My first blog of 2016. If I were still working at GSK I would have been sacked already for not meeting my first quarter objective. My blogs have been few and far between these months, but already 2016 is a year of great change. And I may not have been blogging, but my happiness project is still firmly in my mind. I have finished more than a quarter of my ultimate to do list, focussing on some very difficult ones that are now done. And some promises I made to myself, regarding sleep, running and phone are more or less there. Of course, I can do more. We all can.
But of late, I have been thinking long and deep about happiness, and as a scientist, I have massive issue with this. Just like I would be worried, in the lab, working on a project regarding pain, I find happiness a very abstract notion. There is no easy biochemical marker for happiness, how do we really know we are happy? Maybe, for example, I consider myself as happy, but maybe its all rubbish and in relation to others I am as miserable as they get? How do I know. When you tell me you're happy, how does that compare to me? How can happiness be standardised? These thoughts have come into my mind a fair bit the last few months, but I have had to quickly banish them away. Afterall, one of the key happiness hurdles is not to compare yourself to others. Even the happiest people I know have their moments of doom and gloom. Right now, sitting in my computer, I want to quantify my happiness, but I have no idea how to?
According to the University of Stamford, you can quantify your happiness by two measures. Your state of mind and how well your life is going. The first concept, I find hard to answer, how happy is the state of mind. Surely, you can say you're happy, you can convince others you are, but really are you? How do you know you really are? How well your life is going is also an abstract concept, you start to compare yourself there, and that is a nono.
So despite the demons, that I have yet to figure out how to solve, my happiness project is still alive and running. Because it surely does more good than harm to be thinking carefully about my happiness and wellbeing. So the blogs are back, especially now things have calmed down around me, so watch this space.
But of late, I have been thinking long and deep about happiness, and as a scientist, I have massive issue with this. Just like I would be worried, in the lab, working on a project regarding pain, I find happiness a very abstract notion. There is no easy biochemical marker for happiness, how do we really know we are happy? Maybe, for example, I consider myself as happy, but maybe its all rubbish and in relation to others I am as miserable as they get? How do I know. When you tell me you're happy, how does that compare to me? How can happiness be standardised? These thoughts have come into my mind a fair bit the last few months, but I have had to quickly banish them away. Afterall, one of the key happiness hurdles is not to compare yourself to others. Even the happiest people I know have their moments of doom and gloom. Right now, sitting in my computer, I want to quantify my happiness, but I have no idea how to?
According to the University of Stamford, you can quantify your happiness by two measures. Your state of mind and how well your life is going. The first concept, I find hard to answer, how happy is the state of mind. Surely, you can say you're happy, you can convince others you are, but really are you? How do you know you really are? How well your life is going is also an abstract concept, you start to compare yourself there, and that is a nono.
So despite the demons, that I have yet to figure out how to solve, my happiness project is still alive and running. Because it surely does more good than harm to be thinking carefully about my happiness and wellbeing. So the blogs are back, especially now things have calmed down around me, so watch this space.
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