happiness

now is the only everlasting memory

~ steve.ridgley ~ Leave a comment

image

Many years ago, the photograph was a physical thing.

Nowadays we live in a digital age. The image has become a series of ones and zeros, which can be shared instantly across the globe. It can be enlarged, edited, colours saturated, edges blurred. It can be enhanced with special effects, have its background changed, detail enhanced. All of this can be achieved in seconds. Methods and means for sharing are many, and once a photograph is out in the social network we lose track of its global journey; who might see it, where, how and when.

When we capture a smile in a photograph, it has an eternal quality. A moment in time is captured in digital form to be shared and enjoyed for ever. It becomes an everlasting smile. Or does it?

The photograph cannot replicate the human experience. The feeling that went with the smile. The sensation of the facial muscles drawing the lips back. The image or experience behind the camera that generated the smile. The joy of the moment. The supporting emotions of fun, love, togetherness, excitement, happiness. It cannot hold within it the sharing. The memories.

Today we have become obsessed by taking the picture. We snap them constantly. Delete the duplicates. Discard the imperfect. Edit them to impress.

Maybe we have forgotten to enjoy the moment? To take in the experience? To absorb the emotion and allow the feeling to wash over us like a wave of liquid happiness? To live the experience and therefore to enrich the memory? Maybe the smile in the moment is the only truly everlasting smile? The one in the now?

Let’s focus on the moment, not on the creation of the ones and zeros.

 

time to flex your happy muscle?

~ steve.ridgley ~ Leave a comment

happiness mindfulness meditation
For many centuries, great sages, such as Aristotle, Bhudda, Confucius and Epicurus have advocated the pursuit of happiness. They have suggested happiness comes from within, from creating an inner peace, from reflection. Happiness of the mind, rather than of things.

Now science appears to be catching up. I have just been reading about a study at Kyoto University. The research, reported here, has identified a part of the brain, the precuneus, which appears to be larger in people who self declare themselves to have meaning in their lives, who report positive emotional and cognitive experiences and describe themselves as happy. This has been correlated to studies into meditation, which show that the precuneus grows in people who make meditation a part of their lives – it seems that calming our thoughts, being present in the current moment can exercise our happy muscle.

The research speaks of psychological training that could increase the volume of grey matter in the precuneus, which in turn may enhance subjective happiness. The report’s summary says…

Psychological studies have shown that subjective happiness can be measured reliably and consists of emotional and cognitive components. However, the neural substrates of subjective happiness remain unclear. To investigate this issue, we used structural magnetic resonance imaging and questionnaires that assessed subjective happiness, the intensity of positive and negative emotional experiences, and purpose in life. We found a positive relationship between the subjective happiness score and gray matter volume in the right precuneus. Moreover, the same region showed an association with the combined positive and negative emotional intensity and purpose in life scores. Our findings suggest that the precuneus mediates subjective happiness by integrating the emotional and cognitive components of happiness

Time to flex the happy muscle?

Now that’s a happy thought…

 

where is your career going?

~ steve.ridgley ~ Leave a comment

career life journey
We are encouraged to think about our career, constantly. It starts from an early age. Parents, teachers, school and further education all refer to career, as we make choices about schools, subjects, classes, areas of study, qualifications… We are encouraged to aspire. Aspiration often measured by the grades we get, the university or college we go to, the job we get, the seniority we attain, the pay level we reach…

How will we spend our working lives? In a profession, as a manager, owning our own business, with a portfolio career, following a vocation…? What kind of work do we want to do? What expertise, qualifications, skills, learning do we need for that?

Then when we start work, chances are we have a performance review or a discussion with a line manager, exploring how we might develop our career. We are encouraged to seek new challenges, new opportunities, new skills, new experiences. Maybe we get bored with our job, or learn what satisfies us or motivates us, and so seek to move our career to a different path?

Career seems almost to have become a synonym for life at work, for progression, recorded by the job sequence captured on our CV, our roles, our employers, our promotions, our job titles…

The origin of words is fascinating, especially in the context of how they are understood and used today.

Career comes from the Latin Carrus – a wheeled vehicle. Taking us on a journey. Adopted in French as Carrière and Italian as Carriera, it referred to the road we take. One Oxford English Dictionary definition of career is a person’s “course or progress through life”. Life’s journey if you will.

It doesn’t specify work, job, promotion, pay, skills, grade or profession.

So, maybe the question “Where is your career going?” is in itself limiting? Perhaps a better question would be “How do you plan to progress through life?”

This bigger perspective widens our choices. I might, for example, respond to this question, ‘being kind to other human beings’ or ‘being at peace with myself’ or ‘learning forever’ or ‘having fun’ or ‘being exhilarated by new challenges’.

This opens up possibilities. My choices are more rounded, more whole life. I can still occupy myself and earn a living in the context of these responses, but equally I can pursue them in all parts of my life. Home, hobbies, pastimes, leisure. With family, friends, alone or with like-minded individuals.

So maybe ask yourself not “Where is my career going?”

Instead ask yourself “How am I going to progress through life?” Or “What life course do I want?” Or “What will my life journey be?”

This may afford you more possibility, more freedom, more balance, more happiness.

the hidden value of sadness

~ steve.ridgley ~ Leave a comment

sadness
How can sadness be useful?

When we are sad we seem to be somehow diminished. Absorbed with the source of our sadness. Distracted. Unable to function fully in that moment; emotionally and mentally disabled. Our emotions drive our behaviour and our physiology – sadness may well lead to crying, a desire to be alone and to be introspective.

I’ve just seen the film Inside Out from Pixar. What a delicious film! Pixar at their best. Go see it.

The film charts the development of Riley, a little girl from Minnesota. Her emotions, portrayed as little characters in her head, ‘operate’ Riley. Together joy, sadness, fear, anger and disgust shape new memories and apply her existing memories, including her core memories, to inform her choices. These core memories from childhood create and reinforce her ‘islands of personality’. The film beautifully shows the importance of emotions. The cognitive brain is to all intents and purposes absent, and Riley’s actions and behaviours are driven by a cocktail of her emotions and her memories.

Our emotions, the meaning associated to them and our instant responses when they are triggered are worthy of exploration and portrayal in this way. They are a fundamental part of our humanity.

There is growing psychological and neurological evidence linking emotions, especially the core emotions of fear, anger and disgust to the limbic system and particularly the Amygdala, a small almond shaped part of the brain, at the brain’s core. Here we seem to hard code situations warranting the emotion and its associated meaning. Research for example shows that damage here can impact our ability to recognise angry or fearful expressions in others, and recent studies have started to show problems with social and emotional judgement. Evolutionarily speaking, this part of our brain is old, preceded only by our ‘reptilian’ brain which controls breathing, heart rate etc. These brain systems are designed to run on auto-pilot. It’s no good having to think to breathe, or having to think whether to run away or freeze when faced with danger. There is growing evidence that the limbic system has a role to play in our other emotions too.

The way Pixar capture these complexities and portray them in a touching, yet amusing film is testimony to their art. The metaphor the film uses to suggest the make-up of our personalities as islands, shaped by our core memories from an early age, is a useful reminder of the impact early life experience has, encoding much of our world map – who we are, how the world works, how we fit in that world, what is right and wrong, what is important to us etc.

For me though I took one key insight from this wonderful piece.

The hidden value of sadness.

Sadness allows us to access deeper older memories. Without sadness we are somehow less human. Sadness provides connection and love just as much as happiness and joy do. It also tells us about loss. Sadness tells us about meaning and what matters to us. Sadness can provide real learning. It can help you be more resourceful, as well as less. The key with sadness is balance – balancing sadness with other emotions, as demonstrated in the film.

The next time you are sad, embrace that sadness and the learning it brings. Thank your body for speaking to you so clearly.

why do we seek to grow?

~ steve.ridgley ~ Leave a comment

personal growth
It would seem to be a very human thing, to seek to grow, to strive, to learn, to somehow be bigger.

I’m not aware that other animals do this. They seem content to find food, water, shelter, to survive and maybe to indulge in what Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory might call ‘coitus’ – for the purpose of reproduction and survival of the species you understand.

So why do we seek more? Our desire to learn new things, have new experiences, achieve more, to get better at something, even to master it, seems to be an invisible force driving us on.

I’m not suggesting this is a bad thing. I like to learn or do something new as much as the next person. I’m curious though about the unending drive, and some of its consequences.

Where does contentment fit in? Can we ever be content? At peace with what is?

The drive for growth seems to fuel our desire to work harder, earn more, so that we can fund more growth, so that we can own more. Try snowboarding. Walk to Machu Picchu. Learn the piano. See the latest 3D movie on our 4K television. It seems to make us restless. I wonder how that tips over into other parts of our lives, impacting our relationships, our families, our work and our personal happiness?

Organisations for example – merely complex social systems of people – seem obsessed with growth. Is that even possible? Can they all grow inexorably? Are there enough global resources, is there endless demand, sufficient money in the system, enough personal drive for growth…?

In organisations we are encouraged to have goals, to strive to better ourselves and to do better. Encouraged to learn, become more skilled, more flexible, more agile. We are told to aspire, to seek promotion, betterment. It creates a sense of failure, if we don’t achieve.

It’s not very many years ago, our forefathers would have been bemused by this. They worked to live. Nothing more.

So what would happen if we sought growth less? Not abandoned it – it provides motivation, provides us with purpose in our lives. But … what would happen if we balanced this with contentment?

What if organisations equally rewarded contentment? Not complacency, but a general state of contented happiness? A ‘Bhutan-esque’ Gross National Happiness measure?

Maybe growth is a human condition?
I see some benefits.
But I also see a lack of contentment in our world.

Time for better balance I wonder?

Deviant art photograph by: RickHaigh