A simple way to feel happier, according to the new science of emotion | Hacker News Reader

A simple way to feel happier, according to the new science of emotion

npr.org

93 pointsca98am79107 comments

To summarize, because the introduction ends clickbait-style with "'I had to expand my consciousness,' she says. And she did it by intentionally cultivating a particular emotion." followed by 3 long sections of exposition before they elaborate on the "particular emotion":

Cultivate awe - meaning "reconnect[ing] with the vast natural world, with the universe beyond my professional and personal responsibilities, and beyond this moment in time". In particular, they recommend an "awe walk" where you focus on things around you and small details and look for things that are unexpected and delightful.

Kind of sounds to me like "get out of your own head", which I think is advice I could use more often.

Awe is an interesting one to me. I think it could possibly be broken down into types of awe for more leverage. Similar to the way others have attempted to enumerate additional human sense capabilities.

It'd be cool to generate some "awe practices" which would be more like frameworks with which to generate awe. I imagine the more subjectively-open, the better. One person's Carl Sagan Cosmos-style Awe, for example, is probably another person's nightmare (I can share from personal experience in relating my own awe to others).

Awe is probably one of the biggest sensations one gets from psychedelics. I wonder if this may help to explain some of the antidepressant effects that are currently being explored.

That's a really interesting thought. I also wonder if there are relational or organizational aspects that may suppress or stimulate a sense of awe.

IOW, you may be able to find/design an awe-group or awe-place of your own. Or at least, it may help adjust expectations as to where and when awe can be reliably captured for therapeutic or other moderating capacity.

Having visited a lot of places that are considered holy, I'm pretty sure that reading how a place is considered holy and has been the site of traveling by pilgrims for hundreds or thousands of years, and then going and seeing the pilgrims now act with reverences, it has a tendency to open your own ability to experience sacredness by following along in the footsteps of the predecessors and moving in the ancient rituals. Anecdata tho.

I hear you there. Funny, too...I personally stepped away from organized religion after years of devout leadership and missionary service, and this has dramatically changed my experience with such sites. Similarly anecdotal of course...but I like that subjective choice could be made paramount in any such determination.

I thought exactly the same thing.

I've not taken any psychedelics for decades but those experiences still provide a vivid reminder of how awe-inspiring anything can become if you pay close enough attention.

A similar concept in some cultures is Mindfullness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness

Huh I just think about how incredibly complex and amazing human infrastructure is and get this feeling. I think about the complexity of the professor in my phone and how many millions of human hours were involved in the creation of it.

One thing that really gets me is thinking that every two years, humankind experiences the equivalent collective time that a being who had lived since the beginning of the universe would have experienced.

It’s all kinda weird stuff but I think it makes me feel a sense of awe similar to what is being talked about here.

>> One thing that really gets me is thinking that every two years, humankind experiences the equivalent collective time that a being who had lived since the beginning of the universe would have experienced.

When I got my head round that, it exploded. I love it.

Wow yeah, 7.9 billion people sounds like a lot of people, but compared to the universe we always seemed so small. A quick search brought up an estimate that 117 billion people have ever lived. We've all together experienced the age of the universe hundreds of times! What an amazing thought.

An easy one for me, that I sort of do automatically, is I'll see a man-made object around the house and be like, "How'd someone come up with that?"

For example, the lawnmower. What a fun way to do something that was probably not very fun to do before. Everyone was bending over and using scythes or some shit to cut their grass, and then lawnmower guy was like "What if I had a wheel full of of scythes that spin around, and I could push it?" And then he had one, because he built one, and it worked. Wish come true, good for him.

I had this exact thought earlier, watching a movie and I realised mankind has been around for hundreds of thousands of years, and the technology we have now was pretty much inconceivable even a century ago, even the average person lives better than past emperors (heating, electric, tv, worldwide food on demand etc).

For eons we had no technology and now like a little blip here we are. What a time to be alive.

The 'new' science they refer to (the actual premise of the article) is in this paragraph:

> But according to the latest research, the human body probably works the other way around, Seth says. "The brain registers a grizzly bear, and that perception sets in train all the physiological responses." You get an adrenaline rush. Your heart rate goes up. You start breathing faster. Blood rushes to your muscles. And then the emotion comes.

However the idea is not so new:

> The James–Lange theory is a hypothesis on the origin and nature of emotions and is one of the earliest theories of emotion within modern psychology. [..] The basic premise of the theory is that physiological arousal instigates the experience of emotion.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James%E2%80%93Lange_theory

The sited author Lisa Barrett has come up with some pretty new and solidly basd on experimental and neurological experiments models of emotions. There's a great interview of her by Sean Carroll on his podcast: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2020/11/16/123-...

It's not just that the physiological precedes the emotions, it's also that there's not really any universal human emotions, but each person and each culture kind of buckets these "predict how much energy my brain and body will need" responses into common buckets for discussion purposes. And we now have a lot of cross-cultural studies and neuronal activation timing studies to put some heft into what is rather sensible.

Thanks for sharing, that sounds interesting. I'll give it a listen

Edit: Related summary on wiki page

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_constructed_emotion

Gratitude and awe were just the two examples they used to demonstrate the underlying point, which was (paraphrasing) "if you practice being happy on a regular basis [by doing things that elicit positive feelings], even if just for a short period of time everyday, your brain will be more accustomed to associating 'happy' as a feeling that's 'in the rotation', so to speak, making it easier to feel happy in other situations and in general." Probably the most accessible metaphor in the article was that of learning a piano chord: do it a little every day and eventually it becomes second-nature.

So, in other words, if you want to be happier, try being happy more often.

I really came to appreciate this when I got a camera during the pandemic and started walking around looking for things to photograph. I recommend it. Even better maybe if you dispense with the instagram account and the idea of trying to show it to people.

There are so many photons bouncing around you right now, that a 1mm circle captures more than enough perpendicular to its surface in a fraction of a second, to recapitulate the entire scene - for that disk placed at any location, at any angle.

I kinda agree but at some points I strongly believe being in awe and looking to be in awe can turn into escapism.

What I mean to say: if you have more serious underlying mental health problems then looking to be in awe will be a temporary relief.

Thanks much for the summary.

I really wanted to find the payload, but the reams of gobbledegook were just too much. You've made the world a little bit better place.

As someone who's done a ton of academic research in emotions, I just want to point out:

Lisa Feldman Barrett's theory of emotions (which this article uses) is widely considered implausible by emotions researchers, but she's gotten a surprising amount of media coverage that presents her theories as consensus or fact.

In a nutshell: traditional "appraisal theory" says for example, we appraise something as dangerous (a bear), and have an emotion that consists of bodily and mental feelings (fear), and that emotions are inbuilt much like colors are. (You can't choose to see red as blue).

What Barrett argues is that seeing a bear produces adrenaline -- a feeling which precedes emotion -- and then we can interpret that adrenaline feeling however we like, that emotions are essentially cultural constructions or labels we've invented that we're free to uninvent.

However, this view, besides defying common sense, simply isn't consistent with data. Emotions follow regular patterns in what generates them (e.g. a dangerous situation creates fear) and what relieves them (e.g. escaping a dangerous situation allows fear to subside). There's zero evidence we can reinterpret or redefine our emotions by will, as she suggests. (Nor can she account for why infants all share the same emotional patterns, before they could have learned them culturally.)

If you really want to get into current academic theories of emotion (and Ctrl+F for "Barrett" to see where she sits), you can basically start here:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/emotion/

I watched an interview with her on YouTube and she had a very argumentative tone when questioned by an audience member, rather than a conversational and educational one. Not surprised to hear from a fellow expert that her theories aren't really supported by evidence. She seemed extremely defensive during the Q&A.

Here's the video: https://youtu.be/qwsft6tmvBA

In fact the audience member I linked to basically accidentally stepped on a landmine which seems to be the main critique you've posted of her work, just by talking about facts that seem evident (that emotions are the result of chemicals flooding the brain)

Do you know of any studies where this has been studied in autistic people?

For me, the gap between physical reaction and identifying an emotion can sometimes be very long, like days or longer.

Because I don't identify my emotions intuitively, I actually have to sit and look at the physical symptoms to figure out what the emotion was. My heart was racing and I felt queasy in my stomach. Did something about him scare me and I should be wary, or am I attracted to him? I can't always tell.

Sometimes it does seem like I could choose. Like as a kid, I thought I had really bad stage fright, until someone said maybe I was actually excited. It was an easy shift. Now I love speaking in front of people, and I do it easily. But were they right and just identifying my emotions better than I was? Or was I actually afraid and, by thinking of those same physical symptoms as excitement, did I become excited?

I'm fascinated to find out this has been studied and people have theories leading toward actual answers!

Unfortunately emotion in autistic people isn't an area I've researched, so I can't help you there specifically.

But with the rest of what you're saying, I can say a few things in response.

First, that plenty of people don't identify their emotions intuitively at all, that's not something necessarily autistic. In fact, it's why the whole field of "educational intelligence" education exists. You're describing a classic case of high arousal that is very common to take quite a bit of life experience and feedback to be able to accurately interpret the emotion you're feeling. But also, emotions are often mixed -- it's easy to be attrated to someone but also scared, whether scared of them directly, or scared of the attraction, or scared of the strong feeling period -- or scared in multiple ways, and then one goes away but another continues!

And as for the second example of stage fright, there are three things I can say.

The first is the common adage "if it's mentionable it's manageable" -- in therapy, simply being able to recognize and name an emotion allows us to live with it in a healthy balance rather than be dominated by it. For some people, understanding that stage fright is normal anxiety that operates within certain expected parameters and a healthy response is enough to be able to speak comfortably. Indeed, if you weren't nervous at all, that would show you didn't care -- so a certain level of anxiety is expected and good.

Second, actors specifically are often told, if nervous, to imagine that their character is nervous, and so rather than to fight against nervousness or stage fright, to use it to their advantage -- and indeed most acting scenes are "high stakes" so it works well.

And so third, what your friend told you was great advice. Anxiety and excitement aren't exactly the same thing, but simply by recognizing and validating your emotional arousal and framing it as a positive thing (regardless of its label), they essentially accomplished the previous two things I described -- that it's a positive emotion (it means you care), and energy you can use to your advantage (because it's appropriate).

So in other words, you were probably feeling anxiety and excitement, but the simple message of "it's OK and good what you're feeling" kept anxiety at a reasonable normal level that doesn't interfere, and really that low-level anxiety is essentially healthy heightened attention appropriate to the situation.

Hope that all makes sense!

It really does! Thanks so much for explaining it so clearly.

It also helps me understand why people like the one in the article want to believe that interpretation or recasting of emotional responses might be retrainable. It does sound like it would be advantageous if that were true! If I could convince myself that whatever physical response I was feeling was due to a positive emotion, I can see why I would self-report feeling happier.

On the other hand, it reminds me of my experience with CBT after my sister and nephew died. My therapist kept trying to challenge me to think about the situations in my life in a way that made me something other than sad. But it all felt so much like I was lying to myself that I eventually quit going. Maybe that model is helpful for other kinds of depression when the events really are more neutral, but it rang awfully hollow with appropriate situational grief.

Not only did I have no hope of convincing myself I was something other than profoundly sad, I didn't want to. Being that sad in that period was necessary in a "the only way through it is through it" sense.

Maybe that's part of what's left out in this author's approach. Unless you're one of the people who found out isolation and interacting by screens actually suits you, maybe this last year and a half should be a period of sadness and anxiety.

Seriously fascinating, thank you for sharing.

I had taken a skeptical gaze at the article, not because I professionally study the subject, but because this particular area of science has recently come under fire for issues of researches attempting to reproduce results and discovering some of the "Really Surprising Results" turned out to just be wrong. And the source is a "General News Provider"[0].

I am not autistic. I know a lot of study is being put to understanding that condition, better, but I wonder -- along those lines, do they study the differences, or the edges of those differences: As an explanation, I'm pretty consistent/quick with emotional response but I just read you nearly tell a stage fright story I have related to my children. I used to do community theater, but ended up getting a paid, roll in a play at age 13 that got me out of two months of school.

Dress rehearsal I had a bit of an anxiety attack; one of the women in the show came to check on me and said something along the lines of "how exciting this is". And that was it, anxiety turned excitement. I'd sort of taken for granted that I probably "just changed my way of thinking about the experience". After all, what I was nervous about didn't go away -- I was nervous I would fail in front of a large audience who just spent more than I could afford for a ticket to this thing. I was excited about succeeding but that wasn't a guarantee.

I think I was wrong about that; I think it happened a lot more like you describe: I remember hearing "exciting" and feeling an instant change because I had recognized that what I thought I was experiencing: overwhelming anxiety, was not what I was really feeling: overwhelming excitement and almost no stage fright[1]. The next time it happened was a lead (singing) part in a high school production in front of my peers, with a lot of the school year left[2], but this time it was exactly one heart-beat long, immediately replaced with excitement, just before I walked on stage.

[0] See "Gell-Mann Amnesia effect"

[1] I was a shy kid; I think my parents recognized that, along with the fact that during my childhood, girls almost always played boy parts due to not a single boy showing up for an audition. My first part was because I was dragged along to something my sister auditioned for (and failed to get the part). I think I was too young to understand fear of embarrassment, and did that so frequently in my childhood that it never really formed outside of minor nerves and this incident.

[2] Our school, I was surprised to learn, was unique for a run-of-the-mill suburban public high school theater. Two shows a year, one musical, different every time, sold out by the end of the day the first day tickets are offered (no shows during school hours). Head of English department (also Director) disallowed "extra credit" b/c of the theater size which really made looking at a packed with "Standing Room Only" tickets sold out, attended by a bunch of "not the good kids", all shifting their weight, standing, while laughing at something written by Shakespeare, performed in home-made costumes/set by high school kids.

That we can reinterpret our emotions by will I agree is fairly silly, and seems like more like the thing one would believe if one wants to sell self-help books.

But this doesn't rule out that emotional responses are early, learned scaffolding on raw internal cues that we couldn't reliably distinguish without context.

That all babies seem to learn e.g. fear and laughter in a similar way doesn't contradict that. We could just all be pushed by our circumstance to learn in a similar same way.

And more darkly, we may not quite all learn basic emotional resposes in the same way. Reading about people growing up in abusive relationships, and e.g. returning to an abusive spouse I've often wondered, does the person here described literally confuse fear and affection?

honestly I'm getting very weary of this trend of people being into their emotions or making their emotional life the center-stage of their being. It seems like a very narcissistic hedonism.

I've always felt that there's a simple answer to being 'unhappy'. Just do something that helps others, take some responsibility in the real world, even if it's small but at least you're doing something real, and worst case you're still miserable but at least you've done something meaningful.

I've started to appreciate the religious outlook more that has a mature attitude to suffering rather than this honestly pretty childish avoidance of negative emotions.

Maybe people have different needs?

"The universe is a cruel, uncaring void. The key to being happy isn't a search for meaning. It's to just keep yourself busy with unimportant nonsense, and eventually, you'll be dead."

― Mr.Peanutbutter (Bojack Horseman)

From Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

"Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I think that the chances of finding out what's actually going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say, "Hang the sense of it," and keep yourself busy. I'd much rather be happy than right any day."

It's as if there's a separate higher state of being one can be in that's not happiness, sadness or anger. It's something akin to being content. But more like, a thing inside you saying "I am ok with being happy when it happens, I am ok with being sad when it happens and I am ok with getting a grey sometimes." It's the acknowledgment that you will feel different emotions throughout your life and you are ready to take them on and grow from them. Sadness or anger aren't bad. They serve a purpose.

Well said. I've heard this called "equanimity" in some mindfulness meditation books, and is one of the primary traits practicioners seek to cultivate. It's good to hear it as an original thought in original terms though.

I believe there's some truth to this. The most successful forms of therapy teach you to stop having negative thoughts about your situation by interrogating the reality of those thoughts, and detaching from them . If you stop caring that you're feeling unhappy, are you unhappy?

As a long time meditator, I can say that as you regard thoughts more as potentially useful but maybe not mental formations rather than as bits of truth, then the energy behind the positive and the negative feelings becomes a little less. Rather than everything becoming a totality, it's more gentle; not "I'm going to die" but an awareness of a negative feeling. Not "I'm the emperor!" but a pleasure in doing something well. As feelings become safer to experience and your perceptiveness becomes tuned into the way your interior world works, I find a greater diversity of feelings. The way I can eat very spicy food and just blow up if I'm not used to it, or if my spice taste is adjusted, I can enjoy the way all the subtle flavors mix together and are amplified by the spice, being aware of thoughts and feelings is like the right amount of spice - fully alive as a sensate and sentient creature, but free anyways, free in the moment to steer your body/mind.

I’ve gone through a similar journey myself almost exactly. However, I had to wade through a lot of crap to get to this point and this whole “trend” was one of those areas I had to go through to get to where I am now.

I agree it’s a simplified version of what the religions offer. Similar to how Stoicism and Minimalism have both gone through a resurgence in popularity and sales recently, but the stuff released recently on those topics only scratches the surface of what they actually are.

I view this “emotion trend” as something similar to those two modernised versions of the previously mentioned philosophies: a good spring board into the real thing. But without it existing I’d have never gotten to the real thing so I see it as having some value.

Well, my emotional life is at the very centre of my experience of the world, so it is kind of hard to ignore. Maybe it is self-centred to care about my emotions, but I have also learned that I’m a much better husband, father, and coworker when I’m happy than when I feel like shit.

> I've started to appreciate the religious outlook more that has a mature attitude to suffering rather than this honestly pretty childish avoidance of negative emotions.

People look at me like I'm nuts when I tell them (honestly) "I don't believe in happiness".

I mean that honestly. I believe in emotions like contentedness, elation, joy, jubilation, etc. Things that many consider 'happy'. But this notion of happiness as a permanent state of being. I've never experienced it or seen it. It does not exist. Those pursuing it have some religious attachment to it.

Moreover, even if I did believe in it, I am unconvinced of its utility or whether it's a worthy goal to pursue. Seems completely wasteful to me.

If your definition of happy includes it being a permanent state of being, no wonder you can't find it. That's not part of the definition for happiness. If I said I don't believe in computers, but my definition of computers is "sentient beings from another planet living on Earth", people would look at me like I'm nuts, for multiple reasons.

Ah, the definition was wrong. You failed to correct us, though.

It's not that I can't find it. It's that I have no interest in pursuing it. I am extremely content and satisfied with my life. See no point in chasing things I don't need.

This is the problem. I tell people I'm not interested in being happy, and they take that to mean my life sucks (for lack of a better term). Nothing is further from the truth. Unlike my happiness oriented friends, I am extremely content. I have a beautiful wife and lovely children. My family lives close by. I have close friends. I want for nothing. People tell me I smile a lot.

But I have no feeling I'd describe as happy. I'm not sad. I'm just content. I see no point in seeking the thrill of happiness, just like I see no point seeking the thrill of skydiving. I intellectually see how such fleeting experiences could be nice, but I don't want or need them

My point was that your definition of happy seems to be different from mine. From your description above you sound quite happy. Sure, you’re not living in a permanent state of ecstasy, but who is?

What is your definition of content, and why is happy not the same thing as being content?

I just feel like I'm morally obligated to chime in — you can't be told you don't exist and not feel a little weird about it =)

>this notion of happiness as a permanent state of being. I've never experienced it or seen it

Alright, so maybe your idea of what others mean by happiness is not what I'd expect. I don't think most people would define happiness as a permanent state of being.

There's a risk we'd be talking past each other a bit, so I'm going to try to define what I mean by happiness, and why I'm, so far, pretty sure that I exist!

As far as I'm concerned, "being happy" is about how your baseline level of emotion is. When nothing in particular is happening, let's say if you lied down for a minute, are you stressed, depressed, worried, miserable, feeling like you are wasting time idling and really should be doing something else?

Unless most of your day is an emotional rollercoaster, to me a large part of the time is "baseline" like this. If nothing is acting on you, then your emotions come from within.

And I'd like to hope most people in a stable situation don't experience any of the above negative emotions for no reason, they're not actively suffering when nothing is being done to them.

But that's not what happiness is, it's just neutrality. And happiness isn't the only emotion you're allowed to feel either (that would be pretty unhealthy!). It's not a constant, or a permanent state. It doesn't mean you can't have a bad day, or that you take bad things with a smile. It means you take neutral things with a smile!

It means that when things are at baseline, you don't need to look for a reason to feel good, and redeem the fact that everything is going great and you have nothing to worry about! You don't need a reason to smile.

If what's puzzling you is the 'religious attachment' to pursing happiness, well, I don't get it either. But those articles that sell happiness methods and simple steps and lifestyle changes are clearly not meant for me. I don't feel like happiness is something you chase, or some out of reach goal that requires years of devoted training.

Somehow this seems controversial enough that I'm not comfortable admitting to happiness on my main account's post history! But I hope you can believe that I'm being sincere, and that I wish you the best.

Much love <3

> As far as I'm concerned, "being happy" is about how your baseline level of emotion is. When nothing in particular is happening, let's say if you lied down for a minute, are you stressed, depressed, worried, miserable, feeling like you are wasting time idling and really should be doing something else?

Nope. I love doing nothing. Have no care in the world. Don't feel stressed. Don't feel miserable. I don't feel anything. Should I think about my life, I feel content. But contentedness is different from happiness, because I am content even when I am quite obviously suffering or in pain. For example, I recently sprained my back quite hard. Was I uncontented? Not at all. Even while in pain, I was perfectly fine.

> Alright, so maybe your idea of what others mean by happiness is not what I'd expect. I don't think most people would define happiness as a permanent state of being.

But this is the very definition of happiness I believe is pushed on us by the pschology-industrial complex, and is the one I reject. Certainly, the fleeting feeling of 'happiness' exists. I just don't believe the psychobabble version of happiness exists. Moreover, I think it would be extremely depressing if it did.

> . It doesn't mean you can't have a bad day, or that you take bad things with a smile. It means you take neutral things with a smile!

I guess I find this strange, because even when I have a bad day, I'm typically extremely optimistic. As I've said elsewhere, I'm an eternal optimist.

> I don't feel like happiness is something you chase, or some out of reach goal that requires years of devoted training.

I think you're arguing against a strawman. You call happiness, what I call neutrality or maybe contentedness. This article is not about that. It's about something else.

As others have said, you'll find it hard to find a serious definition of happiness that involves permanence.

That said, different people do tend to have different general attitudes toward life, positive or negative. I spent quite a few years in the negative camp, and there is far less utility in that than there is having a positive outlook. Much easier said than done, of course.

Ones own hopefulness or despair alters the scope of possible solutions. To the extent one can influence ones own attitude, it is useful to be strategic about it. Of course, we need a few curmudgeon's around to keep the group on its toes. But the happy clappy people are so inspiring.

I have an extremely positive outlook. I'm an eternal optimist. I'm just not happy. I don't believe in happiness. I'm an optimist because the alternative is pointless.

I don'h associate sadness with despair or hapiness with hope. In my experience, some of the 'happiest' people are the most desperate. When you're attached to happiness, the thought of becoming sad makes you desperate. That's why happiness should be ignored as an end. It's fleeting and an unnecessary material attachment.

To me happiness = contentness. Like after a run, when I'm just looking at a beautiful landscape or in the car, and I just feel "ok". But if I could feel that kind of ok as a permanent state of being it would probably be enough.

That feeling can last at least an hour. Unfortunately it eventually fades and I get bored and agitated. If I could achieve that permanently it would be amazing, but in my experience meditation or yoga only increase agitation, the only thing which causes it is running or a hot shower.

There's also ecstacy and mania, like when playing an intense video game, eating a delicious food, or winning a jackpot. That feeling fades almost instantly, and permanently feeling that would be kind of overwhelming.

I'm not trying to ne critical but I think you should maybe try a different approach to yoga if it increases your agitation. Some of the 'beginner' positions are actually pretty hard... Maybe try something easier and forget the parts that bring agitation for now.

I have always seen happiness as like sugar... sweet, and fine in small quantities but unhealthy if it becomes a dominant component in one's diet.

Similarly, things that induce happiness (or other feelings) for the sake of it and nothing else are disgusting.

How much of the world has been made worse because happiness was shoved down someone's throat? Do we really realize just how much this emotion and its tells (a smile, good mood, etc) are used to deceive us?

If you want to feel something, earn it.

> If you want to feel something, earn it.

Indeed, and the feeling of earning something is termed 'achievement'.

Happiness is not a permanent state, because it decays like other emotional waves. Feels unreasonable and perhaps harmful to pursue happiness. I aim for equanimity. Looking at the stars feels awesome and it also is just a thing I do sometimes to let some time pass and help myself return to a peaceful center-feeling.

Wasn't stoicism the last big trend in recent years? People cargo culting Marcus Aurelius's Meditations and so forth.

...cargo culting and misunderstanding it deeply.

For a lot of people to whom this kind of attention to emotion is helpful, it's a promotion from "zero space for emotion" to space given "anywhere on the stage," quite far from making it center stage. It's a big step for them.

If they overshoot at first and look like emotional-obsessives, that sort of thing also happens all the time with people who are learning the ropes with just about any new thing.

BTW nothing personal, but I've noticed that advice that starts with the word "just" never seems as effective or rewarding in the long run as the thoughtful, deep, measured-out kind which starts with, say, a question...

After reading as much of the article as I could, I concluded that the best way to avoid malaise is to quit being so introspective; quit acting like my gratification is so dang important; and just go do something.

I'll just add some supporting material from one of my favorite authors, Leo Tolstoy.

> Just do something that helps others, take some responsibility in the real world, even if it's small but at least you're doing something real

This reminds me of a line in one of his stories (paraphrasing) : "The surest path to happiness is service of others."

It's also the final lesson of his autobiographical short story, Father Sergius, and comes up in the story Two Old Men where it's juxtaposed with a ritualistic view of religion lacking an ethos of service.

> worst case you're still miserable but at least you've done something meaningful.

You won't be miserable, although you will likely appear that way to the eyes of worldly people. That's the central theme of Tolstoy's exquisite and (very) short story, Alyosha the Pot.

> Just do something that helps others

The primary reason for my unhappiness is that the majority of my time (excluding sleep) is spent in the service of others and very little time is left to do things for myself.

I'd love to have enough time to read more than 3-5 pages of a book per night.

It isn't though, the primary reason for your unhappiness is not "I can only read 5 pages a night", if you were so busy with other things you love and you also managed to read 5 pages per night as well, you could be very happy. It isn't the page count, it's the mental story.

> if you were so busy with other things you love

This, of course, assumes that the time spent in service of others can be changed or that the consequences of that change would not further contribute to unhappiness.

I have a close friend responsible for taking care of his infirm mother. They receive just enough financial assistance from the government to get by, but not enough to get her even part-time assistance.

His father is dead and she requires full-time care, so he is stuck in the unfortunate situation of having to do everything for her. This has been the case for the past fifteen years.

He loves her, but obviously hates this situation. Unfortunately, he'd also hate himself if he were to leave her to die.

> It isn't the page count, it's the mental story.

For some, yes, but for others like my friend this would reduce to very unconvincing mental gymnastics. People sometimes have shitty lives for reasons that are largely outside of their control.

To consider a more extreme case… would you give this kind of advice to a depressed enslaved person?

> "Just do something that helps others, take some responsibility in the real world, even if it's small but at least you're doing something real, and worst case you're still miserable but at least you've done something meaningful."

These things don't exist either, except as stories that you tell yourself. Why isn't it just as narcissistic to be obsessed with doing "meaningful" things and thinking you are so great for doing that?

And then your answer is "just" do these things and you still might be miserable? This is all around a terrible fix for anything. It's like the story of the therapist who said people should stay in relationships even if they're unhappy, for the sake of love. "So now you've got two unhappy people, but long live 'love', what use is that to anyone?"

If the article is correct (I think it is) then how you feel is based on the thoughts you have, and what you do is based on how you think and feel. That means "just" overcome your negative thoughts by magic, and do meaningful things, is a nonsense fix - it's like saying "stop navel gazing about refuelling your car and just drive somewhere". Well, how? If you don't think people will want your help because you feel worthless, how do you "just" help people? "just" fix what you think so you don't feel worthless, then that frees you up to go help people.

Like the airplane warning "put on your own facemask first".

> It seems like a very narcissistic hedonism.

Maybe, but I think it's more a treadmill of marketing and consuming to create the emotions that marketing promises.

> mature attitude to suffering rather than this honestly pretty childish avoidance of negative emotions.

There's an insidious attitude that seems to be pervading modern culture where everything is about being happy and any negative feeling is wrong. You should always feel good! If you don't you have a mental health issue that needs immediate treatment.

It's stupid and unrealistic. Life sucks and then you die. Often the sucky parts create character and give you the most meaning/satisfaction. Until very recently people didn't even have the time to consider whether they felt happy, they just existed and did what was needed to continue living and moving forward with their lives.

I think there's a balance to be had. I'm not sure what that balance is. In general, "spend less time around people that drain your energy and more time around people that you feel energized by" seems like good advice. I think it's ok for the human race to pursue something better than "life sucks and then you die." I feel lucky that I was not born in the past, despite several issues currently facing humanity. It's ok to consider ways life might be better, even if it mostly just stays the same.

My doctor suggested antidepressants. I told her that my life is actually hard and that I know that I'm not currently living up to my own expectations.

>> Just do something that helps others

Hasn't worked for me, in making me happy.

>> take some responsibility in the real world

Utter disaster as far as happiness is concerned.

>> I've started to appreciate the religious outlook more that has a mature attitude to suffering

That religious outlook seems to be "suffer more and be happy less", my answer to that is no.

At least in Catholicism (my experience):

‘ author G.K. Chesterton once noted that “joy is the gigantic secret of the Christian.” True joy is why martyrs could die with joy. True joy is why St. Paul can command Christians to “rejoice always.” Because true joy is not illusory or conditional. True joy is based on a foundation outside of the individual.’

>> True joy is based on a foundation outside of the individual

You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.

But what is that actually saying? It sounds like nothing to me, other than moving the goalposts towards something that only Catholicism (or religion) can provide.

On one hand, this article seems fine as far as it goes. Sure, I can imagine there's some benefit to cultivating a positive emotion for 5 minutes per day.

On the other hand, any article that uses the phrase "the new science of <anything>" is highly suspect, especially when it claims to have a secret that will let you "rewire" your brain.

Everybody wants the respect that science gets today. Therefore everybody describes what they're doing as "science". It's just debasing the word "science" to make their ideas seem more respectable.

But this isn't new. Marx called his thinking "scientific socialism" back in 1845, as if socialism - or any political theory - would ever actually be scientific in any real sense.

Mindfulness, meditation, whatever. Just get perspective on your life seems like the big takeaway. My favorite instance of this in recent memory is from the show “Alone”, contestants attempt to survive in the arctic with basic tools for 100 days for a million dollars. One guy realized about 40 days in that his old self was worried about the money and his current self only cared about family, food, shelter, etc. He already had everything he wanted in life it just wasn’t apparent until he sat in a tent for 40 days living on fish haha.

I thought the Joy Generator they shared in the article was really neat.

https://apps.npr.org/joy-generator/#story=intro&page=0

I have developed some of my own tools to create similar effects, as part of my text editor journaling process[0]. I think the JG is the exact sort of thing that could really help people make small yet substantial life changes toward a better experience..

(After using the Joy Generator, I spent a bit of time developing an anticipation-generator doc for myself as well, focused on creating happy experiences that lay waiting in the future. Pretty neat ideas they shared. Thanks NPR.)

0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XehGA1fYulo

So, after 14 months of isolation and being in front of screens this person feels unhappy? And the cure is to be grateful and find awe in the small things because some study said such and such?

When did we forget we are still social animals?

The cure is to be in contact with nature and with fellow human beings (better if both are at the same time), but sadly even before the pandemic this was kind of a luxury. It is as if most people don't want to go out or interact with other people anymore. It's all about streaming services, social media and competition.

One thing I've run into, over and over again, is the palliative effects of laughter. I realize that sounds odd, on the face of it, but it's something I keep coming back to in my life.

To illustrate, about a year or so ago, I accidentally smashed my fingers in my car door as I was closing it. To distract myself from the pain, my brain focused on how funny this was, and I started giggling like a madman. It worked! I could barely feel any discomfort as my mind switched over from pain and anger to finding the comedy in my predicament.

Perhaps the answer is simply in switching our awareness of what is happening from negative to positive emotions over time, and building good memories to support our newfound freedom. We can control our emotions, we don't need to be controlled by them.

I will remember this if ever my leg gets chopped off by a chainsaw!

Just remember that the laughing only helps your mental state. You’ll probably still want to laugh your way into a tourniquet.

All true, but didn't those Buddhist monks who famously self-immolated themselves as a protest during the Vietnam War, do so under a self-induced hypnotic trance, indicating that it's entirely possible to override our pain system?

you can override the pain, but it won’t stop the bleeding.

if you wish to survive the dismemberment, you best recognize.

"According to the latest research", hah. Once again neuroscientists are late to the game and make "revolutionary" discoveries that social psychologists have known for decades.

That physical response predates emotion, and that emotion is in large part about how you interpret internal physical cues, has been hypothesised since at least the 1890s, and arguably known since the 1960s when there were a number of influential experiments testing it.

Famously, in 1962 Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer ran an experiment where they manipulated people's internal cues with epinephrine, a drug that causes flushing and increased heart rate. By varying the contextual cues, they got the subjects to interpret this as both happiness and anger, with subjects who got the drug reporting far stronger emotions than those who didn't.

I sort of stumbled upon this myself:

I'll have negative thoughts - your hair is messed up, they're looking at you, you're doing something wrong, not cool enough, they don't like you, etc

But I realized that of course these are completely ridiculous negative thoughts from my social conditioning in North America.

So one day I thought to tell myself equally ridiculous positive thoughts. When I have a negative thought.. my hair is messed up --- I'll counter it with a ridiculous positive thought: my hair is the most beautiful hair on planet earth.

It sounds so stupid when it's positive, but when it's negative I had been listening to it for my entire life. From this point on, it's difficult to give those negative thoughts any weight.

See also: Epicurus and the letter to Menoeceus

https://churchofepicurus.wordpress.com/the-letter-to-menoece...

>Over the past decade, neuroscientists have begun to shift how they think emotions arise. Rather than being inevitable, hard-coded experiences, researchers now think emotions are malleable, and people have more influence over them than previously thought.

This doesn't make sense given the deterministic nature of the universe and the absense of free will.

(I believe in free will, just point this out for fun - and for those that don't but still, 24/7 act, express their feelings, and advice others as if it totally exists).

These articles that make it seem like there’s a way to change your emotions through thought seem so sus. Life is complicated, biology is so complicated, just study yourself and see what works for you. But I bet you are better off changing your environment than thinking your way into better emotions. If you’re rational you can find your own answers instead of looking at essentially a self help / meditation article

Is this just another take on "mindfullness" ?

Practitioners of meditation and breathing exercises may find recognition in some of it. But, meditation/mindfulness is more about observing thought and feelings come and go, as you breathe.

With practice you may gain some mind control, and trying to channel fear and feelings into constructiveness is part of knowledge (jnana). However, many people will confuse also this, and mastering it, depending on so much or so little. Nothing to accomplish.

And really common if you meditate, you are more likely to sleep when tired and eat when hungry and eliminate things from your life that crank you up and and displease you, so in the context of this slightly simpler more healthy life, you brain predictions may be more positive.

> If your past experiences with bears* come largely through news reports of attacks and maulings, then your brain will likely interpret your bodily sensations — raised heart rate, raised blood pressure, sweaty palms — as fear. Lots of fear! And this emotion will help drive you away from the bear.

*or whatever else might be presented as something to fear

This reminds me of work a design masters student is doing to explore how breathwork practices support spiritual wellbeing among engineering college students. After 10 good minutes of breathwork, most participants seem to have a mild spiritual experience characterized by feelings of awe and connectedness.

Fans of Charlotte Bronte may remember:

“No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness. What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure.”

- said Lucy Snow in the novel, Villette, by Charlotte Bronte.

> "it can feel better to be on the giving end rather than the receiving end"

I find that, disappointingly, in-person charity is a lot more satisfying than more efficient forms, because the people I have a chance to help in person are in much less need.

I was surprised to see nostalgia in the list of positive emotions. I guess I don't disagree but I've never thought of it that way, and I've certainly never sought it out.

In my experience some people experience a very strong and qualitatively impressive sentimental connection to elements of their subjective past. It's amazing to watch in some cases.

The details of the connection, its frequency, amplitude / subjective potency, and accuracy seem quite different from person to person.

There have been attempts in some spaces of research to group people by the various characteristics of their subjective experience with their past, and how they metabolize (so to speak) nostalgia.

I was kind of in the same boat as you in the sense that it was new to me (whether one is aware of it as a practice available to them is another differentiator) and I had to cultivate it. I started by making a timeline of my life in bullet points, and then found myself naturally expanding on my favorite parts much later in the experience. This was really pleasant.

Also some chemicals seem to help. Personally caffeine brings this nostalgia-awareness to me quite easily after the initial spur of executive activity has worn off.

I wonder how easy it is to classify nostalgia as positive or negative affect. My grandmother seemed to simultaneously enjoy it and be saddened by it.

Negative can sometimes be used as a marker indicating that the subject is obsessed with the "lack of" looking backward being everybody's problem including their own.

They may view the suggestion of its use as a function of perceived deficit in other important things. Don't got enough (thing you want) in life? You aren't looking backward enough, or you're looking backward but bringing the "wrong" lessons forward (highly subjective variant).

The positive by comparison would reflect a more flexible, demonstrative capacity with the same, including more frequent deployment of it as a problem-solving tool.

> deployment of it as a problem-solving tool

That's why I don't tend to look backward. I just don't see it accomplishing much.

(If I felt like I needed more pleasure, and I were convinced nostalgia was reliably pleasurable and would continue to be even if I made a frequent habit of it, I might.)

It's really heavily used in logistics and business stabilization. In the sense of don't get fancy, remember the founding principles, do what you know (your past).

And celebrate what you know. Such businesses often do the gold watch, the pension, the career milestones celebration as part of this integration into the nostalgic whole.

In other words, it's more like the psychological engine which powers the role and tool selection than the "specific way things are done" and the businesses turn into the big ones over time.

Edit: It's interesting though, we could say that in your comments you are basically representing and promoting the best of your past, insofar as it informs your preferred way of doing things. The way you have learned that you like things to be, or be done, by you. So there's this overlap with nostalgia concepts and subjective perception.

> heavily used in logistics and business stabilization

That's surprising and fascinating. Is there a formal body of work on nostalgia in business?

Depending on the contentedness-over-time curve of your life, nostalgia can become pretty attractive.

TLDR:

* Write three things you're greatfull for daily. Bonus points if you share the task with friends

* Take walks and pay attention to what's happening

* Listen to soft nature sounds

> Write three things your greatfull for

But preferably write them better than this?

Cruel arithmetic

thwarts this would-be haikuist.

Everyone's a critic.

This more general advice, which the article makes outside of its bullet points, could have be bulleted too:

* notice and seek out raw pleasure (sunsets, birdsong)

* revisit pleasant memories

* step outside yourself (charity, flow)

I'll stick to the Hindu sages meditation rather than this mindfulness rebrand thank you very much

Oh and yoga and equanimity

So metta meditation.

Why seek happiness? What's wrong with being content and fulfilled?

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