51–60 of 171 posts
Seek satisfaction, satisfaction from a job well done after long hard hours of work.
OP touches on this in:
> 2. Do things you are bad at - Learning makes us feel alive. Challenge yourself, and keep proving you can learn. Learn to juggle, to hold your breath underwater for longer, to solve a Rubik's cube. Learn to play music and play for yourself. Learn to paint and draw.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, if you want a really reductionist view of happiness, which also happens to be largely true, you could say: have children.
When you have children, why should evolution be seen as under pressure to make you happy? If the ultimate goal is to ensure that you will care for them for the time necessary for the offspring's wellbeing, there are various ways to do this without making the parents happy; in fact, making the parents happy may be counterproductive.
Every time I hear or read about happiness, I remember this quote from Thomas Metzinger. I hope you’ll find it useful, too: “Evolution as such is not a process to be glorified: It is blind, driven by chance and not by insight. It is merciless and sacrifices individuals. It invented the reward system in the brain; it invented positive and negative feelings to motivate our behavior; it placed us on a hedonic treadmill t…
States of satisfaction and euphoria are normal. Being good and doing good are fine objectives in of themselves. To be in a constant state of satisfaction and euphoria is unrealistic, unless it's an illusion achieved by a soma pill [1] or a hallucinatory sociological construct.[2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
I've read the accounts of near death experiences in The Tibetan Book of Living & Dying, and I recall many people being exceedingly euphoric, as if they have been freed of the grasping and attachments of life, like a river joining back to the sea if you will.
Temporarily we wear this meat-suit and then rejoin the spirit world / etheric world, and many people call this 'heaven' or other words. Imagine being permanently on MDMA or something.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The author died 5 years a ago, when https was not as common as it is now. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_Hintjens
Ah, shoot :( That's such a shame! (that they died, not that they didn't ever get to use HTTPS).
Pieter was my best friend, a great loss.
But his writings are here to stay, i guess he started to write some books after 2009, when he got his first duct bill cancer.
'Commute less' should be taken with a grain of salt unless one talks about cars. Any form of transport I take where I am not driving the vehicle myself gives me time to read, relax, think – even meditate (trains are great for this). I know for a fact that I read most books/month in my life in times I had a job that included at least 20 mins of commute (one way) on public transport.
That said, I am very happy to work from home now!
This can be a big obstacle to contentment for me and many people I know. It's just so easy to think "What do I want right now/in the future?" and then get down-in-the-dumps because reality doesn't correspond to this totally arbitrary thing you just imagined
Everyone has heard the story of the person who toils under great hardship and still manages to find joy in life. That's sort of the opposite of depression and it isn't necessarily good. People who are content to toil in hardship might find it difficult to motivate themselves to change their situation. It's a balance between the internal and external. Even the definition of what is good food is malleable. The chef or food critic might be repulsed by Taco Bell while someone else might enjoy every bite.
Every time I hear or read about happiness, I remember this quote from Thomas Metzinger. I hope you’ll find it useful, too: “Evolution as such is not a process to be glorified: It is blind, driven by chance and not by insight. It is merciless and sacrifices individuals. It invented the reward system in the brain; it invented positive and negative feelings to motivate our behavior; it placed us on a hedonic treadmill t…
Well, if you want a really reductionist view of happiness, which also happens to be largely true, you could say: have children.