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Mar. 8th, 2012 05:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kkscatnip
About a week ago, I sat down and watched a bunch of TED talks. I do it every so often, because I like hearing in depth about the ideas that are being tossed around.
One of the videos was Shawn Achor's "The happy secret to better work" where he discusses the results of experiments on how to make people work better instead of harder.
The results were unsurprising to me: people work more efficiently when they are happy, and in order to be happy they need to not have crushing workloads and expectations, and also: they need to focus on the positivity.
It is something that I hear a lot in the mental health program that I go to, the idea of "fake it until you make it"--pretend that you are happy, and eventually you will be happy. This isn't bullshit; it's a proven fact.
If you focus your mind on being happy (or being ________) you will achieve that thing, sooner or later. Because you have a focus, and because it's just the way we are designed. This concept shows up over and over in various schools of thought... it shows up far too much to be ignored, and there are tons of experiments that show that it actually works.
So one of the things that Achor uses as an example in the video is that the workers were instructed to do a few things every single morning, for 21 days:
- Write down three gratitudes, three things that they are grateful for having/being/whatever.
- Journal about one positive experience that they had the day before.
- Exercise. Any kind of thing that moves your body around.
- Meditate in order to escape from the cultural ADHD that is all around us.
- Engage in random acts of kindness, usually in the form of sending a positive e-mail, writing a positive comment--engaging with other people in some sort of positive manner.
Five things. I have been doing them; some mornings it takes me half an hour to do it all, other mornings I stretch it out to two hours.
I genuinely feel much better than I did a few days ago. I am still stressed and feel closed in blah blah blah, but I am more productive than I was last month, which is a big thing for me!
So... it's working. We'll see what kind of mental state I am in by the end of the 21-day trial period; I have a feeling I will end up continuing to do these things.
In other news, I am going to all the conventions in the next five weeks.
This weekend (March 5-8) there is Atlanta Poly Weekend! I attended last year and had an amazing time, so I am looking forward very much to attending again this year. I will probably be volunteering again but mostly I am going for the people, to meet and learn from people.
Next week/weekend (March 15-18) is Furry Weekend Atlanta. Calvin is going to be attending and talked me into going. I figure, why the fuck not? At the very least I will be able to spend time with him, which will be fun.
I get two weeks to rest/recoup after that, and then there is Frolicon April 5-8. Bonnie has a room on the club level and we are going to be pimping like motherfuckers; I am looking forward to it. I had so much fun and met so many people last year and am looking forward to meeting even more people this year.
SO EXCITING.
One of the videos was Shawn Achor's "The happy secret to better work" where he discusses the results of experiments on how to make people work better instead of harder.
The results were unsurprising to me: people work more efficiently when they are happy, and in order to be happy they need to not have crushing workloads and expectations, and also: they need to focus on the positivity.
It is something that I hear a lot in the mental health program that I go to, the idea of "fake it until you make it"--pretend that you are happy, and eventually you will be happy. This isn't bullshit; it's a proven fact.
If you focus your mind on being happy (or being ________) you will achieve that thing, sooner or later. Because you have a focus, and because it's just the way we are designed. This concept shows up over and over in various schools of thought... it shows up far too much to be ignored, and there are tons of experiments that show that it actually works.
So one of the things that Achor uses as an example in the video is that the workers were instructed to do a few things every single morning, for 21 days:
- Write down three gratitudes, three things that they are grateful for having/being/whatever.
- Journal about one positive experience that they had the day before.
- Exercise. Any kind of thing that moves your body around.
- Meditate in order to escape from the cultural ADHD that is all around us.
- Engage in random acts of kindness, usually in the form of sending a positive e-mail, writing a positive comment--engaging with other people in some sort of positive manner.
Five things. I have been doing them; some mornings it takes me half an hour to do it all, other mornings I stretch it out to two hours.
I genuinely feel much better than I did a few days ago. I am still stressed and feel closed in blah blah blah, but I am more productive than I was last month, which is a big thing for me!
So... it's working. We'll see what kind of mental state I am in by the end of the 21-day trial period; I have a feeling I will end up continuing to do these things.
In other news, I am going to all the conventions in the next five weeks.
This weekend (March 5-8) there is Atlanta Poly Weekend! I attended last year and had an amazing time, so I am looking forward very much to attending again this year. I will probably be volunteering again but mostly I am going for the people, to meet and learn from people.
Next week/weekend (March 15-18) is Furry Weekend Atlanta. Calvin is going to be attending and talked me into going. I figure, why the fuck not? At the very least I will be able to spend time with him, which will be fun.
I get two weeks to rest/recoup after that, and then there is Frolicon April 5-8. Bonnie has a room on the club level and we are going to be pimping like motherfuckers; I am looking forward to it. I had so much fun and met so many people last year and am looking forward to meeting even more people this year.
SO EXCITING.
