a friend recommended that I check out this TedTalk by psychologist Shawn Achor about positive psychology, and then I found another one by psychologist Martin Seligman, and got kinda of obsessed with this whole positive psychology thing:
the study of not just relieving depression but of actually making life better.
Shawn Achor is hilarious - and also talks about "the medical school syndrome" where as you learn about all the diseases and syndromes that could happen you soon learn that you have them.
"If we study what is merely average, we will remain merely average"
And then Martin Seligman talks about three types of good lifes:
1) the pleasurable, 2) the engaged, 3) the meaningful
I actually found the "engaged life" description the most interesting, as the other two seem pretty self-explanatory. He discusses the difference between pleasure and engagement as the difference between feeling happy and not feeling anything at all because you are totally and completely absorbed.
when he said that I realized:
I would take absorbed over happy almost any day.
(note the ALMOST - there's gotta be room for some "just because it feels good" times too)
check them out for yourself:
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