7 Rules for personal happiness that may also save our planet… Taylor’s Version…
Sunday, December 31, 2023. 6:27 am….My last post of the year. May we all greet 2024 with grit, determination, patience, and love. This is for the parasocial Person of the Year…
Here are 7 rules for personal happiness that may also help save our species, the planet… and perhaps even the political world…
Pursuing true happiness not only benefits humans, it also but can heal the environment, according to pre-COVID research from 2014.
Dr Miriam Tatzel, is an expert on consumer and positive psychology. Consequently, we have the benefit of her profound wisdom, as she has reviewed decades of psychological research on these two areas of research curiosity.
Miriam argues that the fundamentals of a happy life are also good for the environment.
Dr. Tatzel explains her findings:
“For decades, consumerism has been on a collision course with the environment, with consumer appetites draining the planet of natural resources and accelerating global warming.
One view is that we need to change consumption in order to save the planet.
But what if we approached it from the other way around?
What if what’s good for the consumer meets what’s good for the environment?”
Here are 7 fundamentals of a happy life, which just so happen to benefit the environment:
1. Cultivate your talents
Whatever you are good at, cultivate that, and do more of it. Everyone has something they can do better than most other humans. Find your jam.
If you don’t know what that is yet, find out… as soon as you conceivably can… , and tell you’re loved ones.
Be patient, let it develop, give it time, work on it, massage it. But start looking for it. Please be assertive about this. Humans get deep feelings of satisfaction from practicing and exercising their talents. You got to.
It’s about the experience of play, and playfulness.
The structures of our experience are the windows into the divine. When we are true to the call of experience, we are true to God. John O’Donohue
What talents have you allowed to fade?
Be aware… often these talents will not earn you any money.
2. Be thrifty
Payoff your credit cards. Ritualistic Consumption is a thing, and Jeff Bezos is laughing his ass off in paradise. Researchers want you to do more of it on behalf of their corporate sponsors.
Living a bit too large feels really good… like a quick and easy route to happiness and satisfaction.
Unfortunately, financial debt weighs down a human out of all proportion to its consequences (and, geez, look what debt is doing to the worldwide economy).
So, refine your personal rituals. Enjoy more deeply the sh*t you already have, and stop buying yet more sh*t.
Here’s an interesting reason to buy less discretionary stuff.
You won’t have to earn so much money, in an uncertain future….let alone borrow it. Recycle. Re-use. Re-purpose, and Ribbon Dance. Share resources and ribbons with friends, family, and neighbors.
That means you’ll have more time to express your higher values.. like freedom… which includes the freedom to not be addicted to retail dopamine.
3. Seek out fresh, new experiences with other humans…
If you have a choice between buying experiences and buying stuff, consider choosing experiences over stuff.
That is unless the stuff you’re buying leads to more quality experiences. Don’t be clever and mean… or vulgar and cruel.
Experiences enjoy a long life-span in the mind. Meaningful experiences, like twerking, and finger tutting, also tend to be shared with other humans.
Our totality of experience defines who we are. Life experience is an incomparable shaping force…and, amazingly, often they are free, and cost us only time, not treasure.
4. Work on your relationships
What can I say that hasn’t already been said a million times before? … that I haven’t already said in this blog?
Probably nothing. Humans of quality matter. Collaborators matter.
Families, friends, meaningful conversations…you know what to do. So do it. Now.
“Whenever you give a blessing, a blessing returns to enfold you,” John O’Donohue .
5. Accept yourself
Be comfortable with who you are. Leave your exhaustive self-critique behind.
Yes, continue to ardently strive toward being the best version of yourself… blah blah blah…
But here is what is far more important; look for ways of learning, and growing if that’s your jam…but at the same time appreciate how good you already are…
Please accept yourself and be kind to yourself. Because, trust me, as much as we’d like it to be otherwise, other humans won’t be as invested. They’ve got to be accepting and kind to themselves too.
6. Pursue your growing freedom, agency, and independence
Whether it’s at work, home or play, you’ve got to find freedom in your life. Freedom is subversive.
It’s unlikely to be a sense of complete freedom, but within your own value-based life-limits you need to have a measurable degree of freedom and control.
Freedom and control tap into our deepest human aspirations.
7. Pursue a pathway to freedom by mindfully consuming less
The happier you are, the less you will consume, the less materialistic you will be, and so the less you will consume the happier you will be, and so on.
It’s the precise opposite of the loop that many people are stuck in: feel unhappy, so they wind up consuming more sh*t, getting into debt, feeling less happy, so they go back on Amazon and consume more, ad nauseum…
Without warning, thresholds can open directly before our feet… In the ecstasy and loneliness of one’s life, there are certain times when blessing is nearer to us. John O’Donohue .
Miriam Tatzel concludes:
“A society in which some people are idolized for being fabulously rich sets a standard of success that is unattainable and leads us to try to approach it by working more and spending more.
Cooling the consumption-driven economy, working less and consuming less are better for the environment and better for humans, too.”
Final thoughts…
Beginnings often frighten us because they seem like lonely voyages into the unknown.
Yet, in truth, no beginning is empty or isolated.
We seem to think that beginning is setting out from a lonely point along some line of direction into the unknown.
This is not the case.
Shelter and energy come alive when a beginning is embraced… We are never as alone in our beginnings as it might seem at the time.
A beginning is ultimately an invitation to open toward the gifts and growth that are stored up for us. To refuse to begin can be an act of great self-neglect.
Irish poet and philosopher John O’Donohue (January 1, 1956–January 4, 2008)
Let’s not refuse to begin anew. And, as T.S. advises, let’s just “shake it off.”
Everyone knows that Taylor is a funny, smart woman who knows something about work-product shoplifting, and the liars and the dirty, dirty cheats of the world in 2023!
There’s been considerable speculation about whether or not Tay Tay is neurodiverse. It makes sense to me that that any minority group would lay claim to her.
In 2023, she managed to reach artistic, financial, and cultural influence pinnacles, while finding love and connection with Travis.
That’s a great year.. you go girl! Talk about shaking it off.. LOL!
In 2024, please thrill and shock us further with marriage, babies, and other ordinary, attainable, human successes, like slacking and taking some time off!
At the tender age of 70, after absorbing the profound Swiftie lesson about to “shake it off”, (in a tux, with a New Year’s party vibe, Von Smith is just so cool…) I’ve decided to spend the last day of 2023 in prayer and reflection on these 7 points.
My bones tell me that 2024 is going to be one hell of a ride.
And I want to be right and ready for my family, clients, friends, and colleagues in the research community, and the community of clinical practice.
We’re gonna need all hands on deck to dance through this angst with humor and joy. This will not be a year for the usual bromides.
At the risk of sounding arrogant, I aspire to continue to up my game toward becoming a trusted, top-tier Marriage and Family Therapy therapist, blogger, and thought leader in 2024.
Be well, stay kind, and Godspeed for us all, celebrating our attainable small wins, and successes while living in such Interesting Times.
FOR A NEW BEGINNING
In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.
It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.
Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.
Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.
Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.
by John O’Donohue .
Happy New Year… as we welcome 2024! …Shake it off! …. C’mon… You got to! Forever!
RESEARCH:
This research was presented at the American Psychological Association’s 122nd Annual Convention. Check out this link for her wonderful slide show! (Tatzel, 2014).
