deepstash
Beta
The joy audit: how to have more fun in 2020
“Happiness and emotional health are not extras, or bonuses, or nice-to-haves – they’re actually at the core of what helps us live well.”
Nataly Kogan
158 SAVES
This is a professional note extracted from an online article.
Read more efficiently
Save what inspires you
Remember anything
IDEA EXTRACTED FROM:
7
Key Ideas
Nataly Kogan
“Happiness and emotional health are not extras, or bonuses, or nice-to-haves – they’re actually at the core of what helps us live well.”
Happy Happy People
Happiness is not a goal or something to pursue at a later time. Emotional health is a skill to be mastered, not a destination to eventually arrive at.
And being happy is being linked to an active lifestyle, a better diet, better sleep, better weight management, lower stress levels, an improved immune system, and increased life expectancy.
Analyze and Identify
Get perspective and clarity on which area of your life you have to focus on. Start by analyzing, examining and identifying the problem areas:
- Fun and Recreation
- Physical Environment
- Career
- Finances
- Personal Growth
- Romance
- Family and Friends
- Health
Being Thankful
Most people are stuck in negativity out of sheer habit and think happiness is just available in small doses, occasionally. To get out of the negative thinking:
- Start a Gratitude practice, using a journal or a notepad, and note down the things you like about a certain aspect of your life (like your job, for instance).
- A daily morning routine of noting three specific things that you are grateful for, no matter how small, also helps you push yourself into a positive mindset.
Meaningful Kindness
Being meaningfully kind to others, using small gestures like helping someone get a chair, or asking about their health, releases oxytocin to both the kind person and the receiving person.
This, in turn, helps in job satisfaction and an overall sense of happiness.
Family Love
Being intentionally happy in your relationships, and in your family raises our happiness levels in untold ways.
One feels more connected, joyful, peaceful and blissful when exchanging love with family members and our circle of close friends.
Routines and Discipline
Go to sleep early. Having a sense of discipline in our life patterns and routines provides us with a sense of happiness, even if it means depriving ourselves of certain pleasures in the short-term.
SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
5
Key Ideas
Hobbies for relaxation
Americans have roughly 5 hours of leisure per day. However, watching TV takes up more than half of those hours. Then, when we do make use of those leisure hours, our hustle culture makes...
The“fantasy self”
One mistake people make when starting a hobby is picking something aspirational rather than something they enjoy. When you pick a hobby, stay true to what you enjoy. If you like cooking, try to take your current skills up a notch. If you like writing, try a fiction workshop.
If you want to try something totally new, start small. To hold yourself accountable, enlist friends in the effort.
Hobbies and side hustles
A hobby is not a side hustle. It is important to develop hobbies outside of our economy with no financial motives attached.
Since a leisure pursuit is an outlet for stress, the pure pleasure of engaging in a hobby should be enough. A hobby not only helps to refuel us for a busy work life but also helps us to practice deep focus.
2 more ideas
3
Key Ideas
The new buzzword
The "pursuit of joy" seems to be the new buzzword to counter the fear of missing out phenomenon.
What brings you joy? Joy is pared with cleaning up our cluttered lives: from household clu...
Life clutter builds up
We are constantly invited to do something, think something, experience something or buy something.
For every social event or task we say yes to, we run the risk of overfilling our lives. It may leave us feeling overstretched, overtired and overwhelmed.
Inability to say "no"
There is often an underlying fear that prevents us from saying no. Perhaps we fear that we are not good enough. We find the compulsive "yes" might help us feel better. However, we cannot continue living at this pace.
We need to ask ourselves why we continue to do the very things that make us unhappy. Self-restraint and missing out are vital for our well-being.
3
Key Ideas
Joy
It's a feeling of spiritual and emotional wellbeing that includes bliss, elation, ecstasy, exuberance, and euphoria. It’s an internal affair that is self-existent and independent of e...
Happiness
It's a personal, external and fleeting feeling. It depends upon external things, situations, and experiences and can be achieved through possessions and experiences.
Happiness includes feelings of gratification, excitement, merriment, playfulness, amusement, and enjoyment.
Peace
It's freedom from disturbance. A state of tranquillity and harmony that can be felt collectively or individually. Peace and happiness can be entwined, but the circumstances from which they arise are different.