Mantra for today. Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can #happiness #success 

Posted on July 25, 2015 by nomadoftheuniverse

If you want to make today different, if you are starting from scratch, if you are looking for ways to re-energize yourself for doing something huge, or new, or scary, these 4 cool quotes from some of the blogs I follow should help. 

  
  
Continue reading →

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Who are you? #happiness #universe

Posted on July 25, 2015 by nomadoftheuniverse

When I was younger, I remember writing an essay at school, and later – uni, on who I thought I was. I tried to define myself through descriptive nouns and adjectives of all sorts – daughter, sister, good student, human being. It always felt incomplete and untrue.

Now I know why. Years and years of learning about different philosophical concepts, teachings and point of views, and almost a year of meditation brought me to understanding of who I am that feels right. Continue reading →

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We all have an obligation to be happy

Posted on July 19, 2015 by nomadoftheuniverse

I watched ‘Hector and the search for happiness’ yesterday. A very inspirational and thought provoking story. Spot on casting, the British actor playing the main character adds vulnerability and lifelikeness, although I may be biased. Overall, I hope more movies and TV shows are made about happiness going forward, rather than focusing on drama and misery of human lives.

There are so many angles worth pondering on after the movie ends, but I am not going to spoil it for you. I’ll only mention my 3 biggest take aways:

  1. The formula for happiness: ‘happiness, fear, sadness – it’s all of them’
  2. The statement ‘we all have an obligation to be happy’
  3. And the question, which I should ask myself more often – are you happy?

Are you? And what can you do, now, that will make you happier? I start to think that a lot of decisions in our lives can be simplified by asking the simple, yet important question of whether this does/ will make us happy/ ier.

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Are you your harshest critic? #happiness 

Posted on July 11, 2015 by nomadoftheuniverse

This week let’s take a step back from the fascinating subject of love crushes (see the previous week’s post here, if you missed it), and look at our internal language. 

 

How do you talk with yourself? Are you being your harshest critic? Do you have a tough, never forgiving, never happy voice inside your head who keeps bashing you on a regular basis? It’s ok, we all do. Have you ever considered that you can change that? The famous example is answering a ‘How are you?’ question with ‘Amazing’ or ‘Sparkling’ 🙂 instead of usual ‘Not bad’ (it has ‘bad’ in it!). 

It’s one thing to believe that self love is essential to happiness, and another to actually express it on a regular basis and monitor how you talk to yourself, to correct the deviations. 

Every unhappiness arising inside is the awakening pain body. Continue reading →

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Love crushes, obsessions, poetry… Love addiction and what pain-body has to do with it (Part 1)

Posted on July 4, 2015 by nomadoftheuniverse
Romantic love is an unachievable fantasy — Dalai Lama 
 

Love. What a tricky, elusive, individual thing. We all know what it should or might be, we never really know if it is what we’ve got. When I was young, I was inspired by the Russian poets – Pushkin, Lermontov, Akhmatova, Mayakovskiy, my favourite, who made love into art. Their lives and art were centred around pursuit of love, and pain, drama and tragedy that ensued.

Not able to be with the love of his life, Mayakovskiy killed himself.

Other than poets being more prone to suffer from depression, as research shows, is it possible that they suffered from love addiction?
Continue reading →

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It’s not about happiness pursuit, it’s about being happy right here, right now

Posted on June 28, 2015 by nomadoftheuniverse

Guilty as charged. I often say that I am working on pursuing happiness. I am not. I am learning how to be happier. But also how to be happy right now. And this is the sole purpose of this blog. Happy Sunday! 

  

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Happiness is only the cart, love is the horse 

Posted on June 20, 2015 by nomadoftheuniverse

I am really enjoying the Science of Happiness course from UC Berkeley’s. I in particular enjoy the scientific articles on happiness. Here is a good one and it’s also a link to the UC Berkeley’s Greater Good centre where you can subscribe to their newsletter packed with articles on the science of happiness. 

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How to find my life’s purpose? #happiness 

Posted on June 14, 2015 by nomadoftheuniverse

My thinking on the subject progressed from reading Viktor Frankl’s book and desperately trying to find that elusive ‘life goal’, from being jealous of geniuses and people who knew their passion, who knew what they wanted to do with their lives, to realising that there was another route for myself in the absence of such knowledge – trying different things that are of interest and seeing what sticks. 

Creating and helping people are said to be the most meaningful ways to spend one’s life, and so it seems indeed. I realised that for people like me – risk averse, scared of rejection and failure, beaten into submission by the system (I grew up in the Soviets), lacking confidence and proper role models – the journey started with teaching myself risk taking, decision making and shipping (hat off to Seth Godin). 

I was honest with myself – I was a drifter and I was too scared to take risks and I never finished anything. I never mastered anything.

Hustle is the key word. You can’t stand still. Like James Clear puts it, the most important thing isn’t to create something world-changing, but simply to create. And so if like me you are lost as to what your life purpose, calling, passion, goal, meaning – whatever you call it – is, you can try the route of trialling lots of little interesting things, getting them to fruition (shipping is essential!), learning about yourself as you go and seeing what sticks. Sounds easy in theory, not so in practice… 

I do not have obvious passions. As I learned, word ‘passion’ originates from the word meaning ‘suffering’. This I am afraid applies to even the littlest of interesting projects, as creation and failure/ pain go hand in hand. So if you are expecting an easy ride, I am afraid your only option is to continue drifting…

Here are some really cool posts which I found useful in exploring this subject further. Any theories of your own or any good advice you have on this subject, please share!

Hunter S. Thompson On Finding Your Purpose

6 Tools for Discovering and Fulfilling Your Life’s Purpose

The Ultimate Cheat Sheet for Mastery 

What is the point of living an unexceptional life?

Sticking around 

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Art therapy- full on living, and looking for a silent retreat

Posted on June 7, 2015 by nomadoftheuniverse

My life has been full on this week.

My laptop finally died (never buy HP again!). My new job is great but also full of uncertainty. Commuting for more than an hour each way in the hot weather is taxing. We do have hot weather finally though – summer is here! I helped several people. I did not have time to tidy the streets around the house, like I was doing lately. Acacias blossomed and I nearly missed enjoying their beautiful scent. I meditated a lot (tears on the packed commuter train after Chopra Center’s Davidji Pain Release meditation, oh yeah). I stopped eating meat. Social calendar perked up thanks to summer. I learned more about myself and not all of it was easy or positive… It’s all been a bit like this painting by Nigel Bird.

Untitled123

I feel like I am missing clarity. So I am looking for a 3 day silent retreat (Buddhist ideally) around London. If you know one or have done one, do please let me know in the comments. Have a nice week!

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How much money do you need to be happy?

Posted on June 1, 2015 by nomadoftheuniverse

I’d like to build on the last week’s blog post and talk about money vs happiness. I recently learned that scientists did quantify the ‘money vs happiness threshold’. Actually seeing the number somewhat has shaken my conviction that ‘to be happy, one needs to be rich’. I am definitely re-evaluating this belief along the lines of ‘actually, perhaps one first needs to know what they are doing with their life (as in, have meaning), then get more money if they can to enable this further’. Lack of money, perceived or not, will not stop someone who is really driven from achieving their dreams.

Can you guess how much one needs to be happy, before their level of happiness flatlines despite of income increases? $75,000 per year. This is from the often cited study by Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton (full source here). In their study, they found that while “life evaluations rise steadily with income,” emotional well being (in industrialized countries) drops off at about $75,000 a year.

Beyond $75,000, money is important for life evaluation, but does nothing for happiness, enjoyment, sadness, or stress. Both factors are important; it is good to have high emotional wellbeing, but it is also good to think your life is going well.

As Sonja Lyubomirsky, the expert in studying happiness, puts it, it’s not how rich you are, it’s what you do with the money.

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How rich do you feel now? #happiness

Posted on May 24, 2015 by nomadoftheuniverse

I woke up. I exercised. I am finally feeling better after a vicious cold. It’s a long weekend here in the UK. I am listening to an album I found on iTunes yesterday, Soviet Central Asia Music (1930-1950). I found this cool list of 10min meditations with instructions. Promise of summer still looks slim – it’s freezing. Yet, everything is perfect, I feel balanced and light inside, and the light is on. Here and now. You know 😊 

I hope I can share this feeling with you even if you woke up in a very different mood / are having an aweful day. Check out meditations above. Alternatively, reflect on this infographic – what are the chances of you being you? Write down 3 things you are grateful for that recently happened in your life. And if you think you are lacking anything, you are not rich enough, think about this quote from Timber Hawkeye. How rich do you feel now? 

  

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Measure how happy you are daily. Then improve your positivity diet

Posted on May 18, 2015 by nomadoftheuniverse

As part of the positive psychology class that I am taking, I learned about this web site created by the happiness researcher Barbara Fredrickson. It allows you to measure your ‘positivity ratio’ daily, track it for 2 weeks and make adjustments to your life accordingly. Barbara Fredrickson says that from her research this ratio should be 3-2-1 (3 positive experiences to 1 negative, daily). This is being debated by other scientists, but nevertheless this tool provides quite an interesting perspective. As a result, you could:

introduce more opportunities to be grateful, or start a meditation practice, or start volunteering and giving more frequently, and then track your positivity ratio and see if it changes—see how those steps make a difference in your life

We track our diet and fitness in apps, why not happiness? Interesting approach!

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Don’t worry, be grumpy by Ajahn Brahm #happiness #talk

Posted on May 17, 2015 by nomadoftheuniverse

I have been sceptical of Google talks before. They seemed too long. However I am glad I stuck out with this one by Ajahn Brahm (a Buddhist monk from Australia). Even despite the poo story somewhere in the second half 🙂  Despite his jokes, through stories and laughter, Ajahn Brahm gives very important life lessons. I feel I will need to watch this talk more than once, to really let it sink in.

  Continue reading →

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How cool was Peggy in the last episode of Mad Men – she makes me smile :) #happy

Posted on May 10, 2015 by nomadoftheuniverse

Also, I just have to post these. Peggy was always my favourite character in Mad Men (and Pete). This moment in the latest episode of Mad Men is just so cool. I related to it on a number of levels 😉  Made me happy 🙂

And this moment is where TV becomes art.

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The Science of Happiness course, and how do you define happiness?

Posted on May 10, 2015 by nomadoftheuniverse

I decided to take my studies of happiness to the next level and signed up to the MOOC (massive open online course) titled The Science of Happiness from UC Berkeley. A fascinating course! (and apparently, the first positive psychology course available for free online)  Now and then, I will be sharing with you my breakthroughs on happiness and interesting thoughts stemming from the course material.

Interesting reframing exercise to begin with. I might have said before that my goal is pursuit of happiness. Well, science proved that pursuing happiness only makes one unhappy. So I recalibrated my goal accordingly – I am working on increasing my levels of happiness. This is, by the way, what The Science of Happiness course aims to do too – make one happier.

I also realised that we never do exercises here on the blog! Unbelievable 🙂  Here is one to get us started. This exercise is part of the course and is surprisingly difficult (at least it was for me). It made me pause and really think. How do you define happiness? I did not suspect that different people defined happiness so differently! Read the full question below and share your views in the comments!

How do you define happiness? On what do you base that definition? Does it stem from your first-hand experience of what makes you happy, or from your general observations about what you think constitutes happiness for most people?

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