Today I share with you some of my favorite H words – illustrated. Enjoy!
(All images from my favorite site – Pinterest! Most images link to the original source)
Happiness – because that’s my default state 😉
Tag Archives: Happiness
Wandering Wednesday #6: Food for thought
Ever since my college days, when I was pursuing a Masters in Mass Communication, I’ve loved feature writing – right from coming up with a topic to researching it and writing a piece. Lately, I’ve read quite a few interesting articles that made me pause…that made me rethink my world view…
Image by tango 48 via Flickr
For instance, how many times have we heard the phrase: “think happy thoughts!” Self-help books and self-styled gurus try to tell us that we must change our negatives into positives to bring about a transformation in our circumstances. But did you know that research has shown that positive thinking can be downright harmful in some cases? Don’t just gasp, go on and find out Why positive thinking is bad for you.
Once you’ve figured that one out, come back and find out what is The problem with happiness. I’ll give you a clue – the more importance you place on being happy, the more unhappy and depressed you become.
Have you ever wondered how you think about your life? Is it a well-planned life, where you invest time in finding a clear purpose; or a summoned life, where you examine each concrete situation by sensitive observation and situational awareness? Find out in The summoned self.
Man of many languages - art installation in Vancouver Image by eyesplash Mikul via Flickr
The digital age has given rise to a whole lot of new words – such as Tweetup – that have become so popular that they’ve made it into the dictionary! Want to immortalize a “new” word of your own? How about going In search of a new word for Married?
Could you come up with a new English word, or did you find yourself leaning toward coining a new word in your mother tounge? Does that make you wonder if maybe your mother tongue places some restrictions on your ability to think? Find out! Does your language shape how you think?
Have you come across any interesting features recently? Thoughts on any of these articles? I’d love to hear from you! 🙂
A case for simple living
Where has the happiness gone?
Image via Wikipedia
About a year ago I had written a post titled Jaded Consumerism, where I mentioned that I’ve increasingly noticed that buying material goods doesn’t seem to bring much happiness to me or my friends. Oh yes, there are exceptions — like when I bought my iPhone recently; it still makes me happy! But, overall, we purchase without the joy.
This week I finally gave in to the husband’s constant cribbing and we traded our 10-year old TV for an LCD. That should have brought us (or at least him) a lot of joy…but it didn’t. We bought it, got it installed, he played around with the remote and read the manual, but there was no thrill to the purchase. A TV is a TV is a TV is what I was saying all along, but the husband just wouldn’t listen, would he?
Jokes apart, though, I’ve been wondering about this lack of joy since a while, and then I read an article on NY Times titled But will it make you happy?
SHE had so much. A two-bedroom apartment. Two cars. Enough wedding china to serve two dozen people. Yet Tammy Strobel wasn’t happy. Working as a project manager with an investment management firm in Davis, Calif., and making about $40,000 a year, she was, as she put it, caught in the “work-spend treadmill.”
That was the opening of the article, and I was hooked, because that’s exactly what I had been thinking about!
Strobel eventually hit the stop button on the treadmill, inspired by books and blogs that promoted simple living. She and her husband gave away a lot of their possessions to charity. In fact, “emboldened” by a website that challenged readers to live with just 100 personal items, she went ahead and did just that!
A case for simple living
Image by eflon via Flickr
I’m quite sure that mustn’t have been easy, and I’m pretty sure that it isn’t something that I could do! But, living simply does have its benefits.
If you can downsize your desires a bit, not bother so much about keeping up with the Joneses, you could end up saving quite a decent amount of money. Instead of spending that on purchasing more material goods, you could use that to travel, to do some volunteer work, or even to help family, all of which will give you infinitely more happiness than simply amassing material goods ever will. And a lot of new research shows just that!
Studies over the last few decades have shown that money, up to a certain point, makes people happier because it lets them meet basic needs. The latest round of research [examines] how to reap the most happiness for your dollar. So just where does happiness reside for consumers? Scholars and researchers haven’t determined whether Armani will put a bigger smile on your face than Dolce & Gabbana. But they have found that our types of purchases, their size and frequency, and even the timing of the spending all affect long-term happiness. One major finding is that spending money for an experience — concert tickets, French lessons, sushi-rolling classes, a hotel room in Monaco — produces longer-lasting satisfaction than spending money on plain old stuff.
If I could control my spending impulses, there are a lot of things that I’d be able to experience — a trip to Egypt , learning Italian, painting a canvas, going on an African safari — just a few of the things that are on my bucket list.
If you chose to live simple and spend on experiences instead, what experiences would you choose?
You can read the entire NY times article here.