Last week I asked all of you to send me the 5-10 things that made you happiest in the past week, and a good number of you did so. Here are some of the themes that emerged:
Friends & Family: Talking to, watching with, cooking for, walking and running next to – everybody felt happy when they were with the people they care about or doing something for others. FaceTime came up as frequently as one might expect with our current state of affairs. So did reunions, of all sorts.
Exercise & Outdoors: Some of you love your runs (myself included), others prefer long walks, or tennis – and one of you got pleasure from the simple act of sitting next to an open window. Many of you described your best days as particularly warm, or damp, or windy, but in the context of a pleasant activity the weather only added to the moment.
Accomplishments: One of you closed a large deal at work, and one of you finished a months-long quilted masterpiece. You painted portraits, cooked amazing meals and even delivered babies! You used words like satisfaction, confidence and challenge.
The Little Things: Good bagels. Your bed. An empty apartment for the first time in months. A pumpkin spice candle. Early bedtimes! Movie nights, crosswords, amazing Thai fried chicken, finishing good books. Among the big ticket items were just as many small things, little moments that made you smile.
Finally, a good number of you said some variation of: This exercise. And it’s true, isn’t it? Taking the time to sit down and reflect on the things that made you happiest during the week is, in itself, an activity that produces happiness.
Just like it’s hard to know what’s wrong with a car without lifting up the hood, it’s difficult to do more of what makes you happy if you’re not really sure what those things are in the first place. And by reflecting on the moments, each week, that produced the most joy and happiness for us, it becomes easier to diagnose our own lives. “How could I be doing more of this?“
One of you put it best when you said, “I think I always know what would make me happy, and almost all of those things require very little money and more time.”
I think that by doing exercises like these it becomes far easier to see where your time is being spent, and to reprioritize what’s really important.
One more thing! I received three times as many responses from girls as from guys, and that’s not surprising. This is a vulnerable exercise – not so much because you’re sending responses off into the void, but because you have to put them down on paper in the first place – and men struggle to be vulnerable.
So I will leave it open for everyone who may have been on the fence last week (or simply missed it) to send me the 5-10 things that made you happiest in the past week. If you don’t have that many, that’s fine. As one person put it in their reply, “my list isn’t very long this week, and that’s expected.” Happiness isn’t some state of being we should feel ashamed about lacking. It’s a measuring stick we can use to recalibrate how we focus our energy, for the better.
Looking forward to seeing the second round of responses!
A Word on the Election
Election Day is on Tuesday and it’s somehow snuck up on me, even after spending so much time writing about it in past newsletters. My perspective towards the election has been far and away the biggest source of disagreement between myself and you all, my readers, and for very valid reasons. Everybody’s experience of the political system is different; outcomes affect us all in different ways.
I’ll limit what I say to two things:
- Remember that national politics, by and large, are an external phenomenon. They impact us all, but much, much less than the daily interactions we have with each other. So unless someone’s politics are malicious towards you in some way, try to look past political differences to the humanity in us all. Corny, I know, but we’re a few days away from absolute mayhem online and on social media, and everyone could probably benefit from taking a deep breath and reminding themselves that not all of their friends and family will view the election outcome in the same way, and that’s ok. As the above exercise shows, a good life comes from the relationships we have with our friends and family, and putting those relationships at risk for a once-in-four-years event seems like a fool’s trade to me.
- Catastrophizing: The belief that what has happened or will happen will be so awful and unbearable that you won’t be able to stand it.1
I won’t tell any of you how this election will affect you. That’s for you all to decide. But be realistic with yourselves, and if you find yourself feeling as though the world is coming to an end, the very least you can do is sit down with pen and paper for 30 minutes and check your assumptions a bit. If, after playing devil’s advocate, you still feel the same way, then you’ll be all the more confident about the way you feel.
I’ll end with this because I find reading lists like these very enjoyable:
Beyond that, I did a good amount of writing this week. I wrote a short story that I hope a few of you find funny, and I wrote a more personal piece about the above mentioned friend and her beautiful quilt.
I made note of a line from Seth Godin, a 20x bestselling author, on Tim Ferriss’ podcast this week: “Reassurance is futile because we can never have enough of it.” It’s relevant for any creative field, but particularly for writing, where each positive reaction to my stories fills me with joy for an afternoon and then leaves me wanting more.
I also read Sally Rooney’s two novels, Normal People and Conversations With Friends. Not since reading The Fault in Our Stars and discovering the rest of John Greene’s books have I torn through an author’s work like that, and I’d recommend both of Rooney’s books. Here’s the tag line to The New Yorker profile on her: “The Irish writer has been hailed as the first great millennial novelist for her stories of love and late capitalism.”
I think that’s pretty accurate.
– Emmett
Recent Posts:
Home for the Holidays – A drunken mistake and a cold, cold night
(Fiction, Funny, 7 min)
The Quilt – “We have no use for these.” So you took them home
(Personal Writing, 2 min)
Where Else Do We Suffer From Writer’s Block?
(Blog, 2 min)
What I’m Reading:
Sally Rooney Gets in Your Head – Lauren Collins
“If Rooney’s characters aren’t especially ambitious, if they have low stress thresholds, if they prefer foreign vacations to office jobs, forgive them. The game was over by the time they came of age.”
What I’m Listening To:
Living With Less: The Power of Being a Minimalist – The School of Greatness
“It’s not just money we’re spending, it’s time, it’s attention. Resources that are much more important than money.”
What I’m Watching:
Quit Social Media – Dr. Cal Newport, TEDx
“If you spend large portions of your day in a state of fragmented attention, this can permanently reduce your capacity for concentration.”
Notes:
1The Coddling of the American Mind – Greg Lukianoff & Jonathan Haidt