Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
Mahatma Gandi
👋🏻 Hey friends,
I am sure most people feel that happiness is unattainable; no matter what you do towards it, happiness always escapes your grasp. I always thought that I would be happy if I bought a car, a house, visited a country, etc. There was always something to achieve before arriving at a state where everything is perfect and blissful.
But..
Without my awareness, I always put a condition on my happiness. Throughout the years, many of us have read or checked a lot of articles and books about the secret of happiness. Some offer unique points to implement in our lives, but the conclusions are basically the same: financial status determines happiness. It does not mean money is happiness, but overall, according to the studies, people are no happier once their primary needs are met and have a basic income.
🏆 The essential question is: what is the ultimate conclusion of our needs?
People always say they need to settle everything to have a “dream life” and finally be happy.
However, happiness is not something you arrive at. It lies inside of yourself.
When you make happiness conditional on achieving a future objective, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. You may attain your objective, but there will always be something else to strive for. On the other hand, if you set an ultimately unreachable goal, your dream life will eventually collapse, dragging your happiness with it.
Many of us create stories in our heads that hold us hostage to what could be experienced right now. When you say, “I am unhappy because […]”, the following phrases after “because” obscure the joy and serenity, which can be found at any moment.
🎙️ Goals or achievements are not delusory, but joy doesn’t depend on them. The story in our head makes it seem like it does.
📢 If you are stressed…
If you feel stressed, you are not alone.
According to the studies, four in five people have stress at work, and half of them experience adverse effects in their behaviours. They report headaches, fatigue, and problems sleeping. Nowadays, stress is a real problem.
⚙️ But why people are stressed?
There are several reasons. First and foremost, people do not stress over one thing because people can manage one thing quickly. But if additional tasks and feelings add up to this one thing, it causes anxiety and concerns.
Phycologists call these ‘granular emotions.’ This feeling is different from others; granular emotion is a specific feeling such as fear, worry, or anxiety. When these feelings are combined, you don’t feel them one by one; instead, you feel stressed. This is a massive problem because the ineligibility of identifying the problem or feeling increases granular emotions by turning to stress. The more you specifically identify an emotion, the more granular you make it, which is better for reducing stress.
The next time you feel stressed, go granular by applying the following steps:
- Identify the specific emotion. Instead of saying “I feel stressed”, identify what makes you stressed.
- Decide how you will tackle each. Take action. For instance, make a list of issues in your life when you feel stressed. This will help you to see and act directly toward the problem.
- Turn negative emotions into positive ones. We all have negativity in our life but use it to strengthen ourselves. For instance, let’s say you have a tight timetable to complete the project. Instead of being stressed, think about how the Company will treat you as a hero once you can manage it.
📚 Book recommendation
Steven Pressfield – Turning Pro
This book explores the differences between two types of people: pro and amateur. According to the author, pro-people concentrate on real work (acting directly), while amateurs spend most of their time doing fake work (researching something for longer than necessary). Fake work is important and valuable sometimes, but it should not take up more than 10% of your time if you really want to go pro.
📱 App of the week
Instapaper is one of the productivity tools if you don’t have time to read articles at a specific time. It allows you to save the articles and read them anytime later. Instapaper can be used via a web browser or an application. It has a dedicated extension for Chrome and Safari, so you can easily bookmark the article without hesitation. Every article is automatically reformatted to remove excessive formatting and graphics. It has beautiful fonts that make the reading enjoyable on all the devices. It’s a free service, but a premium subscription offers handy features such as full-text search, unlimited notes, a text-to-speech playlist and speed reading.
🌐 Useful website
While working, if you can’t focus or are tired of listening to loud music, this website will help you rest while doing your tasks. MyNoise creates beautiful noises to mask the noises you don’t want to hear: your chatty colleagues, tinnitus, or even your inner voice when you can’t shut it down! The concept is simple, works extremely well, and does not require expensive noise-cancelling headphones. Thanks to its unique audio engineering, myNoise sets the standard among background sounds.
📍 Quote of the week
“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, and today is a gift… that’s why they call it present”
Master Oogway (Kung Fu Panda animation movie)
✍🏻 My latest blog post
Recently, I’ve talked about procrastination. A single explanation of procrastination is postponing tasks for an undefined period (or completely abandoning them). Unfortunately, we exhibit procrastination behaviours in all areas of life, and after a while, it becomes a habit. If you have the same issue, check this article to learn more about how to beat procrastination: How to beat procrastination: Pro tips from real experiences.
💡 My favourite things
🔖 Article: Space is absolutely chock full of mysteries. We’ve built things like space telescopes and even sent some satellites out into the vast reaches of the unknown expanse surrounding us. Galactic mergers aren’t exactly a new thing. Hubble captured two galaxies merging earlier this year, and it’s predicted that the Milky Way will collide with the Andromeda galaxy sometime in 4.5 billion years. What this new image does, though, is give us a good look at the wake of such galaxy mergers. Check this article to read more.
📽️ YouTube video: Recently, the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration just released the first-ever image of the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole. This image is vital: what do we learn from this image? Why is it different to the M87 image? Why is it blurry? This video explains everything well and detailed. Even if you don’t have much physics law, this video convinces you of what you need to know about what’s happening around our solar system.
That’s all for this week, but much more will come later.
Have a lovely week!