Category: Josh Feingold Blog

I had the opportunity to be in San Diego this weekend (note to future self – certainly a place to retire!) and between a cold and time change from coast to coast, ended up going to sleep around 9PM and up a few times, until packing and leaving for home around 5AM. 

Around 630AM I realized that I could try to get on an earlier flight and hopped on a taxi to the airport, which was pretty close by.    Pretty soon after I arrived, it was clear that my 145PM flight was the earliest flight I would be on, and since I didn’t bring my computer due to size, facing a seven hour span with nothing to do at the airport. 

I took a nap on the floor for an hour, tried texting a few friends, and played on my mobile device, but the constriction of being in an airport with no shops, no real communication devises, and a lingering throat ache preventing conversations that I have been delaying the past week, meant horrible boredom.

Wow, I realize now that this post is a complaint about having nothing to do.  What an ironic post!  How many people would love to be in a life situation, where their biggest complaint, is nothing.

Having spend time on life meaning, I now realize that man’s search for meaning, is nothing other than the evolutionary force that propels us to meaningful action.

This is a core need, and when unfulfilled, results in frustration and unhappiness. 

Of course, I think through medidation, we can find a state of comfort with nothing for extended periods, but as I don’t yet have a teacher that can effectively teach the art of meditation, in the interim I remain under the influence of productive action.    

 

Well, there I go again, making the same mistake twice.

There really is no excuse for repeating ones mistakes, other than for the masochists among us.

So why do we do it?  Because we don’t give proper attention to our mistakes.  We like to think we are pretty put together, so when a mistake happens, well, we minimalize it, so as not to fly in the face of our own amazing opinion of ourselves.

However, in doing this, not only are we drop dead wrong, but we are doomed to repeat the same old mistake.  Again and again, until we start paying attention.

So the only real way out of the predicament is to see ourselves as a person in constant growth, celebrate our mistakes as battle wounds for living bravely, then focus on our mistakes, and ask ourselves what we need to remember NOT to do again.

Perhaps this focus will allow us to in fact, make bigger and better mistakes further on down the line, instead of the same old stupid mistake that keeps us from progressing.

 

I have this things where I let my kids stay up as late as they want one night on the weekend every once in a while when nothing important is happening the next day.

This past weekend, was one of those times.

While in the past, there has been no real negative consequence of “no bedtime night”, this past weekend, well, one of my sons had a last minute sleep-over the next night, and pretty much ended up with “no bedtime weekend.”

Long story short, my son was tired and irritable, and since one of the best ways to calm a child is to remain calm (plus I really don’t like to lose my mojo), I was doing my best to keep things under control.

So there we are, in the car and I say, “Son, I just want you to know that you are really annoying me, with your bad attitude.”

To which he responds, “No Dad, you are annoying yourself.”

And I knew he was absolutely correct.

Life is good.

I have been thinking a lot about happiness this past year, and wanted to share with you (well, really, with myself), a brief summary of where my thoughts are now.

As you know, I achieved a state of extreme exuberance, which lasted for a number of weeks, following my plateau experience a few months ago.  During this time, I wrote my book on happiness, but by the time I finished the book my exuberance had dissipated, and I started back on my search for authentic happiness – defined by the feeling of exuberance.

I detoured a little, researching different scientific topics with a strong preference to the biology of the brain, to include chemical influences on happiness and sadness, and autonomous brain actions and pathways, which help, explain how our brain works.

Having completed this tangent, I turned back to Happiness, and decided to look into the study of Happiness, and was surprised to find that very few people are looking at the question of Happiness.  The general perspective is that by removing sadness, one finds Happiness.  But intuitively, and through experience, I had come to believe that it only tells half of the story.

Looking on Amazon (my source for knowledge), I bumped into the idea of Positive Psychology, which seems to claim that Happiness can be fostered through Positive perspectives, among other things.

I am currently reading a book by the man who developed Positive Psychology, Flourish by Martin Seligman, and while I am only at the beginning of his book, I think this book will be a very positive addition to my thoughts on things, and want to already pull in a few ideas of his, to my model, which I will get to shortly.

Since models are easier to leverage with a name, I am going to title it the Comprehensive Happiness Model.

The basic idea behind the model is that Happiness can only be achieved when we have filled our five basic needs. These five needs are a direct reflection of our evolutionary path, and clearly provide our species the greatest chance to survive, or perhaps even thrive.  When any of these needs are LACKING fulfillment, they leave sadness or depression in their wake.

Specifically, our body chemistry monitors these needs and provides chemical rewards to our brain when these needs are fulfilled though a feeling of happiness (contentment) much in the same way that it gives us “good drugs” when we eat or have sex.  When our needs are not being fulfilled the lack of these rewards encourage us to action – like a junkie who withdraws.  (Not so sure about the scientific base of happiness withdrawal, so further research is needed there.)

The five base needs include Lack of Fear, Control of Our Environment, Not Being Alone, Life-Meaning/Productive Action, and Self-Knowledge of Existence.

Here is where Positive Psychology comes in.  By focusing our brain on the fact that our needs are fulfilled, we can create a habit (read The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg for a basic introduction, but it’s really more about creating unconscious processes), that our focus is on the positive and not the negative, and in turn keep our positive drugs flowing.  Add to that the idea of Brain Elasticity, and after a while, we can change our focus from the evolutionary default of focusing on what is lacking, to the constant focus of what we have, and thus happiness.

As I said, it is a working model, but I think it is getting pretty close to the truth.

 

I often consider becoming a scientist.

You see, there is something that I want to prove.  The intrinsic inter-connectedness of the world.  And I think science is the tool we use to prove things in our modern society.

In truth, it is really to prove it to myself, but I think the outcome would be good for mankind as well.

There are numerous ways man is interconnected with his world; through connection with inanimate objects, other creatures, the universe, and within himself.

Having discussed my peak, or plateau, experience, it was nothing other than an awareness of connectivity.   And this connectedness, provided an anchor for my self in the universe.  It provided an attachment from which to view myself as part of the whole, beyond the natural whole unto myself, that I was able to self discover.

Bringing this idea home a little, the concrete understanding that we are part of something bigger, can help those of us that struggle with being a speck in time.  It also explains why people associate so strongly with their sports team, or employer.  When we see ourselves as part of the connected universe, we no longer disappear upon death.  Rather, we transform back to where we came from, and if are honest, have been living the whole time.