Nice vignettes but I don't really believe it. Not knocking those getting value out of them, but they don't work for me.
And the most important for me of all - gratitude. I’m finding that if I apply gratitude to thoughts and actions throughout the day, very little if anything can shake me now. It feels like a superhuman power. Motorist cuts me up… meh.. at least I’m not in a hurry like that guy. Grumpy because I had a bad night sleep… I’m thankful I had a warm bed and roof over my head and warm shower to jump in. Injured myself running… at least I have legs to run. The effect of the above on my life has been profound. My happiness levels are through the roof and I’m achieving and doing things I never thought possible as I’m not allowing negative emotions and thoughts any space in my life.
Not saying this will work for anyone else, but it does for me.
The best parents are the ones that instill that into their kids. Some will scoff and say that it’s teaching to accept mediocrity. Not at all, it’s about making the most of what you have, nothing to do with striving for more.
Hearing that parable at Sunday mass multiple times as a youngster is one of the reasons why I stopped going to church at age 14 and have never been back.
>American’s default view of ‘fairness’ can be incredibly corrosive.
Can you elaborate on what this default view is? For example, Americans seem to have no problem with someone becoming a near-billionaire overnight from winning a multi-state lottery (Powerball, Mega Millions).
American’s view of fairness breeds envy. Across every income level a vast majority want 10% more to be ‘happier.’ Once you have this ego death of sorts, it lets you easily step off the hedonistic treadmill, thus improving one’s life :)
But recently I have been perusing "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", and finding that a huge amount of it also strikes me as being just mass-market stoicism.
So it has made me curious whether it's a direct influence, or whether it's just a case of multiple people or philosophies coming to basically the same conclusions independently.
So I'm curious whether your philosophy of grateful contentment for what you have comes via a direct influence, or was arrived at independently.
In any case, it's an excellent practice, but one I nonetheless often have trouble executing myself :)
It’s a common idea (which isn’t to say it’s invalid or wrong). If you’re interested in studies on happiness or living a “good” life you’re bound to bump into it more than once. Quick example: do a web search for “TED talk gratitude” and you’ll find more links than you know what to do with.
And then I got to work more on those.