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Aristotle’s Practical Wisdom: Does doing the right thing make you happier?
Does doing the right thing make you happier?
How do we even know what the "right" thing to actually is, in a world that seems to be slipping further into hatred, mistrust, and apathy on a daily basis?
The answer to these questions might be to look back to the past, rather than forward to the future. Looking at the practical wisdom of the philosopher Aristotle to help us find answers to our current problems.
Want to know the best part?
This practical wisdom might actually increase our happiness.
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The 31 Benefits of Gratitude You Didn’t Know About: How Gratitude Can Change Your Life
Do you want more from your life?
More happiness? Better health? Deeper relationships? Increased productivity?
What if I told you that just one thing can help you in all of those areas?
An Attitude of Gratitude
What the heck? Gratitude? Is this a Christian blog?
No. I’m not even religious. When I first started looking into gratitude, I wasn’t expecting much.
I was wrong:
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How to Be Happy: 54 Ways to Find True Happiness in Your Life
Over a person’s lifetime, how much do you expect that their happiness will increase?
Most people I’ve asked seem to think that the answer is ‘A LOT’.
Sure, there’ll be tough times and the occasional sadness, but as they accomplish and accumulate, their happiness will go up and up and up.
FALSE.
Most people die a few percentage points happier than they were as children. Marriage, employment, friendship, growth… all it results in is a few percentage points of change.
No surprise. Happiness is counter-intuitive.
One study tracked the same individuals over the span of 20 years. At the end, most were just a small bit happier than they were at the start.
But there were exceptions! Their baseline level of happiness increase by 20, 30, even 50% over the course of those 20 years.
Those exceptions were few, with less than 5% of the people studied showing changes of that magnitude. But they existed.
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Direct Brain Stimulation, a Billion Dollar Invention? Not Yet.
Every single feeling of perception – of touch, of smell, of color – can be traced back to a particular set of neurons.
Stimulate those neurons directly and a person’s perception of reality can be controlled.
In the 1940s, neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield experimented with the brains of his patients. He sent mild electric shocks to their somatosensory cortex.
As a result, they felt as if their body was being touched even when it wasn’t. A shock to one area, a feeling of their arm being pushed, a shock to another and a feeling of their upper lip being nipped.
Science fiction takes brain stimulation technology to its extreme – fully immersive virtual reality. Want the user to feel as if he’s actually boxing, not just waving his hands in the air? Sense his arm and body movements. Then stimulate the neurons responsible for his fist and arm when he gives a hit and the neurons responsible for his head and nose when he takes one.
But why limit direct stimulation of the brain to physical perception?
Stimulate the brain’s happiness centers and BAM – you’ve got happiness on demand.
You can purchase a direct brain stimulation device online, plunk it on your head, pick a brain region, get zapping, and enhance your mood, memory, and attention.
You can spend 25 years working hard in order to make your life perfect and finally get those happiness neurons firing as much as you want, or just maybe, you can use tDCS for 25 days.
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7 Steps to Reducing Rumination
Like the whispers of a devil, it pretends to help while just making the situation worse.
What can you do to reduce it?
Unfortunately, the cure is as complex as the cause.
But follow these 7 steps and you can slowly but surely rid yourself of the poison known as overthinking.
Step 0 – Get Treatment if Depressed
Step 1 – Understand That You Can Influence Your Emotions
Step 2 – Accept That Overthinking Won’t Give You an Insight
Step 3 – Know When You’re Overthinking
Step 4 – Ignore Your Rationalizations
Step 5 – Assert Control
Step 6 – Distract Yourself
Step 7 – Tackle The Problem
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Is Depression Really on The Rise?
It’s an idea repeated so often that it’s now taken for fact – depression is on the rise.
If true, modern society has messed up.
In 1985, 10% of people had no one to discuss important matters with. By 2004, that number had grown to 25% – one out of every four people! (1)
We’re spending less time with other people, eating worse food, and getting less exercise, sunlight, and sleep.
Surely the rate of depression has gone up.
My father disagrees.
Normally that wouldn’t mean anything to me – he believes lots of crazy things. But he’s a psychiatrist.
Psychiatrists are the ones who invented the scientific study of mental dysfunction.
The field has problems. But they base many of their beliefs off of empirical evidence, not armchair philosophizing, like what used to be common (think Freud and penis envy).
Psychiatry has insights to offer.
Is the idea that the rise of depression is more media sensationalization than hard journalism one of them?
