When trying to evaluate happiness, the important information is what your dream is and how close you feel to living the dream.
Irrepressible Resilience
- Rather than experiencing a position of impossibility, and therefore a situation without hope or remedy, intelligent leaders showed the capacity to see what is possible and to set a plan of action with concrete steps to create the envisioned positive state.
- Irrepressible resilience is different from persistence. Persistence is perseverance or sticking with particular actions or thoughts until a goal is achieved, whereas resilience is a quality present in an individual that allows him or her to maintain a certain strength against adversity.
- Years of subsequent research taught Siebert that those who survive (and thrive) often respond to challenge with humour, wisdom, and mental and emotional flexibility.
Appreciative Intelligence: Seeing the Mighty Oak in the Acorn
Notes on Appreciative Intelligence
- Persistence: The ability to continue focusing on and building upon positive aspects of a situation or individual, even in the face of challenges or setbacks. High self-esteem individuals tend to persist longer, both behaviorally and cognitively.
- The conviction that one's action matters: The belief that one's actions can have a meaningful impact on a situation or individual. Having this conviction helps individuals to maintain a positive outlook and stay motivated.
- Tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity: The ability to navigate complex and often ambiguous situations, which allows individuals to remain flexible and adaptable, and to find new and creative solutions to challenges.
- Irrepressible resilience: The ability to bounce back from setbacks and challenges, while maintaining a positive outlook and staying motivated to focus on and build upon positive aspects of a situation or individual. This creates a more positive and productive environment, even in difficult circumstances.
Appreciative Intelligence: Seeing the Mighty Oak in the Acorn
passion for control
The fact is that human beings come into the world with a passion for control, they go out of the world the same way, and research suggests that if they lose their ability to control things at any point between their entrance and their exit, they become unhappy, helpless, hopeless, and depressed
So if the question is “Why should we want to control our futures?” then the surprisingly right answer is that it feels good to do so—period. Impact is rewarding. Mattering makes us happy. The act of steering one’s boat down the river of time is a source of pleasure, regardless of one’s port of call.
Excerpt from Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
Notes on Freakonomics
- Vagaries of human behavior to cold numerical probabilities. Who among us wants to describe ourselves as “typical”? If, for instance, you added up all the women and men on the planet, you would find that, on average, the typical adult human being has one breast and one testicle—and yet how many people fit that description? If your loved one was killed in a drunk-driving accident, what comfort is there in knowing that walking drunk is more dangerous? If you are the young Indian bride who is brutalized by her husband, what cheer can be had from learning that cable TV has empowered the typical Indian bride?
- In a complex world where people can be atypical in an infinite number of ways, there is great value in discovering the baseline. And knowing what happens on average is a good place to start.
- So for a moment, instead of thinking about poor Jessie Arbogast and the tragedy he and his family faced, think of this: in a world with more than 6 billion people, only 4 of them died in 2001 from shark attacks. More people are probably run over each year by TV news vans.
- Most of the stories fall into one of two categories: things you always thought you knew but didn’t; and things you never knew you wanted to know but do.
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
He gives away the medals he wins.
Original thinkers try to learn new tricks rather than keep performing the old one. In Winehouse’s words: “Never the same thing twice, yeah?” That’s why Coates, after writing a best-selling essay on the black American condition, is now following up with a superhero comic. Original thinkers never intend to arrive. They just keep questing. Wenger, now 66, recently told French newspaper L’Equipe: “I always live in the future.” He gives away the medals he wins.
- In Japan, people believe that things like cleaning your room and keeping your bathroom spick-and-span bring good luck, but if your house is cluttered, the effect of polishing the toilet bowl is going to be limited.\n2. Food, clothing, and shelter are the most basic human needs, so you would think that where we live would be considered just as important as what we eat and what we wear.