My Connection to Happiness 🙂

Dear Friend,

Hey there, how’s it going?

I’ve been feeling, in all honesty, pretty happy lately. It’s a bit weird for me to write out a sentence like this, one that’s so foreign to my younger self. This month’s newsletter is all about happiness, but a quick disclaimer — I’m aware of how shitty the world is these days, and that it might be distasteful to gush about joyful things when the world is a complete dumpster fire. But, it is so important to be antifragile in a world beyond our control, and to do that means being authentic with how we feel so we can courageously live our lives with intent. Harvard’s Tal Ben-Shahar explained it best in this video, “I do not think that things necessarily happen for the best, however we can learn to make the best of things that happen.”

• Relevant: Don’t chase happiness. Become antifragile (Free)

I’m on week 8 of 10 in my Science of Well Being course (free on Coursera!), and it’s been insightful to help me connect between the good things I do/have in my life with the reason why they make me happy. For instance, a job at Apple sure sounds great, but it can still feel dull and mundane over time (like with any job) unless I’m actively being mindful of what my job at Apple means to me. Part of this course involves finding my “signature strengths”, which turns out my current role actively involves utilizing many of my top strengths. So Apple or not, a job where I get to use my signature strengths is the actual reason why my job makes me happy — something I can now actively remind myself even on the blarghest of days.

• Find your signature strengths: VIA Character Strengths Survey (Free)
• Take the Science of Well Being course on Coursera (Free)

There was this lightbulb moment for me when I heard someone say “I’m not angry, I’m experiencing anger” the other day. Anger doesn’t define us nor is it our sole identity, as emotions like anger is only ever temporary. And while that sentence alone was worth pondering all by itself, yesterday during lunch another thought also dawned on me that in Spanish there are two distinct words for “I am” — one permanent, and one temporary. Specifically with emotions, it’s not “Yo soy enojado” but rather “Yo estoy enojado”. For reasons I can’t explain, my brain connected these two random thoughts together and I was so filled with gratitude and joy in that beautiful moment. Grateful because I was able to put the two and two together, and happy that even though I’m still terrible at Spanish, I could still find meaning in its pursuit to add value to my life in unexpected ways.

• Relevant: How language shapes the way we think (Free)

One last thing — After three plus years, Ian and I are finally moving to a new apartment! Moving wasn’t really our first option, but when push came to shove we found one that seemed to check most of our boxes. As nice as we’ve made our current apartment work, the rental conglomerate’s been throwing wrenches into our lives one too many times. The new apartment is nice, but more importantly I can’t wait to create even more meaningful memories with Ian in this brand new place.

And here’s the rest of it:

• The photos I took this month
• What’s worth remembering in February 2024

Thanks for reading on this and being with me on this journey. You can check out past issues of Dear Friend, on my website.

Love wins