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Messiness of Life
One strong happiness maker is the feeling of control – having a say in your life. However, being able to embrace the messiness of life and the uncontrollable is another strong happiness maker. Yes, exactly this paradox describes the messiness of life well. In the following, I’m unpacking four statements to explain what I mean…
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Religion
Oh, I will dare something today. I’ll reflect on religion. But I start somewhere else: free food. My ex, low-income earner like me, often goes to the free food distribution at the Anglican Church. He has regularly shared food with me and some of that was really good. I’m also getting better in cooking large…
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Time after Time
Last week, a friend and I were reflecting on time and I believe this is a great blog topic. Besides not having enough money, other people not really getting us and our health being challenging, lacking time seems to be one of the major reasons why we cannot be happy. Do you agree? Have you…
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Being right or being connected?
This week, I’m reflecting on being right. Let me start with connections. I think I’ve established that connections are important for happiness. Long-term connections like relationships provide us with good loads of the love (and happy) hormone Oxytocin. As a refresher, Oxytocin helps us to form bonds by developing trust. Humans are not specifically strong…
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Are we supposed to be Zen?
I’ve been reflecting about the connection of the parasympathetic nervous system (responsible for rest, digest and relax, sympathetic nervous system is responsible for fight or flight) and happiness. After all, most of happiness seems to be connected with relaxation. Also, positive emotions (the various forms of happy – from calm, serene to interested, joyful and…
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About Jumping and Danger
The kids are watching the movie Sahara while I’m writing this blog post about jumping and danger. (They have played extensively without screens and we were outside for a while, so let’s not discuss appropriate screen time today.) Sahara is an animated movie about snakes, not to be confused with the Matthew McConaughey and Penelope…
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Reflection on Parenthood
It’s school holidays – the time when kids are not occupied with school but hang out at home (unless it’s travel time or they are booked in vacation care). Time for a reflection on parenthood! My kids are now 6 and 8 and I still cannot believe how fast time went. Just yesterday, I squeezed…
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Find Happiness in Unlikely Situations
I met a friend for coffee. In our conversation, I mentioned that I’m now able to live on the dole (welfare payments). I casually mentioned how much that is. My friend said ‘oh, yeah, that’s not much’ and offered me toiletries she gets for free from a friend. Maybe she just made conversation but let’s…
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Outlander Lessons in Love
In between my last uni assignment marking and being sick, I rewatched (again) Outlander. Yes, the successful Starz series also running on Netflix. And yes, based on the very successful books. Claire and Jamie’s love and family story embedded in detailed-described historic events (a lot of battles and a lot of blood and killing) and…
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Competition
The European soccer championships offer a good starting point to explore competition. While the championships are entertaining, competition causes so much unhappiness. So, why do we keep comparing ourselves to others? Why competition? According to Loretta Graziano’s book Habits of a Happy Brain, herd animals (humans belong to that group) constantly measure all others around…
