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A 70-year-old's secret to a full and happy life

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Re: A 70-year-old's secret to a full and happy life

#71

Post by lynnetye »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #22
ericajohnson wrote: post #3

Dr. Bik Kwoon Tye could be a poster child for Dr. Seligman's work in the field of positive psychology! This story reminds me so much of a book I just finished reading: The Happiness Advantage. "Conventional wisdom holds that if we work hard we will be more successful, and if we are more successful, then we’ll be happy. If we can just find that great job, win that next promotion, lose those five pounds, happiness will…

Does it? A lot of the people I know who've accomplished significant things did so not because they were happy, but because they tried harder than anyone else. They were not satisfied with the way things were and put a lot of effort into changing them. I myself didn't lose half my bodyweight because I was happy, quite the contrary, I hated --and still hate-- my body. That kind of motivation is incredibly helpful for o…

I didn't read the book the OP quotes, but it rings true to me on many levels.

While happiness doesn't guarantee success, it sure has hell makes it easier to work hard!

The darkest year of my life was sophomore year in college. I wasn't doing well in my classes, so I dropped some hobbies to make more time to study. I got out of shape, gained weight, lost touch w/ my friends, put more pressure on myself to make all of these sacrifices "worth it," and welp – my grades never improved.

The next year, I fell in love w/ this boy.

After what most people call a downward spiral, I essentially fell straight into an upward spiral! Falling in love was (and still is)... inspiring. I got back into shape, rejoined all of the teams and activities I had quit, and also got straight A's in not four, not five, but all six of my classes (at MIT).

Being happy doesn't magically transport you to the finish line, but it certainly makes running the race more enjoyable. As the quote says, happiness is indeed fuel.

And lastly, I don't know if you're proud of yourself for losing so much weight, but you ought to be! When I get out of shape, my goal usually starts out as "I want to feel good in my body." But every time I start the process (and it happens frequently because I'm a bit of a yo-yo-er), I start to get really geeked by the progress. Progress is one of the only things that reliably and consistently makes me happy. (It's the best!!!)

Re: A 70-year-old's secret to a full and happy life

#72

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

brmgb wrote: post #29
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it? A lot of the people I know who've accomplished significant things did so not because they were happy, but because they tried harder than anyone else. They were not satisfied with the way things were and put a lot of effort into changing them. I myself didn't lose half my bodyweight because I was happy, quite the contrary, I hated --and still hate-- my body. That kind of motivation is incredibly helpful for o…

> Success will not make you happy, this my experience agrees with, but I'm equally sure that happiness will not make one successful. Well, if you allow me, what does being successful actually mean ? What is the point of your definition of successful if it doesn't make you happy ?

Success is simply accomplishing things you set out to accomplish, I guess.

Re: A 70-year-old's secret to a full and happy life

#73

Post by bleepcord »

rwnspace wrote: post #21
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God I tortured myself growing up thinking that once I achieved the next big goal I would “be happy”. I don’t know why it took me 30+ years to realize that state was never achieved, I just have to be happy now without waiting for it to happen to me.

I wonder if it took 30+ years because your young adult brain was geared toward perceiving 'carrots and sticks'.

How would a young adult go about breaking this perception?

Re: A 70-year-old's secret to a full and happy life

#74

Post by RaceWon »

yters wrote: post #43
sharkmerry wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why is death a "threat"? im not sure what you are intending to say. Epicurus said death is the end of body & soul, therefore not to be feared. Im not sure I agree with that nor the inverse, if god exists, death is to be feared? Why?

The notion of God and and eternal reward or punishment are quite often tied together. It is hard to see one without the other. Hence, if God exists and there is eternal punishment, that is a little bit scary.

> The notion of God and and eternal reward or punishment are quite often tied together. It is hard to see one without the other.

The most brilliant marketing plan ever devised. It just awes the salesman in me... Brilliant!

Re: A 70-year-old's secret to a full and happy life

#75

Post by coldtea »

david-gpu wrote: post #30
yters wrote: post #20

When I step back and look at my life, I have to say it is pretty good. I get agitated when I lose perspective and magnify some particular bad thing. Also, as a Christian, this gives me the ultimate relief, because I can step back and say whatever unimaginably horrible thing is happening God is ultimately in control orchestrating things for maximal good, of which maximal good is also at some fundamental level in line…

> And if God doesn't exist, then nothing matters anyways, so why worry? I'm not trying to start a pointless debate, your comment really made me curious. Let's imagine the Christian god doesnt't exist. How does that logically lead to nothing mattering? As a lifelong atheist there are plenty of things that matter to me: the well-being of people (particularly those around me), peace, justice, climate change, etc. Are th…

>As a lifelong atheist there are plenty of things that matter to me: the well-being of people (particularly those around me), peace, justice, climate change, etc. Are these goals not valuable in themselves?

Well, they can be valuable subjectively. Then again, useless things can also be valuable subjectively (e.g. a person obsessing about hoarding BS at their home).

But objectively, and in the long scheme of things, everybody will just be dead forever, so what's the point?

At best it's better enjoying a small intermission bookended by an eternity of nothing.

The universe, for one, doesn't care. It could just throw some asteroid at earth, and kill everybody removing all traces of history, culture, civilization, etc too.

Re: A 70-year-old's secret to a full and happy life

#76

Post by chubbyrabbit »

NeoBasilisk wrote: post #59
david-gpu wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And if God doesn't exist, then nothing matters anyways, so why worry? I'm not trying to start a pointless debate, your comment really made me curious. Let's imagine the Christian god doesnt't exist. How does that logically lead to nothing mattering? As a lifelong atheist there are plenty of things that matter to me: the well-being of people (particularly those around me), peace, justice, climate change, etc. Are th…

Things can matter to you, but they are not things that objectively matter.

Nothing objectively matters.

Re: A 70-year-old's secret to a full and happy life

#77

Post by coldtea »

yters wrote: post #36
m0zg wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An atheist myself, but I imagine this has to do with the lack of eternal life after death in that case. Religious people find the idea of life after death comforting, and it's easy to understand why: most people fear death and can't comprehend their consciousness ending at some point, for the same reasons why we can't comprehend things like the big bang or infinity. There is, by definition, no example that we could p…

No, I mean something more practical, not based in religious reasoning. If you think about it, if God does not exist, then death has no threat, since once you are dead you cease to exist and no longer care about anything. I believe this was pointed out by Epicurus.

It was pointed out, but it was always a cheap parlor trick.

"You cease to exist after death, so what's to fear?"

"Well, my fear is that I will cease to exist, Einstein!"

Fear doesn't have to be with something in the future being painful. We also fear something not being how we want it to be (in this case, we want to continue existing, and death prevents that).

>since once you are dead you cease to exist and no longer care about anything

That's an argument about we wont feel fear after death.

It's not an argument about we can't fear death itself...

Re: A 70-year-old's secret to a full and happy life

#78

Post by coldtea »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #54
m0zg wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't think "rationally" about death. It's literally incomprehensible to a human mind, when the object of death is that mind itself.

What do you mean when you say you can't think about it rationally? There are enough survivable experiences physiologically similar to death that we can make some pretty good guesses as to what the experience leading up to it is like. And it would be incoherent to talk about the experience of being dead, because it is no experience at all (as before we were born). We know quite a bit about what happens when we die, an…

>What do you mean when you say you can't think about it rationally? There are enough survivable experiences physiologically similar to death

That makes no sense. There are some experiences of coming close to death, or what doctors consider death -- which is the mind/organs shutting down, etc.

There is (and can't be) no experience of actual permanent death though, nor has a dead person recounted their experience while a dead person.

The ones retelling the experience are always alive when they do it.

Re: A 70-year-old's secret to a full and happy life

#79

Post by topmonk »

WalterBright wrote: post #62
topmonk wrote: post #57

I think human emotional state is nature's tool to get us to procreate and improve the chances of our offspring to survive. If at anytime we become truly happy this hurts these goals. For example, if an old man could be building a wall or an arsenal of bows an arrows, or inventing a better way to go fishing, his tribe would be more likely to survive. But if he just sat there, content to being alive, this is bad for hi…

I'm basically a happy person. But that doesn't mean I'm content to sit on the beach. I can't stand that. I need to be doing something useful.

Yes, but not everyone is like that. Just as some people are taller, smarter, more artistic, etc. some people have a baseline happiness that is higher than others. Consider yourself lucky.

Re: A 70-year-old's secret to a full and happy life

#80

Post by coldtea »

anon9001 wrote: post #55
david-gpu wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can step back and say that for whatever unimaginably horrible thing that's happening, it's all just a random walk Can you, really? Say your kid disappeared a week ago after soccer practice, and the police has no leads about their whereabouts. Could you really distance yourself and "not worry because everything is just a random walk"? Or would you spend all night restless, like a normal human being?

Maybe? Let's say I had a kid that got kidnapped, and I spend all night restless like a normal human being. Where has that actually gotten me? And if the kid never comes back, what's an appropriate "normal human" duration of restlessness? People go to therapy for years to get over that restless stuff and replace it with some version of accepting that the world is not under your control. No doubt that upsetting things…

>Maybe? Let's say I had a kid that got kidnapped, and I spend all night restless like a normal human being. Where has that actually gotten me?

People don't respond to things just because it "gets them somewhere", and even less for such events.

One doesn't do a calculation "I'll grieve for X amount of time, because this has the best effects", except if they are a sociopath.

At best they can say after some time "I feel like I've grieved enough now, I should try to get back with life" -- and even that is not a decision, it's a gradual process with regressions, etc.

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