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Tag: "happiness"

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Hungry Ghosts
By Lisa Rokusek on November 14th, 2009

Hungry Ghosts

I recently came out of an emotional bad spell - emerging from it felt a lot like hitting the surface after you’ve been underwater just a little too long. This spell of anxiety/fear/depression/whatever it was taught me more than usual because it happened smack dab after I had a really awesome year business wise. I was on a high. Things were so good I had to go buy a suit so I could go to Las Vegas and get an award for being so awesome. That is important to note not because getting an award is important (but it is kind of cool, right?) but because of what happened after the award.

Intellectually I knew that all the activity I had in the funnel would end, and I’d be back in building mode. I knew it and even tried to prepare myself for the letdown. My business is cyclical - I know that. And I like building mode. Building mode is how one gets to closing mode. I just had a run of especially good fortune and my building mode was a distant memory, which I knew was not such a great thing for me. In the midst of my crazy happy frenetic good luck mode, I tried to prepare for what would come after the constant activity of balancing all the stuff in the hopper died down. I know how I can be - I get squirrley sometimes, so I tried to prepare.

There is a saying: “Trying lets us fail with honor.” I failed. I’m not sure I had any honor, either.

“I woke up one morning and I was scared. Not just a little scared, either. I was in full-on panic mode. I remember thinking, “Dammit, Lisa, this is exactly what you worked to prevent.” Yep it sure was. In my defense, I had a crazy end of September/October. We had family in from out of town (stressful), my Mom had spine surgery (surprisingly stressful), the foster greyhound we rescued need to be carried up and down our stairs in order to go outside (it takes both of us - constantly coordinating schedules is stressful), I bought a car (consumerism is, for me, fraught with drama, tension and guilt - stressful, but I sure like the car) and Ginger decided to feng shui our bedroom. Not only was I going through something hard, I had to do it with our bed facing a new and opposite wall. Things like that do bad things to me. I spent an entire sleepless night focused on whether the bed facing the other direction was symbolic of me never closing another deal. During that mental wrestling match I started doubting my employ-ability (I only have one suit!!) and by morning I had tearfully decided my only option was to make this thing work or I’d end up living in a paper box. I went to bed scared, I woke up panicked and I think Ginger wanted to throttle me (I wanted to throttle me).

[more . . . ]

American Culture • Meaning of Life • Neuroscience • Psychology Cognition • Quality of Life • Science
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Longitudinal study tells us what makes people happy
By Erich Vieth on July 11th, 2009

Longitudinal study tells us what makes people happy

What makes people happy? On quite a few occasions, I’ve posted at DI with regard to ideas that I learned through reading various books and articles (a search for “happiness” in the DI search box will give you dozens of articles). What does that reveal about me, I wonder?

Today, I had the pleasure of reading an extraordinarily thoughtful article on this same topic: “What Makes Us Happy?” by Joshua Wolf Shenk appears in the June 2009 edition of The Atlantic. You’ll find an abridged edition of the article here.

Shenk’s article is anchored by the Harvard Study of Adult Development, the longest running longitudinally study of mental and physical well-being in history. It was begun in 1937 in order to study “well-adjusted Harvard sophomores (all male), and it has followed its subject for more than 70 years.” The study was originally known as “The Grant Study,” in that it was originally funded by W.T. Grant. Despite all odds, the study has survived to this day–many of the subjects are now in their upper 80’s. Along the way, the study was supplemented with a separate study launched in 1937 dedicated to studying juvenile delinquents in inner-city Boston (run by criminologists Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck).

You’ll enjoy Joshua Shenk’s work on many levels. He writes with precision, providing you with a deep understanding of the featured longitudinal studies. You will also enjoy his seemingly effortless ability to spin engaging stories (there are dozens of stories within his article) and his exceptional skill at crafting highly readable prose. I’m writing this post as a dare, then. Go forth and read Shenk’s article and I guarantee that you will be thoroughly enriched and appreciative.

The Atlantic also provided a video interview of George Vaillant, now 74, who since 1967 has dedicated his career to running and analyzing the Grant Study. As you’ll see from Shenk’s article, Vaillant is an exceptional storyteller himself. The Atlantic article, then, might remind you of one of those Russian dolls, and that is a storyteller telling the story of another storyteller who tell stories of hundreds of other storytellers. For more than 40 years, Vaillant has not only gathered reams of technical data, but he has poured his energy into interviewing the subjects and their families and melding all of that data into compellingly detailed vignettes of the subjects. Telling stories is not ultimately what the study was supposed to be about, of course, and Vaillant also tells us what those stories mean for the rest of us. Truly, what makes people happy? Vaillant offers answers that you will be tempted to immediately apply to your own situation.

Vaillant has a lot to say about “adaptations,” how people respond to the challenges they face in life. As a Shenk explains,

American Culture • Community • Friendships/relationships • Health • Meaning of Life • Networking • Psychology Cognition • Science
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Control Your Controllables
By Lisa Rokusek on February 08th, 2009

Control Your Controllables

One of my favorite economist reads, Paul Kedrosky, directed me to this image, which is from another excellent financial analysis blog done by Susan Woodward and Robert Hall. This is a comparison of labor numbers from now and 1981 rescaled to the size of today’s labor force. Stunning.

For those of you who, like me, were still in high school in 1981 - it was the biggest recession we have had in the US since the Great Depression. Not pretty. The graph shows us a partial image of how painful events are right now. Many people have lost homes, many are without work, and I have a feeling it is going to get worse before it gets better. There is a lot of suffering out there. I get a lot of calls from desperate people who are trying to put on a brave face. Sometimes I feel like I am barely hanging on to my life raft and folks are pulling on my legs to clamber on.

In the midst of all this turmoil, with so much personal pain around me, how do I keep steady?

American Culture • Culture • Current Events • Economy • Featured • Meaning of Life • Psychology Cognition • Uncategorized
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By Erich Vieth on December 18th, 2008

Happiness is viral

Happiness is contagious, according to a new study:
New research shows that in a social network, happiness spreads among people up to three degrees removed from one another. That means when you feel happy, a friend of a friend of a friend has a slightly higher likelihood of feeling happy too.
The lesson is that taking control [...]

Psychology Cognition
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By Erich Vieth on November 26th, 2008

Meet the the man who first identified “flow”

I’ve often heard about “flow,” but never from the man who was personally responsible for developing the theory:  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced “cheeks sent me high”).
For the first part of his lecture, you’ll hear that beyond the poverty level, money and material things don’t increase happiness.
From there, Csikszentmihalyi describes a state that brings great happiness.  [...]

Psychology Cognition • Web Site
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By Erich Vieth on April 02nd, 2007

How to be happy

I often jump at the chance to report on new well-written articles regarding happiness, especially when they are based upon science rather than mere anecdotes.
Last year, I started a subscription to Scientific American Mind  It’s a well-written magazine that addresses lively and timely topics.  Be February-March 2007 issue contains an article entitled “Why It’s so [...]

Psychology Cognition
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