For those of you who are following, I got caught up watching talk after talk tonight and never got around to writing anything. Now it's after midnight, I'm at risk of being sick for the third time in a month and a half, and I'm exhausted. So, I leave you with these fine gems until I can get back to them. Their lessons?
Listen to beautiful music, allow yourself to be awe-inspired, and don't be afraid to let your mind wander. You'll be happier** for it. Enjoy. =)
**update below.
10pm UPDATE:
Okay, I really hope you enjoyed the music by the Earth Harp lady (it's so soulful and wonderful, how could you not enjoy it?), because clearly I didn't watch that mind wandering TEDtalk before I posted it. In it, the guy pretty much suggests that letting your mind wander may, in fact, actually be responsible for your unhappiness...and therefore probably does not make you happier. You caught me. I am a slacker. But I will remedy that now.
"That guy" is Matt Killingsworth--and like many of the "happiness psychologists" I've been following, he attended Harvard (where they seem to be intent on making every happiness breakthrough there is.)
He has been collecting data for his doctorate program using a mobile app called Track Your Happiness (developed by Visnu Pitiyanuvath). It allows users to track their feelings on a moment-by-moment basis, and has them answer additional multiple choice questions every time they are randomly pinged.
Matt is fascinated by the power of the wandering mind and is really trying to make connections in his work. He debunks our initial reasoning that mind wandering might actually increase happiness--that perhaps we let our minds wander because wherever we choose to go in our minds must be happier than where we are currently. His data actually shows correlations that indicate that mind wandering does the opposite; that an unfocused mind worries more and may actually cause unhappiness. It seems to prove the saying that an idle mind is indeed the devil's workshop...although not in the traditional sense.
I feel like I've covered this in one of my other TEDtalk Tuesdays, but until I find it, let me hash it out here. Think about how the depression rate in America is growing--it seems to parallel the unemployment rate. Think about all those times you're alone and you let your mind start to dwell and mull and overthink. Think about all these unemployed Americans with down time and seemingly nothing to occupy their days.
Being a great country doesn't mean that we're happier. Matt says this at the beginning of his talk. All our success as a country has very little impact on how happy we are. I'm starting to believe that all these choices and freedoms and free time are all just making it more difficult for us to be happy. That our idle hands are causing us to have idle minds, and while some of us are capable of making great connections within our own brainspace, the majority of us find it easier to be consumed by worry and anxiety and dissatisfaction.
An interesting limit to Matt's study is that he's only studying people with smartphones. The people in this demographic have to be able to pay the >$30ish/mo data package required with their expensive smartphones. These people probably work a 40-hour work week, make decent pay, and maybe even have weekends off. They have significantly more leisure time than those basic phone people working two or three jobs during the week. And we tend to think that if you have more leisure time, you have more time to let your mind go unfocused, right? I mean, theoretically, if you're working to hold 3 jobs, you probably only have enough energy to focus on the task at hand.
Given these assumptions, and the correlations Matt lays out in his talk, shouldn't the smartphone users be less happy than their busier lower-class (sans smartphone) counterparts?
But that doesn't make sense, does it? Why do we strive to climb the social ladder if we're happier when we're busy at the bottom? (That actually kinda reminds me of Brave New World's utopian caste system...the happy working Epsilons only had the brain capacity to mind their work, while we follow a storyline where Alphas and Betas slowly drive themselves into depression via overthink.)
Ignorance is bliss? Or rather, is busy-ness bliss?
Probably not. And here's where I'd like to see more research done. I remembered that my demography class taught me that lower classes tend to be less happy (and less healthy!) on account of the amount of cortisol (stress hormone) in their systems. When you're constantly anxious about paying the bills or getting everyone fed, it's like you're in a perpetual state of mind-wandering. It doesn't matter how many jobs you have -- your survival is always at the back of your mind.
So what do we do? I mean, the lower classes aren't happy, the middle class smart-phone users aren't happy, and we read stories about suicidal celebrities all the time.
FALSE.
I think there's a lesson to be learned here. A few weeks ago, I posted a TEDtalk Tuesday about the paradox of choice, and how I thought post-college depression/apathy had to do with having the world at my fingertips. I think perhaps another contributing factor was that I went from a state of busy-ness ("the best 4 years of your life"), to a state of...uselessness. I had full days to myself: to think and mind-wander myself straight into feeling really apathetic and unmotivated. Without my family to get me out of the house, I probably would have gotten very sad indeed.
My favorite quarter in college was when I was on two intramural volleyball teams, taking 17 credits, and spending nearly every waking moment working on my service-learning project with my technical writing group. I was so busy I barely had time to eat. Why do you think Disneyland is the happiest place on Earth? Because you're always busy rushing from ride to ride to food to pictures. Hardly any time to think.
The lesson here is that there is still hope. There is hope in staying busy. There is happiness in staying busy. There is happiness in limiting your choices to a schedule. There is happiness in feeling useful.
So here's a post to staying focused, living in the moment, not dwelling, and staying happy. =)
Listen to beautiful music, allow yourself to be awe-inspired, and don't be afraid to let your mind wander. You'll be happier** for it. Enjoy. =)
**update below.
10pm UPDATE:
Okay, I really hope you enjoyed the music by the Earth Harp lady (it's so soulful and wonderful, how could you not enjoy it?), because clearly I didn't watch that mind wandering TEDtalk before I posted it. In it, the guy pretty much suggests that letting your mind wander may, in fact, actually be responsible for your unhappiness...and therefore probably does not make you happier. You caught me. I am a slacker. But I will remedy that now.
"That guy" is Matt Killingsworth--and like many of the "happiness psychologists" I've been following, he attended Harvard (where they seem to be intent on making every happiness breakthrough there is.)
He has been collecting data for his doctorate program using a mobile app called Track Your Happiness (developed by Visnu Pitiyanuvath). It allows users to track their feelings on a moment-by-moment basis, and has them answer additional multiple choice questions every time they are randomly pinged.
- How do you feel?
- What are you doing?
- Are you thinking about something other than what you were currently doing?
Matt is fascinated by the power of the wandering mind and is really trying to make connections in his work. He debunks our initial reasoning that mind wandering might actually increase happiness--that perhaps we let our minds wander because wherever we choose to go in our minds must be happier than where we are currently. His data actually shows correlations that indicate that mind wandering does the opposite; that an unfocused mind worries more and may actually cause unhappiness. It seems to prove the saying that an idle mind is indeed the devil's workshop...although not in the traditional sense.
"As human beings, we have this unique ability to have our minds stray. This ability to focus our attention on something other than the present is amazing -- it allows us to learn and plan and reason." (3:40ish)
I feel like I've covered this in one of my other TEDtalk Tuesdays, but until I find it, let me hash it out here. Think about how the depression rate in America is growing--it seems to parallel the unemployment rate. Think about all those times you're alone and you let your mind start to dwell and mull and overthink. Think about all these unemployed Americans with down time and seemingly nothing to occupy their days.
Being a great country doesn't mean that we're happier. Matt says this at the beginning of his talk. All our success as a country has very little impact on how happy we are. I'm starting to believe that all these choices and freedoms and free time are all just making it more difficult for us to be happy. That our idle hands are causing us to have idle minds, and while some of us are capable of making great connections within our own brainspace, the majority of us find it easier to be consumed by worry and anxiety and dissatisfaction.
An interesting limit to Matt's study is that he's only studying people with smartphones. The people in this demographic have to be able to pay the >$30ish/mo data package required with their expensive smartphones. These people probably work a 40-hour work week, make decent pay, and maybe even have weekends off. They have significantly more leisure time than those basic phone people working two or three jobs during the week. And we tend to think that if you have more leisure time, you have more time to let your mind go unfocused, right? I mean, theoretically, if you're working to hold 3 jobs, you probably only have enough energy to focus on the task at hand.
Given these assumptions, and the correlations Matt lays out in his talk, shouldn't the smartphone users be less happy than their busier lower-class (sans smartphone) counterparts?
Ignorance is bliss? Or rather, is busy-ness bliss?
Probably not. And here's where I'd like to see more research done. I remembered that my demography class taught me that lower classes tend to be less happy (and less healthy!) on account of the amount of cortisol (stress hormone) in their systems. When you're constantly anxious about paying the bills or getting everyone fed, it's like you're in a perpetual state of mind-wandering. It doesn't matter how many jobs you have -- your survival is always at the back of your mind.
So what do we do? I mean, the lower classes aren't happy, the middle class smart-phone users aren't happy, and we read stories about suicidal celebrities all the time.
| There is no Obi-Wan Kenobi here. |
FALSE.
I think there's a lesson to be learned here. A few weeks ago, I posted a TEDtalk Tuesday about the paradox of choice, and how I thought post-college depression/apathy had to do with having the world at my fingertips. I think perhaps another contributing factor was that I went from a state of busy-ness ("the best 4 years of your life"), to a state of...uselessness. I had full days to myself: to think and mind-wander myself straight into feeling really apathetic and unmotivated. Without my family to get me out of the house, I probably would have gotten very sad indeed.
My favorite quarter in college was when I was on two intramural volleyball teams, taking 17 credits, and spending nearly every waking moment working on my service-learning project with my technical writing group. I was so busy I barely had time to eat. Why do you think Disneyland is the happiest place on Earth? Because you're always busy rushing from ride to ride to food to pictures. Hardly any time to think.
The lesson here is that there is still hope. There is hope in staying busy. There is happiness in staying busy. There is happiness in limiting your choices to a schedule. There is happiness in feeling useful.
So here's a post to staying focused, living in the moment, not dwelling, and staying happy. =)
Another mind-wander:
ReplyDeleteI wonder if the focus required to play video games is negated by the stress they sometimes cause.
Focus=less opportunity to mind-wander=happier gamer.
stress=cortisol? or testosterone?=unhappiness?
Does testosterone have the same negative effect on happiness as cortisol does?