but the same can be said of happiness so it would be interesting to hear the data.
Anyway, I thought that whole Nicholas Epley interview was really interesting and now I'm wondering what types of psychology PhD programs provide funding for grad students and which don't, because if I could just cover my expenses I wouldn't mind doing that for the first few years of retirement! I imagine clinical programs do not.
-
Definitely lack of connection and authenticity makes painful things more painful, and having connection and authenticity makes painful things less painful. I strongly believe that one of the best things we can do to make the world a better place is be open about what a mess our lives are and as a result I am a huge oversharer of my own fuckups and personal disasters. Lol. But I'm talking about the underlying things, like failures of our own making (failure to finish a dissertation, failed business venture) vs bad shit happening out of the blue (car accident, stock market crash) vs loss that happens in the natural course of life (gradually losing everyone you know as you age, losing your own abilities). Sure there's a ton of circumstantial variability but the same can be said of happiness so it would be interesting to hear the data.
Anyway, I thought that whole Nicholas Epley interview was really interesting and now I'm wondering what types of psychology PhD programs provide funding for grad students and which don't, because if I could just cover my expenses I wouldn't mind doing that for the first few years of retirement! I imagine clinical programs do not.
I'm talking about those things too. When I reference last year, I'm talking about an epic shit storm of a year.
I maintain that connection is the key to being happy through those things. Because although it was arguably the most painful year of my life, which is saying A LOT, it was also one of the happiest.
I kind of spend my days talking to people about the awful things in their lives, and awful things can either be incredible sources of growth and insight or they can be psychologically crippling.
The difference is having enough resources to move through it, learn, grow, and thrive.
Connection doesn't just lessen the blow. Awful things will always feel awful, but ample truly loving connection provides a sense of safety and security and a knowing that you can come out the other side okay, and that's what makes every awful thing an avenue of growth.
I've been a homeless teen with no support going through very bad things, I've been an isolated adult with no support going through very bad things, and I've been a connected adult going through really really bad things and the difference is astounding.
The difference between a good life and a bad life isn't that one is easy and the other is hard. It's that one has enough supports to thrive through suffering and the other doesn't.
Most of the happiest, strongest people I know have been through some serious shit. But they had enough supports to grow and develop profound insight through it, insights that make it a lot easier to be happy. All of the most miserable people I talk to, and it's literally my job to talk to miserable people and understand why they're miserable, suffer from varying degrees of isolation, and most of them don't feel like they're allowed/able to lean on others for support.
-
Week 7 done. I was actually a little surprised that the course had several weeks left as it looked like the professor had covered everything she laid out at the start of the course and now I see why. The last weeks appear to be just a way to try to get you to pick one of the techniques she covered and really commit to following thru on it. You choose from the following:
Signature Strengths - using your top character strengths in new ways
Savoring - taking time to savor the things you enjoy
Gratitude - (List and/or Letter) - expressing gratitude for the people and things in your life
Kindness - increasing your acts of kindness
Social Connection - making connections with strangers and acquaintances along with scheduling time for the people in your life
Exercise - increasing your physical activity to at least 30 minutes a few times a week
Sleep - making sure you sleep at least 7 hours a night several times a week
Meditation - meditating for 5-10 minutes if you are a beginner or increasing your time in meditation if you already meditate regularly
As usual, enjoying the discussion on here too.
-
Unhappiness, in my experience, is largely driven by a lack of connection and authenticity.
This.
-
I am also enjoying the course--a friend & I were hiking today and discussing it.
We both already incorporate many of the practices that the course highlights but realized that the people in our lives who may really benefit from the course are also the least likely to seek out something like this...and commit the time to it.
-
I also do a lot of the things suggested in the course. I journal every day and include gratitudes, I meditate, exercise 4x a week, savor moments consciously, I use my strengths frequently, sleep 9 hours. But when it comes to anything social I'm terrible at it. I was hoping the course would get more into the social side of things as thats my weakness, but the summary would just be that socializing with anyone, stranger or close relation, it'll improve your happiness which, I already knew. I'm just reluctant to put myself out there. I have friends I talk to online, friends we see every few months, and a wife who is my absolute best friend and we spend time together every day. But I'd really like to be a part of an in-person community. I think that should be my goal from this whole course: find a community and join it.
-
I also do a lot of the things suggested in the course. I journal every day and include gratitudes, I meditate, exercise 4x a week, savor moments consciously, I use my strengths frequently, sleep 9 hours. But when it comes to anything social I'm terrible at it. I was hoping the course would get more into the social side of things as thats my weakness, but the summary would just be that socializing with anyone, stranger or close relation, it'll improve your happiness which, I already knew. I'm just reluctant to put myself out there. I have friends I talk to online, friends we see every few months, and a wife who is my absolute best friend and we spend time together every day. But I'd really like to be a part of an in-person community. I think that should be my goal from this whole course: find a community and join it.
That sounds like a good goal. No hobbies that would involve other humans in the real world?
I'm jealous that you have a wife to have frequent in-person interactions with. That's a massive improvement over my own social isolation.
-
I also do a lot of the things suggested in the course. I journal every day and include gratitudes, I meditate, exercise 4x a week, savor moments consciously, I use my strengths frequently, sleep 9 hours. But when it comes to anything social I'm terrible at it. I was hoping the course would get more into the social side of things as thats my weakness, but the summary would just be that socializing with anyone, stranger or close relation, it'll improve your happiness which, I already knew. I'm just reluctant to put myself out there. I have friends I talk to online, friends we see every few months, and a wife who is my absolute best friend and we spend time together every day. But I'd really like to be a part of an in-person community. I think that should be my goal from this whole course: find a community and join it.
To have a sense of community the key is to find people you like and to do difficult things with them.
-
I also do a lot of the things suggested in the course. I journal every day and include gratitudes, I meditate, exercise 4x a week, savor moments consciously, I use my strengths frequently, sleep 9 hours. But when it comes to anything social I'm terrible at it. I was hoping the course would get more into the social side of things as thats my weakness, but the summary would just be that socializing with anyone, stranger or close relation, it'll improve your happiness which, I already knew. I'm just reluctant to put myself out there. I have friends I talk to online, friends we see every few months, and a wife who is my absolute best friend and we spend time together every day. But I'd really like to be a part of an in-person community. I think that should be my goal from this whole course: find a community and join it.
That sounds like a good goal. No hobbies that would involve other humans in the real world?
I'm jealous that you have a wife to have frequent in-person interactions with. That's a massive improvement over my own social isolation.
I definitely feel very lucky to have met her, and this course has certainly helped combat the tendency of taking her for granted.
As far as hobbies I ride bikes, run, snowboard, play music, but I haven't really been able to break into a community for any of those things. I actually took a pickleball intro thingy to learn the rules the other day. So I'm planning on joining the open play days to see if I can meet people. Its hard for me to imagine doing more than showing up, playing, and then leaving immediately after. But maybe that's enough to feel the social connection of playing with others.
-
I also do a lot of the things suggested in the course. I journal every day and include gratitudes, I meditate, exercise 4x a week, savor moments consciously, I use my strengths frequently, sleep 9 hours. But when it comes to anything social I'm terrible at it. I was hoping the course would get more into the social side of things as thats my weakness, but the summary would just be that socializing with anyone, stranger or close relation, it'll improve your happiness which, I already knew. I'm just reluctant to put myself out there. I have friends I talk to online, friends we see every few months, and a wife who is my absolute best friend and we spend time together every day. But I'd really like to be a part of an in-person community. I think that should be my goal from this whole course: find a community and join it.
What instrument do you play? Depending on what it is I bet you could find a group to join, like a community band, a church group, a pub session, etc. Even if you're not very good, there are other not-very-good people who would love to get together and play. I'm one of them and make an unholy racket with a few other not-very-good friends. It's fun!
-
Don't just leave! Be slow in changing your shoes and packing your bag ... help clean up the nets and sweep the floor (or whatever your group does for housekeeping) ... ask who is coming next time ... ask if anyone wants to carpool ... ask for recommendations of favorite youtube lesson personalities, etc. Create opportunities for conversation.
Wow, you're good at this. I'm taking notes!
What instrument do you play? Depending on what it is I bet you could find a group to join, like a community band, a church group, a pub session, etc. Even if you're not very good, there are other not-very-good people who would love to get together and play. I'm one of them and make an unholy racket with a few other not-very-good friends. It's fun!
I play classical guitar but I am very bad haha. I can also play some sing-a-long tunes as well. This sounds fun though, where do you go about meeting people for this?
-
I play classical guitar but I am very bad haha. I can also play some sing-a-long tunes as well. This sounds fun though, where do you go about meeting people for this?
Well I've done a couple of things. Once I took lessons on a very niche instrument and the instructor invited me to join the group he led at the Unitarian church. And then recently I took up another instrument and just started blathering about it to all my friends and it turned out that two of them had started new instruments too and one of them had a partner who was actually competent on her instrument and willing to join us so we started getting together to play. We're hilariously bad but it's a lot of fun! Taking up a new instrument is definitely a thing for the recently retired, in fact I'm having a hard time thinking of anyone I know in real life who hasn't done it, so it should be easy to find other amateurs with time on their hands.
I know of all kinds of other fun things too. I have a friend who started a marching band during Covid and they're still going strong. A ukelele group that meets at the nursing home for a singalong. A bunch of people who meet at the pub to play traditional Irish music. Just start asking around and I'm sure you'll find something in no time.
-
Public singalongs are also a ton of fun! There is one here in Seattle that I had been wanting to go to for over a year, but I kept missing them for one reason or another. Then I saw they were having a Taylor Swift night a couple of weeks ago. DD and I are huge Swifties, so she went with me. It was sooooooo fun! The next one is an '80s night and we are going to go again. I'm hoping I can get some of my high school era friends to join us.
Here's the video of the final sing through of Blank Space:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suvl4n1oipk
-
Public singalongs are also a ton of fun! There is one here in Seattle that I had been wanting to go to for over a year, but I kept missing them for one reason or another. Then I saw they were having a Taylor Swift night a couple of weeks ago. DD and I are huge Swifties, so she went with me. It was sooooooo fun! The next one is an '80s night and we are going to go again. I'm hoping I can get some of my high school era friends to join us.
Here's the video of the final sing through of Blank Space:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suvl4n1oipk
Gosh that does look like fun! I wish I could come with you!
I watched some of the other videos and teared up at the end every time. I am EXTREMELY susceptible to group emotion. I cry if I'm in the crowd when they cheer at a home run, when graduates march to Pomp and Circumstance, every time the freaking National Anthem is sung (and I'm not even patriotic). I just have to laugh at myself.
-
Public singalongs are also a ton of fun! There is one here in Seattle that I had been wanting to go to for over a year, but I kept missing them for one reason or another. Then I saw they were having a Taylor Swift night a couple of weeks ago. DD and I are huge Swifties, so she went with me. It was sooooooo fun! The next one is an '80s night and we are going to go again. I'm hoping I can get some of my high school era friends to join us.
Here's the video of the final sing through of Blank Space:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suvl4n1oipk
Gosh that does look like fun! I wish I could come with you!
I watched some of the other videos and teared up at the end every time. I am EXTREMELY susceptible to group emotion. I cry if I'm in the crowd when they cheer at a home run, when graduates march to Pomp and Circumstance, every time the freaking National Anthem is sung (and I'm not even patriotic). I just have to laugh at myself.
coordinated rhythmic activity is actually well known to tap into deep feelings and connection, this is why so many cultures have practices of chanting
-
I'm curious to know, now that the learning portion of the course is over, what sorts of things do you plan to add into your life to take advantage of this new knowledge? For me starting pickleball was the one concrete social thing I am adding. I'm still searching for some other outlets, but I'd love to hear all of your plans so that we can inspire and give each other ideas.
-
I'm curious to know, now that the learning portion of the course is over, what sorts of things do you plan to add into your life to take advantage of this new knowledge? For me starting pickleball was the one concrete social thing I am adding. I'm still searching for some other outlets, but I'd love to hear all of your plans so that we can inspire and give each other ideas.
Pickleball seems like a good one! But really almost anything that you enjoy can be made more social if you want to. Going for solo hikes now? Instead join a group that meets up and hike with others. Heck even your MMMness can be made more social if you want it as I believe there are MMM meet-ups etc.
I had read before about the importance of social connections for your well-being but the nuance that intrigued me from the course was that even small social interactions can have a significant positive effect, like the example in the course about chatting up someone during your train ride on your work commute.
-
I did the course a few years ago, and meditation was the main activity I added to my life. I did find it helpful in terms of the social interaction thing to be able to remind my introverted self that something I was considering was "scientifically proven to make me happier!" That can sometimes make the difference to nudge me into taking action when I'm considering doing a small kindness, or speaking to someone or complimenting them instead of remaining silent.
-
I think I'm going to be more open to social interaction too. I've been working remote FT for the last 4 years, and I love it (MAJOR introvert here). I mostly only spend time with my partner and my dog.
Last fall I signed up for a weekly pilates class, and it's been a lot of fun. I don't know anyone's names, but it's enjoyable to go and hear about our instructor's dating life (she tells us lots of stories) and get word about stuff happening around our town.
I wouldn't have thought small interactions - like the bus rides or grocery store - would make much difference, but sitting in class last night, I realized that it does give me a boost.
I'll be looking for ways to add more small interactions.
-
I'm another WFH introvert and have found myself being a lot more chatty lately when I'm out and about and noticing the positive effect on me. I think noticing my improved mood and understanding its cause also has a multiplying effect, not only in how I feel in the moment but also in my likelihood to be open to social connection the next time.
I've also been analyzing the types of connection that are energizing to me and the kind that suck the life out of me. Definitely I do much, much better one on one. If I'm with a group of people, it's not long before I have to excuse myself and go take a break in the bathroom for a minute. It feels urgent and necessary. Usually it's when people start talking about politics. I think maybe I am just literally being bored to my actual death and have to go resuscitate myself, lol.
-
Yet another WFH introvert here - it’s nice to hear from so many people whose experiences resonate!
I’ve really liked the course. Most of the info isn’t new to me - I’ve been reading up on positive psychology here and there for years - but I do find that the reminder about how beneficial it is to actually do these things is the kick in the pants I need.
On top of really committing to daily exercise and actually sticking to the diet I know works for my tummy issues, I’ve been trying to make the small interactions more chatty and break out of my usual just-business m.o. The other day I had a funny exchange on a weird elevator with a woman equally confused about the buttons - it was lovely! I also joined a committee for my kids’ home-school association which will definitely mean more human-ing in the near future.
Meditation is something that always sounds appealing, but I can never actually get into. Oh well. I do very often (almost daily) experience hours of flow - amazingly from my actual job - so maybe that accomplishes some of the same thing.
-
I am still working away on this.
Today I went to the bank to deposit a couple of checks. I started to head for the drive thru, but recognized that I was looking at a line of SUVs burning fossil fuels in pursuit of minimal social connection, thought "this is lame," parked and went inside. I had a chat with another lady waiting and another nice chat with the teller and was on my way, and definitely before I would have gotten through the drive thru.
Then I went to the grocery where a guy hit on me in the wine aisle (social connection! lol) and then when I was putting my fresh rosemary/sage/thyme combo on the belt, the guy ahead of me said "Poultry blend! I should have gotten that!" and I handed it to him and said "Here, I'll go get another one while you're checking out." Acts of kindness! Okay, I'm not Mother Teresa, but I don't get out much. I'm very kind to my dog!
Also I am working on getting an actual friend *group* together at work, not that easy because I'm WFH, but I've been cultivating two new friendships and next week I've got the three of us going out for beer and tacos.
Also also, I've been doing loving kindness meditations in the morning. I confess that I do these while I'm still lying in my nice warm bed instead of sitting in a chair but I do feel that I'm getting some benefit.
-
Slowly working my way through the course, and the part about social interaction is super fascinating. I've also made it a goal to add meditation back to my life. I've been tracking what I'll call "nice things for others" on Fridays, for a few years, and try to write down three things I'm grateful for every day. So, some of this resonates based on what I'm already doing, but hearing the science behind it is super fascinating. So far, big fan of the course, and just recommended it to DH tonight.
-
The social interactions and generosity to others is a big part of why I so prefer living in rural Newfoundland as much as possible.
People there socialize literally all the time and normally at each other's homes, they don't tend to spend money to socialize. They also are insanely generous and help each other by default.
Throw in being surrounded by stunning nature and it's just so, so easy to be happy there with the relentless supply of happiness-fuel.
I crash hard when I have to come back to Ontario, which is a place I describe as "the misery Olympics."
-
I've just signed up and will try to get to the week 1 stuff this weekend. I've actually just come from the burnout journal and was almost going to post there but it felt like too much. So it feels weird to be joining in here now.
However, in December I applied for a stint in a rehab clinic for burnout and as often is the case, just having sent off that application (as well as having a week's holidays and then another couple of days off at Christmas, both spent with family) seems to have freed up enough space that I keep finding myself thinking about things I could start doing. At least I have enough knowledge now to know that it would be a really bad idea to start doing any of those things at this time instead of concentrating on trying to get back in the habit of things like cooking and eating at home, washing dishes and tidying up every once in a while.
This course seems like a manageable amount of stuff that probably ties in well with the goal of trying to improve my mental health while skating on thin ice when it comes to being in the middle of a burnout and depressive episode.
On a side note, I'm delighted that I remembered my coursera password straight away. It has been seven or eight years since I did the "Greening the Economy" certificate.
Ooops, this topic has not been posted in for at least 120 days. It's been way longer than that since I registered for this course and then didn't even watch the introduction video. Thankfully, since about mid-January I have been declaring the most recent depressive episode finally over and done with and so, slowly, very slowly, I am picking up the threads of my life again. So, again, this seems like a good time to do something towards a goal of trying to improve my mental health.
It was of course very difficult to answer a lot of the questions in the week one happiness and character surveys because I am feeling a good bit better already but, on the other hand, I've just made it through this particular episode and all the work I did in clinic and since then has not actually fully addressed all the other shit going on in my head. That work is still ongoing.
I do feel like I answered quite a few questions from a depressed place, because that's how I would have answered them anytime in the past two years. And some other questions I answered more positively than I might have even just a couple of months ago. The answers are not the important part, though, the work is, so on we go.
My overall well-being came out at 3.88 (on a scale of 1-10)
My authentic happiness is 1.96 (on a scale of 1-5)
And my top five strengths are:
1. Honesty
2. Kindness
3. Appreciation of beauty & excellence
4. Fairness
5. Judgement
That tracks fairly closely to how I see myself (or at least how I would like to see myself), which was interesting after reading so many different lists on the first part of this thread. Yesterday when I got my list I definitely thought well, sure, everyone will have these things first.
Again, the questions drove me a bit mad because there is a difference between do I do something and can I do something. So, actually, I can organise groups and what have you but I hate doing that and don't feel like I do it as well as others but that might be because it is so effortful for me. Someone else might just see organised groups and think that is so me. For things that I can do but know I loathe, I made sure to answer in the negative as much as I noticed them.
I opened all the extra reading and video bits on my phone and am making my way through those on the tram to and from work. Hope ye don't mind me dragging this out of the depths but maybe some people who haven't seen it before will decide to join in now. Hope everyone is still looking out for their well-being!
-
I appreciate the reminder that this thread exists. It is still not time for me to do it, though. Summer semester I have no classes, so that will be a better time.
-
Thankfully, since about mid-January I have been declaring the most recent depressive episode finally over and done with and so, slowly, very slowly, I am picking up the threads of my life again.
Deeply relatable, friend. I started this course in 2020, then again late 2021...easy to set aside the strategies when everything feels bad man. Maybe I'll have to give it another try with y'all :)
-
I enjoyed this course when I initially did it and might revisit it soon.
For spring learning, I am starting the Artful Practices for Well-Being course. A dose of new perspectives might help inspire me to start making art again which is so good for my mental health and life-satisfaction.