Helen Garner on Happiness: ‘It’s Taken Me 80 Years to Figure Out It’s Not a Tranquil, Sunlit Realm’
Helen Garnertheguardian.com
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Helen Garner on Happiness: ‘It’s Taken Me 80 Years to Figure Out It’s Not a Tranquil, Sunlit Realm’
I have a full life. A privileged life. An unendangered life. But sometimes the simple joys escape me. Joy is not always a feeling that is freely bestowed upon us, often it is something we must actively seek. In a way, joy is a decision, an action, even a practised method of being. It is an earned thing brought into focus by what we have lost — at l... See more
Maria Popova • Audubon on other minds and the secret knowledge of animals, the paradox of joy with Nick Cave and Lisel Mueller, how Dostoyevsky became a writer
Happiness is therefore a form of action; it’s an activity, not something that is passively bestowed upon you, not something that you magically discover in a top-ten article on the
Mark Manson • The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life (Mark Manson Collection Book 1)
"Ceaseless change is an unreliable basis for lasting fulfillment. Realizing this, many people begin to wonder whether a deeper source of well-being exists. Is there a form of happiness beyond the mere repetition of pleasure and avoidance of pain?"
Sam Harriss • Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion
Observing your daily experience helps you discover true happiness
Through daily reflection on her experiences, Milner discovered that true happiness often came from unexpected moments of "wide focus" awareness, rather than conventional ideas of enjoyment, leading her to uncover deeper, more authentic desires.
Through daily reflection on her experiences, Milner discovered that true happiness often came from unexpected moments of "wide focus" awareness, rather than conventional ideas of enjoyment, leading her to uncover deeper, more authentic desires.
Mark Frauenfelder • Book Freak 164: A Life of One's Own
Happiness is a state of inner fulfillment, not the gratification of inexhaustible desires for outward things.
Daniel Goleman • Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill
Joy is not a function of a life free of friction and frustration, but a function of focus — an inner elevation by the fulcrum of choice. So often, it is a matter of attending to what Hermann Hesse called, as the world was about to come unworlded by its first global war, “the little joys”; so often, those are the slender threads of which we weave th... See more
Maria Popova • Essential Life-Learnings from 14 Years of Brain Pickings
We know that if you’re starving, lonely, or in pain, you’ll probably get happier if you get food, friends, and relief. After that, the returns diminish very quickly. You could read all the positive psychology you want, take the online version of The Science of Wellbeing ("Yale’s Most Popular Course Ever!”), read my post on hacking the hedonic tread... See more
Adam Mastroianni • Why aren't smart people happier?
Here, in my late thirties, I want to learn his nature-slowness. This, for me, is a change. It is the opposite of the kinds of drama that used to make me feel reassuringly alive. But I think I’m finally getting it. This kind of living isn’t the absence of story or of life. It’s just a story happening so slowly you can’t really see it taking place. I
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