All the pictures of our 2016 trip in Asia
| North Thailand
|
Laos
South Thailand
|
Sri Lanka
|
India
|
Tag: happiness
Happiness in the affluent West
On a BBC article Happiness dips in midlife in the affluent West it is argued that “in countries such as the UK and the US, life satisfaction followed a U-shape, dipping to a low in midlife.”
For this research, the data set is coming from the Gallup World Poll in more than 160 countries covering more than 98% of the world’s population. As well as physical health and pain, they considered three measures of wellbeing:
- evaluative – how satisfied people were with their lives
- hedonic – feelings or moods such as happiness, sadness and anger
- eudemonic – judgements about the meaning and purpose of life
The work by MoveHub is related to this topic. He ask the question : Which country is the happiest in the world? And made an infographics out of the result of the research. It is a visualisation of the data of Happy Planet Index (HPI), which shows to what extent 151 countries across the globe produce long, happy, and sustainable lives for their citizens. The index measures three components:
- life expectancy
- experience well-being
- Ecological Footprint
Can You Design Happiness?
Not the most innovative or mind blowing solution I was hoping to see when I saw the title, nevertheless it is an attempt to bring happiness or transform a stage in our life into something more positive, and for that it is worth to show it.
Could there be a design solution to unhappiness? Silvia Neretti explores the relationship between psychology and design. She designed a pop-up therapy stand, which injects “happiness into everyday life”. It is accomplished “through the analysis and the modification of the interactions between people, situations, and communication in a specific unhappy context, by sabotaging the symbolic objects in it…”
Unhappiness, she argues, is the result of a specific context. She becomes unhappy when her father bogarts the couch, splaying across it and not engaging her in conversation. As a design intervention, she creates cardboard subdivisions for the sofa—much like these park benches designed to prevent homeless people from sleeping on them—and suddenly, the video shows her and her father chatting happily. In another case, she helps a woman, lonely and recently separated from her husband, think about her unhappiness spatially. Neretti maps the woman’s home, and using basic cardboard boxes, she covers the house in whimsical new creations—cardboard shelves, a cardboard desk to work at, cardboard decorations to replace tired paintings—all designed to get the client to think about her home in a new way, and eventually, move on. From fastcodesign
Matthieu Ricard & altruism
Inspiring reflection on happiness – altruism – sustainability
- potentiel for goodness & do bad – build/destroy depending on our motivation
- foster an altruistic motivation is better than a selfish one
- many challenges in our time – we are the major impact on our earth
“5 years ago we were at the edge of a precipice, today we do a big step forward – this edge is the planet boundaries – with this boundaries, there is a number of factors we can still prosper – choose the simplicity”
Happy, a documentary about happiness
What makes you happy?
HAPPY – Directed by Roko Belic – seeks to share the wisdom of traditional cultures and the cutting edge science that is now, for the first time, exploring human happiness. Through powerful interviews, we explore what makes people happy across the world.
Some notes i took during the movie:
compassion – gratitude – caring – love -> spiritual emotion
make you think about things that are bigger than yourself
seek your own happiness, self happiness -> selfish
move to the wellbeing of the world -> your life grows, you car about something bigger than yourself, transcend your own life.
If each of us spend a little bit of time each day practicing to cooper happiness and also to call the other vertus quality: compassion, altruism -> the world would be a better place -> it would transform our brain in a positive way
It is about being authentic with who you are
Thinking happiness as a skill -> no different to learn how to play violin or golf
The formula for happiness is not the same for everyone
the things we love to do are the building blocks of a happy life: play, new experiences, friends and family, doing things that are meaning full, appreciate what we have -> things that makes us happy are free -> the more you have the more everyone has, benefice from it
social bounding, interaction, co-operation -> rewording to human, how we inhibit our self-interest in order to do something with someone -> otherwise you don’t cooperate, self cent rated. We don’t behave that way, we are human, social creature
Co-operation -> elicit dopamine signals, the act of co-operate with another human can, in the right circumstances, feel as good as taking a drug that increase your dopamine.
In a culture which often encourage competition instead of cooperation
Joy comes from connection to others, the best things we can do for child is to learn them to love well
Before modern culture influenced our thought about happiness, what made us happy before video games, internet and television, car and electricity.
Dalai Lama: to teach me the value of compassion is my mother. Compassion, from birth is in our blood, your whole life.
People who do a specific form of meditation, compassion and loving kindness can increase their happiness level to a greater extend and for a far longer period of time.
Richard J. Davidson Phd
When we work in a community we realise that: my life is pretty good as it is, I have something to give to someone, who doesn’t have something that I have. You switch from thinking about what don’t I have to what do I have that I can share.
-> we know from research that it is a very powerful thing which makes people happier
We all need something bigger than our self:
– structure religion
– compassion, caring
– gratitude
– spiritual feeling
-> be connected to the univers to other people
My thoughts
Please give me your feedback on my ideas, and if you have any thoughts how I could develop them or in which direction I should go. Any comments are welcome. (see the pages with the mind map My thoughts)
The different themes I am looking at for the moment are:
BORDERS
on 2 different aspects:
– inequality between people: because you are born in x or y country you can’t move freely (visa, border…) Why do I have some right than other people doesn’t have? How this is right ? Also, by doing that, is not increasing the desire to see what is forbiden? When you are not allow to do something you might try harder to make it possible.
– creating your own border by staying in your confort zone. It can result to refuse to see in the other side of the road how people are living or even your neighbour ? and I am not talking (yet) about situations in other country or continent, where it can be so far from the reference framework that it is difficult to identify to the situation or living condition.
My feeling is that it is very easy to stay on a routine, ‘bury ours head in the sand’. It allows us to not called into question our behaviours and the impact of our actions in the society.
Is developing empathie, be open to others would help to create a better word ? Experience, relate and understand others could help to be more open on the world surrounding us (on different scale) and try to ‘be in the shoes of someone else’. In a sense brake the borders we create.
DISCONNECT
To experience, relate, understand others, and reconnect with the self, I believe that it is important to be able to ‘disconnect’: from the technology, from the consumer society, from ‘always more’ and ‘always faster’.
EQUALITY
I am a bit obsess with this idea that we are all human, all made of 70% of water, all the same in a way. In contrast there is this huge inequality on the planet where world’s richest 1% own 40% of the world’s wealth. it is related with the first idea developed in ‘border’.
Maybe equality between people could maybe take place in the ‘between’ places, passage, connections, non spaces.
HAPPINESS
This is the big question: How to have a good life? Is happiness living well and doing well? Should it be our goal in life and how to get there? Yet, my position on these questions is that to have a good life you should act in coherence with the values you are believing in. You should go out of the confort zone to live new experiences, and learn from it what is essential for you and bring something positive out of it. It can be as simple as coming back from work by another route, try to observe the word with open mind and a sense of detail…
David Steindl-Rast
Everyone should see this video, to try to enjoy life in simple events. The secret of happiness might be in the decision to Stop even for few second, enjoy the present moment and go. STOP LOOK GO
The one thing all humans have in common is that each of us wants to be happy, says Brother David Steindl-Rast, a monk and interfaith scholar. And happiness, he suggests, is born from gratitude. An inspiring lesson in slowing down, looking where you’re going, and above all, being grateful.
Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk, meditates and writes on “the gentle power” of gratefulness.