I made up my mind

www.mindandlife.org/dialogues/past-conferences/ml15/.

happiness “is determined more by the state of one’s mind than by one’s external conditions,

Matthieu Ricard,

“Our life can be greatly transformed by even a minimal change in how we manage our thoughts and perceive and interpret the world.

He also stressed the importance of having a circle of friends to meet with regularly in order to support health

Noise strongly affects our emotions, nervous systems, and physiology. I identify it as a major cause of anxiety.

To state a complex change simply: our lives in the developed world have largely gone from hard and generally content to easy and often depressed.

Note that behaviors strongly associated with depression—reduced physical activity and human contact, overconsumption of processed food, a desire for endless distraction—are the very behaviors that more and more people now can indulge in, or are even forced to embrace by the nature of their sedentary indoor jobs.