A feeling of profound gratitude towards whatever good one’s life has to offer, however small, contributes towards people finding meaning in their transition.
Rituals provide the space and the ‘container’ by which a demarcation is created, and the outside world is not hindering, creating a safe zone to get healed.
Martin Seligman, the father of positive psychology, theorizes that while 60 percent of happiness is determined by our genetics and environment, the remaining 40 percent is up to us.
Transition, even the completely voluntary, can be a source of intense suffering because it involves adapting to new situations and changing your self-conception.
Transition is also called liminality by psychologists - a state where you are neither in the state you left nor entirely in your new state. This in-between state creates an identity crisis, even in good transitions.
But they are really a predictable and integral part of life and happen regularly. Author Bruce Feiler interviewed hundreds of people and found that a major life change happens, on average, every 12 to 18 months. Even huge collective transitions such as the pandemic occur with regularity.
In hindsight, even the unwanted transitions are usually seen to have been a success.
Research shows that we tend to see past events as net positives over time. Even the most challenging transitions have some positive fruit. It may just take some time to see it.
Since ancient times, humans have assigned healing and transformational properties to water. In early Rome, baths were an important part of cultural life, a place where citizens went to find relaxation and to connect with others in a calming setting.
A "blue mind" is a mildly meditative state characterized by calm, peacefulness, unity, and a sense of general happiness and satisfaction with life in the moment, that's triggered when w...
The sound around us, from an auditory perspective, is simplified. It's not quiet, but the sound of water is far more simple than the sound of voices or the sound of music or the sound of a city.
The visual input is simplified. When you stand at the edge of the water and look out on the horizon, it's visually simplified relative to a city you're walking through, where you're taking in millions of pieces of information every second.
The water could be inducing a mildly meditative state of calm focus and gentle awareness.
When we're by the water, our brains are held in a state of mild attentiveness. In this state, the brain is interested and engaged in the water, taking in sensory input but not distracted by an overload of it.