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Reading List - On Joy
Why friendship and loneliness affect our health
I then summarize the growing body of evidence suggesting that our mental as well as our physical health and wellbeing are best predicted by the number and quality of close friend/family relationships we have, with five being the optimal number.
How many friends do you need?
Cut point analyses, based on Youden maximization, indicated that the optimal number of close friendships was 4 to avoid anxiety, 3 to avoid depression, and 4 to avoid loneliness... In fact, they have observed that across cultures, humans tend to have 1-2 intimate relationships, about 5 people they are emotionally close to, and about 15 people they consider as good (albeit not necessarily close) friends.
Everybody Wins: The Chapman Guide to Solving Conflicts Without Arguing
When you argue, your objective is the same as it would be in a courtroom: You want to win the case. You want your side to be vindicated and your spouse to be found guilty of your accusations. This is what is so gravely harmful about arguments. They ultimately lead to one of three results: (1) You win and your spouse loses; (2) you lose and your spouse wins; or (3) you argue to a draw. When an argument ends in a draw, both spouses are losers. Neither one is convinced by the other’s arguments, and both parties walk away disappointed, frustrated, hurt, angry, bitter, and often despairing of hope for their marriage.
Eckhart Tolle on Shyness, Self-esteem and Ego
True self-esteem goes much deeper. It’s finding the source of power and aliveness deep inside. We talked about the lake. Realizing that within the depth of your being, there is that continuous source of intense aliveness and power, which is the stillness out of which everything comes. The potential, the unexpressed potential for all form is there for every human being. You have to become still.
10 Keys to Happier Living
Acceptance involves acknowledging the “unvarnished facts” of ourselves and our situation – the good and the not so good, without judging ourselves. Rather than this causing us to be stuck with things as they are, acceptance is the foundation for growth and change [9]. Self-esteem is our sense of value or worth. It is based on judgement about how good we are in specific areas of our lives (e.g. performance at school, work or in sport or in relationships) or relative to other people. As it can be dependent on our judgements about success or failure or on comparison to others it can be fragile [10]. The pursuit of self-esteem can lead us to overly focus on, or inflate, the positive aspects of ourselves and our performance and ignore or hide areas we don’t feel good about.
How to Free Your Soul From Disturbance
Joy is about subtraction: not about aggressively seeking to add pleasure to our lives, but about removing the things that cause us needless frustration, without reducing our desire to take action that we can.
Question, question, question. Don’t assume that the reason that you feel something, and that it’s right just because you feel it. And in that kind of process, you will become rational, you’ll become somebody who can use empathy, you will have the ability to judge people properly and accept them for who they are as opposed to continually moralizing, wishing people were something that they’re not.
You’ll have a much smoother path through life, and you’ll be much calmer and more peaceful without all that emotional baggage that drags you down. But it starts with looking inward and questioning yourself and not assuming that everything you feel or think is right.
