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The 10 commandments for happiness and success

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Re: The 10 commandments for happiness and success

#61

Post by 001sky »

lotharbot wrote: post #23

2/ Only surround yourself with brilliant and positive people. I partly agree with this rule. People who are negative drama-creators who regularly make bad decisions can really drag you down. They can cause you to spend an excessive amount of time worrying about pointless problems that only exist because of someone else's immaturity. But I'm also a teacher. I work with at-risk children who are immature and sometimes m…

In a pure meritocracy, the best academic students are admitted, since college has an academic purpose. Most of these academically-oriented students are going to be the driven-to-succeed type. It benefits a school not at all to have an unhappy bottom quarter who feel driven to succeed yet are outclassed academically by the rest of the cohort. However, it's impossible to help the bottom quarter in general because there always must be a bottom quarter by definition.

Instead, pioneered by Harvard, the "Happy Bottom Quarter" philosophy argues that for the sake of fundraising, reputation, and the self-esteem of students, schools should admit people specifically for the bottom quarter[1]

_______

[1] http://www.quora.com/College-and-University-Admissions/What-...

[apologies on the source, but it's footnotes are researched and worth the correct attribution].

Re: The 10 commandments for happiness and success

#62

Post by runn1ng »

exit wrote: post #58
runn1ng wrote: post #36

I will share my two cents, how I overcome my depression. It sounds deadly simple, and it sort of is. 1) regular excercise. Make some small, daily routine (I prefer running) and stick to it. The endorphines work wonders. The body starts feeling good after a few days. 2) (and this will be maybe controversial due to The religious undertones) regular meditation. While excercise clears your body, meditation clears your mi…

do you sit zazen at a zendo with others, 20 minutes a day?

I don't, unfortunately. Our group meets once a week, I am doing zazen privately the other 6 days.

Re: The 10 commandments for happiness and success

#64

Post by runn1ng »

jjb123 wrote: post #57
runn1ng wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a person who is still kind of atheistic, I can understand that sentiment. Basically, scientific thinking forces constant verification of everything and encourages questioning, while religious thinking (even with buddhism) has far more dogmas and forces acceptance and, to a certain degree, discourages questioning. What drove me to zen-buddhism is the fact that the religious part is kept rather small and it is far m…

Out of curiosity, why did you choose the words "still kind of atheist"?

Because I cannot really believe in a higher power. I don't believe in ghosts and try not to ve superstitious. I think most of the religious texts (even in buddhism) is bullshit. I constantly try to question everything.

And yet I ended up in a zen group, basically a religious organization. (A little like Ivan Karamazov.)

Re: The 10 commandments for happiness and success

#65

Post by marcosdumay »

crassus wrote: post #46
ams6110 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't get the anti-religion sentiment here. If you find in religious teachings a way to live happily, productively, in a socially positive way, why is that a problem or anything to apologize for?

Indeed, religion makes you happier[1], so its strange the author left it out of his ten points ""[9] and a review of 498 studies published in peer-reviewed journals concluded that a large majority of them showed a positive correlation between religious commitment and higher levels of perceived well-being and self-esteem and lower levels of hypertension, depression, and clinical delinquency.[12] A meta-analysis of 34…

I'd try an hypothesis that religion gives a huge fixed amount of happiness, at the cost of a small amount of unhappiness that slowly accumulates through the entire life, and even through generations.

Looks like the most logical outcome for me, but I don't know how to test it - or even if there is enough data in the world to test it now. Anyway, the usual correlation is not causality applies here.

Re: The 10 commandments for happiness and success

#66

Post by timr »

quaunaut wrote: post #48
timr wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was hoping that you were going to critique the need to surround yourself with "positive people". There's obviously a lot to be said for not surrounding yourself with pessimists, but (in the US, anyway, and silicon valley, in particular), the default personality type tends to be "optimism to the point of delusion". It's just as problematic to overdose on positive thinking as it is being surrounded by pessimists. Opt…

I could not disagree more readily. Note: I don't live in silicon valley. We're talking about a nation of people who, by far, believe they are stuck with the life they were given, with no means of control. Sure, they hope that one day they'll be able to achieve their dreams and desires, but by far, the majority of the country(outside of Silicon Valley) has the opinion that the only way to live, is to slave it out for…

If you don't live here, then you have no idea what I'm talking about.

Look, there are obviously pockets of this country where people feel stuck. I'm even a firm believer that many people in the US actually are stuck in place by forces beyond their control. But in general, a lack of optimism has never been a problem in this country.

Survey after survey tells us that, on average, Americans believe that we're smarter, more capable and harder working than our peers. We believe that if we work hard, we'll be rewarded proportionately. We believe that the rich/poor gap is much smaller than it is. We believe -- in ridiculously large numbers -- that we all have a realistic chance of becoming wealthy. It manifests itself in thousands of ridiculous ways, from our abysmal savings rate, to the way our political system tends to reward the wealthy at the expense of the average.

There's a human bias toward optimism, but Americans really take it to the next level:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/opinion/15Sharot.html?_r=0

Re: The 10 commandments for happiness and success

#67

Post by marcosdumay »

crassus wrote: post #53
hnriot wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because those same set of teachings often differ very slightly from someone else's and usually ends in a war, or at the very least, a great deal of wasted bloodshed. See history for examples. Why you're supposed to apologize is because your religion - no matter which particular mythology you subscribe to, has likely caused an immeasurable amount of sorrow for many others.

Where are the peaceable, prosperous, and happy atheist nations hiding?

They have been conquered. Literally. At older times religion was one of the biggest tools used to create armies, and conquer the neighbors' land.

Re: The 10 commandments for happiness and success

#68

Post by cgh »

giulivo wrote: post #35

I enjoyed the post but there is one sentence I can't understand: > 2/ Only surround yourself with brilliant and positive people. Negative and mediocre people are everywhere and their influence on you can be devastating. The thing is that I'm potentially one of those "mediocre" people and I don't see why my influence should be devastating. For instance, what is wrong about being negative? Not that my days are about it…

Globally speaking, there is less poverty and warfare than there has ever been in human history, or to put it another way, humanity is more prosperous and peaceful than it's ever been. By all objective measures except environmentally, 2013 is shaping up to be the greatest year in human history. Really, the greatest issue facing humanity today is climate change, not the other stuff you mention.

So take some cheer in that, I guess.

Re: The 10 commandments for happiness and success

#69

Post by crassus »

marcosdumay wrote: post #67
crassus wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are the peaceable, prosperous, and happy atheist nations hiding?

They have been conquered. Literally. At older times religion was one of the biggest tools used to create armies, and conquer the neighbors' land.

Name some of them.

Re: The 10 commandments for happiness and success

#70

Post by abhimir »

runn1ng wrote: post #64
jjb123 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, why did you choose the words "still kind of atheist"?

Because I cannot really believe in a higher power. I don't believe in ghosts and try not to ve superstitious. I think most of the religious texts (even in buddhism) is bullshit. I constantly try to question everything. And yet I ended up in a zen group, basically a religious organization. (A little like Ivan Karamazov.)

upvoted for the Dostoevsky reference
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