Balanced Life -- Imagine That Something Good Never Happened
I'm working on my Happiness Project, and you could have one, too! Everyone's project will look different, but it's the rare person who can't benefit. Join in -- no need to catch up, just jump in right now. Each Friday's post will help you think about your own happiness project.
I read a fascinating article by Sonja Lyubomirsky, author of The How of Happiness, about a study showing that people who wrote about how they might never have met and fallen in love with their sweethearts had a bigger jump in happiness than those who wrote about how they did meet and fall in love.
Apparently, contemplating the fact that a key event might never have happened, at all, makes it more surprising and mysterious. Just think how close you came to having a different fate - your life could have gone in another direction, so easily! The absolutely brilliant, enthralling novel The Post-Birthday World, by Lionel Shriver, explores this notion at length in an utterly gripping way, as does the movie Sliding Doors.
Lyubomirsky points out that surprise, novelty, challenge, and variety are associated with intense emotion and vivid experience.
I've certainly been convinced of that, myself. One thing that surprised me in my own happiness project is the truth of the proposition that Novelty and challenge bring happiness. When I started my project, I expected that this wouldn't hold true for me, because I love mastery and routine. Well, I was wrong. To test the idea that with novelty and challenge bring happiness, I started this blog, and it has brought me immeasurable happiness.
After reading about this study, I thought for a few minutes about how my life would be different, now, if I didn't have my blog. I did get a major happiness boost from realizing that phew, I do have my blog. Then I thought about what would have happened if I hadn't met my husband. What an unhappy prospect! I got a surge of happiness and relief from knowing that we did meet each other. (We met because our library carrels were back-to-back; what if we'd been assigned to opposite ends of the room?)
Imagining life without your sweetheart (or your blog, or your cat, or whatever) also inspires gratitude. It's challenging to feel grateful for the familiar elements of everyday life, but imagining their absence inspires thankfulness and awe.
So take a moment to imagine that something good never happened. Do you feel happier?
* Zoikes, check out this video of someone drawing two portraits, simultaneously, one with each hand. Coincidentally, the artist dedicates the video to the movie The Shawshank Redemption, which I've never seen -- despite the fact that many people have told me that it's in the Top Ten of happiness movies. I just read Stephen King's short story, "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption," so am now ready to watch the movie.
* I send out short monthly newsletters that highlight the best of the previous month's posts to about 26,000 subscribers. If you'd like to sign up, click here or email me at grubin, then the "at" sign, then gretchenrubin dot com. (sorry about that weird format - trying to to thwart spammers.) Just write "newsletter" in the subject line. It's free.
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Yes seems like we all just need to slow down...
In the green section of the Huff post there is a great post about how slowing down and appreciating life is very green.
IE if you are slowing down you are not out withdrawing equity out of your home to consume widgets at and ever increasing pace!
DK
http://sea
I read the title of this article: "Imagine that something good never happened."
And I said, "Gee. this must be an article about my life."
I came home from work the other day.......
I agree with last writer, life is just a series of coincidences. We are along for the ride.
If one thing in your life didn't happen, something else would've happened instead. Life is a process not a structured journey. If I didn't meet my significant other the way we did I would have met someone else and found as much happiness (and difficulty) with that person.
Ooohhhhh, How Original!
I'll bet you just read the new Stoics book that's making the rounds.
I have to wonder how many of us lose touch with the real world though?
"Back to nature" is a real and wholesome idea.
If you have a yard, make it a sanctuary of sorts. Plant some trees along your fence so that in a few years, your yard becomes an enclosure.
Make yourself or buy one of those pond kits...you
Can you make a few waterfalls that feed it? If so, you might find that the sound of falling water is relaxing. Put a few fish in it...goldf
Hang some birdfeeder
Ever see a Hummingbird?
They are wonderful little creatures and are fascinating to watch...
Go to your local Garden Store and you can probably pick one up for about 10 bucks.
You can buy prepared food..just add water or make your own...4 cups water to 1 cup sugar..fil
You will be surprised.
"Hummers" can be seen in early morning, evening and during the day.
Got a pair of Binoculars?
Look at the sky. Look at the Moon Want to know more about what you can see? Join an Astronomy Club.
These are few things you can do.
Don't forget to mention that one should boil the water and add the sugar until it completely dissolves and then keep the mixture in the refrigerator. Never add red dye - it's harmful. A red string tied to the feeder will attract them, although it may take a week or so.
Sorry for the interjection - some folks just haven't started from scratch yet.
Life is hard period but there are also great and stirring and wonderful things that happen to us, especially when we need them most.
i think your message might have come out a bit better if it had gone to its logical conclusion.
never take anyone, or anything for granted, because they might never have come into your life at all, and they can leave your life just as mysteriously.
be very grateful for the sources of love and happiness in your life, and remember they are gifts. treat them like the treasures they are.
Exactly.
Never loved anyone in my life and I'm loving it.
that's too bad.
Unfortunate for you and probably someone else too.
While I find that highly improbable, if true then you have no way of measuring something you have not experienced and, thus, have no reference point whatsoever. That is, any opinion you have on love cannot be accurate. It's like having an opinion on the 2nd law of thermodynamics but never studying physics.
Well, the thing about love is that it is great! Until it fades or ends... But I think someone once said that it is better to have love and lost then to have never loved at all. And so we put ourselves on the line, and available for hurt, for that fleeting glory and that comfortable "wrapped up in a thick blanket and listening to the rain and cuddling" happiness that love brings, that absolute connection that drowns out the sounds outside...
Hate to be a killjoy but our lives are so dominated by chance events that contemplating any given subset of them is a pretty trivial activity. What if one of our dad's sperm cells didn't fertilize one of our mom's eggs? What if the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs missed (and didn't allow mammals, and ultimately humans to fully develop)? What if the threat of Soviet destruction of a trunk of the government's computer infrastructure never existed, and DARPA never cared about distributed computing (the internet)- we'd never be having this discussion So.... if you're happy that just to be alive, knock yourself out. I know I do.
Wow talk about missing the point.
The point is not to contemplate things that aren't personally meaningful but to selectively contemplate the events that are, and by thinking about major turning points in your life that resulted in more happiness you are doing an exercise in appreciation and gratitude. If you never contemplate that you could have easily not met your husband, accidentally gotten pregnant or some other thing that resulted in major happiness it is much easier to take these things for granted. Appreciation for the gifts in your life is a key component of happiness, and the exercise the author described is a very easy way to help people to do that, not the only way, but by imagining your life without something that makes you happy you automatically feel gratitude.
Just because you find the exercise trivial, does not mean that everyone does. Not everyone is a nihilist.
GWB would be president ?
kidding !
Well I was going to say that we don't have to worry about this because Obama was elected but you pretty much said the same thing! I'm not kidding. I'm happy to have the evil finally purged out of my government.
As if...the evil will stay as long as corporatism reigns supreme in DC. Judge Roberts may be about do to the ultimate of judical activism and undo a law put in place 100 years ago to help stem the tide of influence
if something never happens then you just talk incoherently. it's called karma. why is my face so incoherently white whiskers like santa? my father was astonished. he died -- mom too-- nobody knew the extreme anguish i had in my success.
I just can say really gr8 article i liked it and did imagine a few things and it sure makes a difference
Well, I certainly read this article at the wrong time in my life. My beloved husband of 32 years died a very short time ago. My life with him was pure joy. But as I weep writing this, I can assure you that I am at the stage in my terrible bereavement that I really can't make sense of why we love when it all disappears in one brief moment. People tell me there will be a time when I will actually enjoy the memories, but right now I feel mostly deep pain.
I'm so sorry for your loss...I know I don't know you, but please accept my condolences.
We love because it makes life worth living...y
Thanks for your kind condolences, Pupadup4oBama.
I am sorry for your loss, but your beloved husband is not dead, and he never will be as long as your memories of him live through you. That is pretty much how it works. He is very much alive within you, and granted there may not be new memories, but you have 32 glorious years together, and I'll bet many of those memories you have will make you smile. Don't cry over what you lost, rejoice over what you had together. It will make life much easier.
Thanks, WSKI77. I am trying so hard to get to that point. It is difficult, but I know I must if I am to survive. Your kind words are part of the long process. Where I am right now I need to be reminded by friends and strangers alike that I can get beyond the pain. Thanks again.
i am sorry for your loss, but he has not left you, only gone to live in a different place with you. he will always live inside you, so look for him there.
Thanks for your kind thoughts,p
Please accept my condolences too...
Losing anyone in your life, whether by death or loss of a love, goes through stages. It will get better and in fact does, one day at a time. And even though we must suffer all of it, we must also live our lives and in the living, day by day, it helps us to get through..
May God be with you in your time of great need...
SonofLiberty, Thanks for your condolences. That's what I am trying to do, live one day at a time. Some days are much harder than others, but I suppose I get stronger knowing I got through a particularly bad day.
Take some deprenyl it's good for bereavement. Sorry for your loss, time to get back to what is important.
Thanks for your suggestions and for thinking of me. Prosecute GWB. I'm curious why deprenyl. That's an old fashioned MAO inhibtor. Today SSRIs are all the rage. I am going to wait a while before I decide to take anything. I'm going to give it three or four months. But if there is something special about deprenyl, let me know. I agree that I have to get back to me. The problem is in a long relationship two people become very intertwined and it is hard to figure out who "me" is.
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