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A Moment of Clarity in the Pursuit of Happiness

jtaby.com

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Re: A Moment of Clarity in the Pursuit of Happiness

#21

Post by jacques_chester »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #15

This is something I tried very hard to teach my kids, basically that everyone gets to choose how they are going to feel about something, and understanding what set of conditions lead up to the choice you made can help you understand yourself and the world around you. The typical kid complaint is that someone 'makes fun' of something that they are passionate about and that makes them feel 'bad' (ashamed, angry, annoye…

Well there's stoicism or buddhism and the realisation that you can control your reaction to events.

And then there's clinical depression, where you realise this but the effort to think about trying is enough to make you want to cry.

I don't want to undercut the self-governance model because it can make someone a better person. But it has boundaries.

Re: A Moment of Clarity in the Pursuit of Happiness

#22

Post by redschell »

jtaby wrote: post #12
Rickasaurus wrote: post #8

Many are willing to suffer unhappiness so that their children might be more successful. At 31 it's something of a pattern I've begun to see in my peers.

I'm starting to realize that those who do what they love find more success than those who do what they "need" to do in the long term. I'm fairly sure that the children would also rather have parents who are having fun and are happy than those that are sad and bored but bring in an extra $20,000 a year. I don't have children though, so I can't really empathize on a deep level, I'm just going by intuition.

It's a fair point, but you need to consider the fact that the extra $20,000 a year could mean the difference between a big college loan and a smaller one (or no loan at all!), and the size of your college loan, which will in time become college debt, can have a profound psychological effect on what you want to do with your life. I'm not sure I'd be confident in a start-up as opposed to a stable job if I had $20,000 more in debt looming over me.

Re: A Moment of Clarity in the Pursuit of Happiness

#23

Post by ilaksh »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #15

This is something I tried very hard to teach my kids, basically that everyone gets to choose how they are going to feel about something, and understanding what set of conditions lead up to the choice you made can help you understand yourself and the world around you. The typical kid complaint is that someone 'makes fun' of something that they are passionate about and that makes them feel 'bad' (ashamed, angry, annoye…

No. Bad things are bad, and no one should train themselves to pretend they are not bad.

When your friend not only cannot appreciate your hobby but derides it and doesn't attempt to make up for that, your friend is not a very good person or friend. You may be able to train them into being a slightly better person or friend, but more likely you need better friends.

We should not expect people who have been shot to make jokes or to be happy. We should expect them to save their energy for recovering from their wounds.

Our natural emotional reactions to our circumstances are there to provide a corrective feedback system.

The fact that this type of perspective is still so popular just means that civilization has a long way to go towards making daily life more tolerable for average people.

Re: A Moment of Clarity in the Pursuit of Happiness

#24

Post by gabaix »

jneen wrote: post #14
gabaix wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3.4% of your life is not much if you get Facebook equity and end up with millions. The hardest part - I think - is that you are not assured at all to get rich. You might end up spend 3.4% of your life to buy you a new car and that's it.

Hm. So say I got Facebook equity and ended up with millions. My question is why ? What can I possibly do with that money that will make it worth it?

Then spend it on a good life. Give the rest. According to study, you only need $75,000 to live happy. http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2010/09/07/the-perfect-salary-fo... Btw, I am not sure why my first comment was downvoted.

Re: A Moment of Clarity in the Pursuit of Happiness

#25

Post by mdoerneman »

Rickasaurus wrote: post #8

Many are willing to suffer unhappiness so that their children might be more successful. At 31 it's something of a pattern I've begun to see in my peers.

Many may not be truly happy with what they are doing but they are not willing to risk the well being of their family in order to seek what truly makes them happy.

Re: A Moment of Clarity in the Pursuit of Happiness

#26

Post by PabloOsinaga »

I want to share something that really impacted me in a big way, related to this notions being discussed here.

It was something I saw in a museum in New York state, about 1 hour north of New York City - I cant remember the name of the museum or the artist or the piece.

It was, literally, a matrix, where every point was a day in your life.

The shocking thing about it was that you could see it in its entirety pretty well. To my surprise, it was not a HUGE matrix, but rather a pretty small one - that you could see quite clearly both holistically, and every individual cell.

I tried to reproduce it in this excel spreadsheet. It is very shocking to see your life in such a way. It is scary. There are not that many cells!

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22472889/yourlife.xlsx

Re: A Moment of Clarity in the Pursuit of Happiness

#27

Post by pestaa »

ilaksh wrote: post #23
ChuckMcM wrote: post #15

This is something I tried very hard to teach my kids, basically that everyone gets to choose how they are going to feel about something, and understanding what set of conditions lead up to the choice you made can help you understand yourself and the world around you. The typical kid complaint is that someone 'makes fun' of something that they are passionate about and that makes them feel 'bad' (ashamed, angry, annoye…

No. Bad things are bad, and no one should train themselves to pretend they are not bad. When your friend not only cannot appreciate your hobby but derides it and doesn't attempt to make up for that, your friend is not a very good person or friend. You may be able to train them into being a slightly better person or friend, but more likely you need better friends. We should not expect people who have been shot to make…

I believe the main point was to isolate your emotional state from impacts, and not to "be happy about bad things."

You have to maintain your well-being in the long term by being friend to good people and, well, not being shot, but in the short-term reinforcing positive thinking might just save you from a worse situation.

Re: A Moment of Clarity in the Pursuit of Happiness

#28

Post by jtaby »

ilaksh wrote: post #23
ChuckMcM wrote: post #15

This is something I tried very hard to teach my kids, basically that everyone gets to choose how they are going to feel about something, and understanding what set of conditions lead up to the choice you made can help you understand yourself and the world around you. The typical kid complaint is that someone 'makes fun' of something that they are passionate about and that makes them feel 'bad' (ashamed, angry, annoye…

No. Bad things are bad, and no one should train themselves to pretend they are not bad. When your friend not only cannot appreciate your hobby but derides it and doesn't attempt to make up for that, your friend is not a very good person or friend. You may be able to train them into being a slightly better person or friend, but more likely you need better friends. We should not expect people who have been shot to make…

It's interesting, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi specifically calls out this idea of listening to your "natural emotional reactions to our circumstances" in his book Flow.

Re: A Moment of Clarity in the Pursuit of Happiness

#30

Post by techiferous »

jerf wrote: post #16
jneen wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm. So say I got Facebook equity and ended up with millions. My question is why ? What can I possibly do with that money that will make it worth it?

Not spend the next 34% of your life working on something you don't love, for one. Even in our current technological state, a life of toil on things you don't love is the default state of a human being.

Or you could learn how to love the things you are already working on. That option is easily overlooked.
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