Tag: happiness

You

Stay calm 🙏 and kick butt ⚔️

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Here are a few tips that helped me get through times when I felt lost or hopeless. This is my practical, step-by-step guide, hard-earned and tested in real life.

Setting goals

Decide what you want. Pick a small goal for now — anything useful. Take the pressure off. Just pick something to work on that you can do.

Think short-term and what’s in your control. What can do you today, tomorrow, this week, this month? You can act most effectively in this timeframe.

Narrow your focus: Do one (main) thing at a time. You can’t do everything all at once. Once you finish a major goal, you can move on to the next with even more focus, having the first thing done.

Working towards goals

👉 It takes practice.

Visualize the outcome you want. Close your eyes, breath, and picture in vivid detail what you want to happen. This may sound silly, but it can help motivate you and sharpen your focus.

Work towards the outcome you want in small steps every day. Keep your current daily goals modest; keeping a backlog of stuff to do later is helpful.

👉 Doing Great Things is Boring 🤷🏻‍♂️.

Place your happiness in the progress towards the results, not in the result itself. Steady work in itself will make you feel better.

👉 “The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet.”

Yes, work towards an outcome, but don’t get attached to it; you can’t control everything. Focus on what you can do right now and take pride in your effort, however it may turn out.

Keep your ego in check. Do things because they go with your values and goals and not to look good or to avoid judgement.

Your happiness depends only on you, not on external people, places, or things.

👉 The Secrets to Happiness (Distilled)

Taking care of yourself

Enjoy nourishing foods any time you want: water, tea, bone broth, fruit, avocado, nuts, yogurt…

Try some calming sounds. Listen to some ambient music, nature sounds, movie soundtracks, whatever works. You can find these in your music app or even YouTube.

👉 The Best Music for Working

Freshen up your environment. Get outside for some sunlight and fresh air. Open a window. Light a scented candle or incense. Clean and tidy your home.

Move. Walk, stretch, exercise every day. Find an exercise (or two) that works for you. 🧘🏻

Taming your mind

It takes practice.☝️

👉 Super Summary: Think Like a Monk

Ask yourself – is this useful? If you find yourself having unhelpful, repetitive thoughts, then nip them in the bud. These are usually about a past or future that you can’t control and can’t solve by thinking.

Take a few deep breaths, then work on calming yourself.

Focus your mind on a game – Wordle, a crossword puzzle, or a chill app like isowords, Townscaper, paper.io, or MiniMetro.

Work through your thoughts and feelings with journaling. Don’t hold back. Get it all out – the good, the bad, and the ugly. Or just write a haiku about your day to make it more fun. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Meditate: Clear and observe your mind non-judgmentally. Scan your body, focus on breathing, visualize success, give gratitude, find empathy for others.

Feed your heart, not your fears

Fear makes you do stupid things and must be conquered.

👉 “Fear is the mind-killer.”… “Move, but don’t move the way fear makes you move.”.

Above all, keep faith in yourself. ✌️

👉 “May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears”

You

5 Things You Don’t Need to be Happy, Fulfilled, and Successful

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This Medium post has lots of juicy points.

👉 5 Things You Don’t Need to be Happy, Fulfilled, and Successful

It’s so good that I am just going to summarize it and quote it a lot right here per my own goals, but you should read it for yourself.

You Don’t Need A Bunch of Money – But making money encourages personal growth and gives you freedom and peace of mind. And the personal growth keeps you away from bad jobs, bad bosses, and bad commutes.

You Don’t Need to “Find Your Passion” – Just be good at something. Passion comes from being good at something, not the other way around. Being good at decent job can get you autonomy, a sense of meaning, and a positive work environment.

If you want to love what you do, abandon the passion mindset (“what can the world offer me?”) and instead adopt the craftsman mindset (“what can I offer the world?”).

Cal Newport

You Don’t Need Everyone to Like You – “The best way to get other people to like you is to learn how to like yourself.”

You Don’t Need (Or Even Want) to Be Famous – “What can you pursue if fame isn’t the answer? Pursue building a tribe instead.”

I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.

Jim Carrey

You Don’t Need Your Life to be a Movie – “You want a feeling of accomplishment, growth, and the pride that comes from following through with your goals.”

The secret of leadership is simple: Do what you believe in. Paint a picture of the future. Go there. People will follow.

Seth Godin
creativity · You

Express Yourself (Ethan Hawke Edition)

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Ethan Hawke gives an inspiring talk on creativity and how it forces you know yourself, lets you empathize with others, and gives you room to be a happy fool.

In singing our song, in telling our story, in inviting you to say, “Hey, listen to me, and I’ll listen to you,” we’re starting a dialogue. And when you do that, this healing happens, and we come out of our corners, and we start to witness each other’s common humanity. We start to assert it. And when we do that, really good things happen.

If you want to help your community, if you want to help your family, if you want to help your friends, you have to express yourself. And to express yourself, you have to know yourself.