Things That People Who Love Their Lives Do

[Desdinova]

I agree with all of these except for the part about travel... I see their point, but I personally cannot build my own world unless I find a place to reside.

http://elitedaily.com/life/10-thing...ove-their-lives-are-doing-differently/598934/

 

[dasein]

There is science in this field, the writer of the linked article seems to be forming "broscience." Not to say that the list is wrong, some of it looks like worthwhile practice I have seen in other places. Personally, I prefer the science. Some things I've been reading lately

http://sonjalyubomirsky.com/papers-publications/

Note the papers linked down the page. Also search "Lubomirsky happiness pdf" for summaries. The pdf part is necessary only if you like to save things to a pdf library for future reading, for just browsing, can do without it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology) Link keeps messing when I cutpaste, just click on the "did you mean" link.

Some interesting summaries of the Flow experience can be found by typing in "Csikszentmihalyi flow pdf"

A great place to start is the old classic "Psychocybernetics." That book was written by a plastic surgeon who found that once his patients' physical defects were fixed, they were still unhappy. There are numerous summaries on the net, and I found a pdf of the whole book away from those obnoxious pdf sites. It's a little dated, but science based, easy to read, highly recommended. On an opposite note, I recommend against the "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" type of business books that pertain to this topic. They are unsubstantiated bunk IMO. Stick closer to science and timeless wisdom. Trendy business books I rarely find to be of much value. A couple of exceptions are Jeffrey Pfeffer's "Power," and Lehr and Schwartz, "The Power of Full Engagement." As an aside, I buy books off ebay and at sales. Sometimes use summaries from the net. Never pay retail for a book today unless you want to build a library and are loaded with no worthier cause to give money to.

For me, one important part of happiness is limiting the media and other messages that pour into my brain. This means very limited television, movies, magazines, which are crammed with negative messages (to get you to BUY) even in sports, choosing positive music (for years I listened to too much angsty, depressive, angry music such as Radiohead, NIN, Cramps, which are fine... in small doses). Also saying goodbye to video games and online gaming. If you take in constant unhappy stimuli via media, video games, music, is it any wonder you feel less happy over time?

Another tactic useful to me has been external focus on the wisdom of others and meditating on the lessons learned. The external focus can be the Bible, Buddhist texts, Koran, or the works of a philosopher. For me, I use the I Ching, not as a new agey fortune telling or feng shui mysticism, but as a way to focus thoughts and see the world from different angles. Not as, "what is going to happen in the future?" but "what is happening right now and how many different angles can I get on it?" I take an I Ching reading and then internalize it over days, weeks or longer, until the shift in perspective becomes a natural part of my thought patterns. Have been on the same reading for 2 months now, meditate on it every day. When it's time, I'll do another. Another great external focus is Thomas Cleary's three volume "Classics of Strategy and Counsel" out of print, but well worth getting off ebay or elsewhere. Pick a proverb from one of these and truly make your day about that, try to see experience through the lens of that wisdom. Review at the end of the day, and next day, stick with that proverb if there's more to learn, or pick a new one.

Setting specific rituals into ones life, such as "bed by ten, up by six," "exercise 5 days a week with periodic exercise times during the day," "diet log of all food eaten," hell even "meet a new woman," can really boost happiness. Write them down and give yourself mental rewards as you check them off daily. Then reward yourself at the end of the week. A reward based feedback loop to instill happiness patterns is important.

Time management is key in happiness. Pomodoro Method and Getting Things Done are good, science based time management techniques:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done

Long enough for now. Could write lots more, self-hypnosis, heuristics, Gendlin Focusing, also good google search fodder, as studying and self-refining personal cognitive process is a hobby of mine.

The takeaway is that happiness and loving life are manageable quantities, well within our control, despite that some people are genetically predisposed to be less happy. Big brain uber alles. Instinct, predisposition, compulsion and habit, completely malleable and also chosen.

 

[TheCWord]

I would love to flesh out this part and discuss a little more...

They live in the moment, but dream in the future.
Happy people have hopes, dreams and goals. They have wants and aspirations, but they don’t allow themselves to get caught up and lost in them. There isn’t so much a time and place for dreaming as there is a maximum allotted amount recommended.

You can’t live life doing nothing more than looking towards the future because you’ll miss the only time that things actually matter or exist: the present. The present, the immediate moment is the only moment that you can actually live in. The rest is only an illusion.

I almost wanted to hear what the specific "maximum alotted amount" to dream is. Haha.

Because I'm public enemy #1 when it comes to this. I'm ambitious to a fault, and always spend so much time daydreaming about my future successes that I don't end up doing the actual work necessary to attain that future I'm imagining.

Always results oriented, rather than focusing on enjoying the process. Funny how even though I recognize that, I have trouble correcting it.

I strive to find that balance between daydreaming enough to provide me with a vision and that boost of motivation to get things done, but not letting it consume my day to the point where I've left no time to do the actual work.

 

[Desdinova]

I would love to flesh out this part and discuss a little more...



I almost wanted to hear what the specific "maximum alotted amount" to dream is. Haha.

Because I'm public enemy #1 when it comes to this. I'm ambitious to a fault, and always spend so much time daydreaming about my future successes that I don't end up doing the actual work necessary to attain that future I'm imagining.

Always results oriented, rather than focusing on enjoying the process. Funny how even though I recognize that, I have trouble correcting it.

I strive to find that balance between daydreaming enough to provide me with a vision and that boost of motivation to get things done, but not letting it consume my day to the point where I've left no time to do the actual work.

See, that's why I don't pursue the whole entrepreneur lifestyle. You spend so much time working to achieve success that you don't have time to enjoy any current or past success. You're just constantly working. Is a man's life truly enjoyable if he spends it making a fortune and dies without enjoying any of it?

 

[TheCWord]

See, that's why I don't pursue the whole entrepreneur lifestyle. You spend so much time working to achieve success that you don't have time to enjoy any current or past success.

That's only if you're thinking about entrepreneurship as the pursuit of fortune. Many self-employed people, myself included, are pursuing the opportunity to do what we love for a living so that no day will ever feel like work. I personally can never imagine retiring, for example, because what I do as a career is something I would do even if it wasn't.

The way you describe entrepreneurship is the way I describe 9-5ers. I wonder how they can spend 8 hours a day at a job that is simply a means of income, just so that they can have maybe 4-6 hours at night doing what they ACTUALLY want to do.

Is a man's life truly enjoyable if he spends it making a fortune and dies without enjoying any of it?

I would ask, is a man's life truly enjoyable if he dies without having achieved his full potential? Or at least made a concerted effort to achieve it?

 

[Colossus]

A few good common sense tips but mostly vague millennial lifestyle-design tripe.

Dasein, are you familiar with Cal Newport? He's a computer science prof at Georgetown who has written several books on academic performance and job satisfaction. His latest book, "So Good They Cant Ignore You" is a worthwhile read; a little short on hard data but nonetheless a great debunk of the "follow your passion" myth with regards to finding the ideal work scenario. He also talks a lot about "deep work" and intentional stretching of your mental boundaries to achieve mastery.

And on the note of actual data, what's interesting is that the whole lifestyle design, courage-culture movement of the millennial generation is mostly unfounded BS. In other words, just simply following your passion or some vague ideal of an autonomous, free-wheeling, passive income-generating lifestyle doesn't really get people anywhere. It just feels good to read about.

I think it's a poor strategy (and poor advice to give others) to simply follow some preexisting passion until the ideal job or lifestyle lands in your lap. A far better approach is to spend the necessary time and mental strain developing career capital in an area of long-standing interest, even if it's necessarily your passion of the moment, and utilize that capital to leverage yourself into a position with rare and valuable traits.

Social studies looking at people who have satisfying work not surprisingly yield complex results. There are many intrinsic and extrinsic factors. However, patterns do emerge when examining ideal work scenarios, and what they show are the following traits:

1. Autonomy and control
2. Creativity
3. Impact

On a similar note, there are 3 well-established traits in social science literature that are necessary for someone to be intrinsically motivated for something, whether it be a job or hobby:

1. Autonomy (again)
2. Competence--are you actually good at what you do
3. Relatedness- are there others in proximity that you can relate to or impact in a meaningful way with said job/activity

When you read Gen-Y type blogs about young people who have seemingly ideal work/life scenarios, what you find is that not surprisingly they have a healthy measure of all three "job" traits I listed above. Additionally, what you DON'T hear is how exactly they got into this dream scenario (usually a combination of existing career capital, intrinsic ability, and luck). And beyond that, you dont get a sense of how rare these scenarios really are. It feels good to read about; the ideals are positive and the direction is vague so people can project that onto their own lives. But, unfortunately it encourages young people to put the cart ahead of the horse, and do something that totally derails their momentum like quit college to start a passive-income blog, quit their career in business or advertising to start a yoga studio, or drop out of investment banking to be a farmer. Almost all of them fail, and fail hard.

I'm repeating a bit of Cal Newport here, but all jobs with rare and valuable traits (autonomy and control, creativity, and impact) require something rare and valuable to offer in return; usually skills, expertise, and connections. These take time and focused study to build. I could be a PA for the next 20 years and never really build rare skills. I would need to focus my efforts into something meaningful that people will pay for (a subspecialty niche), or utilize my general career capital in medicine to break off into another profitable business venture at the right time.

Living in the moment, creating your own religion, and living all over the world sound great on paper (and really they are just variations on the autonomy theme), but most of us cant GET there without something people are willing to pay us for, and it needs to rare and valuable enough to set you apart from the 8,000,000 others who want the same things as you.

 

[speed dawg]

See, that's why I don't pursue the whole entrepreneur lifestyle. You spend so much time working to achieve success that you don't have time to enjoy any current or past success. You're just constantly working. Is a man's life truly enjoyable if he spends it making a fortune and dies without enjoying any of it?

I was going to reply, but CWord beat me to it, echoing my thoughts:

That's only if you're thinking about entrepreneurship as the pursuit of fortune. Many self-employed people, myself included, are pursuing the opportunity to do what we love for a living so that no day will ever feel like work. I personally can never imagine retiring, for example, because what I do as a career is something I would do even if it wasn't.

The way you describe entrepreneurship is the way I describe 9-5ers. I wonder how they can spend 8 hours a day at a job that is simply a means of income, just so that they can have maybe 4-6 hours at night doing what they ACTUALLY want to do.

I would ask, is a man's life truly enjoyable if he dies without having achieved his full potential? Or at least made a concerted effort to achieve it?

Excellent questions, but my question to you CWord, is that aren't the people that find work they enjoy just plain lucky? I mean it's sort of like 1st world problems. People have to work to earn a living.

 

[TheCWord]

Excellent questions, but my question to you CWord, is that aren't the people that find work they enjoy just plain lucky?

hey speed,

My motto: work hard. get lucky.

Luck certainly plays a huge part. But there is something to be said for hanging around long enough to get lucky. Many of my one-time peers who started out with similar aspirations to me quit long before they had a chance to get lucky.

Did my first real “break” come from producing amazing work and being more talented than everyone else vying for the same job? Of course not. I got it because someone in my family knew someone. Luck!

But I was still putting in the work while I was waiting for that lucky connection to come around. You’ve got to be good when it’s your time.

People have to work to earn a living.

I was still in high school when I comitted to the idea that I was going to make this happen - that I would do what I love for a living. My line of work is insanely competitive and there are very few actual jobs. I guess it qualifies as being in the “arts,” so, you can imagine. How many actors, musicians, etc. do you know who desperately want to be one of the few who “make it?”

I remember telling my dad about this. Again, this was back in high school. And he asked about Plan Bs and stuff like that. I didn’t have one and didn’t want one: I didn’t want to have to “work to earn a living.” I just wanted to do what I wanted. I remember my dad replying, “Well, I want to manage a major league baseball team, so what?”

If there was a hint in my father’s voice that he found my blind ambition to be arrogant and selfish, I don’t blame him. Throughout my 20s, and even more now that my friends and I are going into our 30s, I’ve been faced with lots of resentment from people who “work to earn a living.” As if they want to say to me, “who the f— are you to think you can just do what you love for a living? what makes you so special?” As I got older the vibe quickly turned to, “you’re supposed to get a job you can tolerate, get married by 30, buy a house, have kids, and play by the societal rules like the rest of us!”

It’s so funny. It’s almost like me pursuing my dream was somehow offending other people who had nothing to do with it. Respectfully, I even get a bit of that vibe in this thread.

Of course, the anger sometimes turns to pity, like when times are tough and there's no work. Then the vibe is more, “Poor CWord, we’re all getting married, we’re all buying houses, we’re all having kids, and this poor schmuck is stuck in this dream world.” Of course, then things go on the upswing for me and some of that anger and jealousy returns, and even people confiding in me that they want to drop their careers for their passion.

As for my dad, it is gratifying to say that my mini-successes so far have changed his mind about dream-chasing. I know it’s made him reconsider what would have happened if he went after certain dream jobs he desired when he was younger. Now, if I ever talk about giving up and finding a normal job where I have to “work to earn a living” HE is the one to say, “are you crazy?! You can’t do that!”

To inspire my father, and to have him turn it around to keep me going, is probably one of the most rewarding things that has happened during this entrepreneurial lifestyle I’m living. And that has nothing to do with fortune.

TLDR: Work hard. Get lucky.

 

[Scaramouche]

Dear Des,
In my Younger Days I had a Country property,it was an interesting life,but got boring....Watching Cattle and Horses,I came to the conclusion that Happiness or otherwise is very much Genetic,Quiet Bulls sired peaceful Stock,are we any different?...No....The happy little kid you remember at School playing in the sandpit,generally grew up to be someone content with their lot...Contentment is very much related to eliminating desires...A cornerstone in the Bhuddist Philosophy...Happiness is a state of mind!