Health, Happiness & Kindness – Monthly Round Up on Self Discovery

One of the things I have noticed about the os.me community is the number of people who have such wonderful stories and perspectives to share. There is an innate sense of connection when one reads something that connects with you and it’s a feeling of great warmth and joy that there are other folks who have similar thoughts, experiences and the underlying commonality of kindness. It’s a very unique recipe.

Life can be short or long depending on how we see it. Contrasting with how long humans have existed, a life span of 100 yrs seems very tiny. At the same time 70,80 or 90 seem like a lot of years and a long way to go. Everyone’s journey is different and most would agree that amongst all the things we seek, health and happiness is probably on most people’s list.

Before sharing some of the posts by our fellow members, I wanted to draw your attention to a very insightful ted talk I watched recently, The Secret to a Happy Life.

I remember over the years reading in a few different instances about a study that has been tracking participants over a very long time, since 1928 to be precise. Professor Robert Waldinger of Harvard University who currently heads the research shared a Ted talk that describes the main findings of this research which is the longest now tracking more than 3 generations. The speaker coined a term “social fitness” describing our ability to build relationships and correlating it to long term health and happiness. He also poses an interesting question, “How many people could you call in the middle of night if you were sick or scared?”. What I find interesting is there is a general consensus framework that defines happiness as almost entirely an internal phenomenon yet, the study which now tracks more than 2,000 people for more than 80 years says that our ability to build meaningful relationships in life – family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances plays a meaningful role. So how does one reconcile these ideas? It’s definitely food for thought and something you may find useful.

COMMUNITY & OTHER POSTS

Exploring Emotions – Deepa dives deeper into emotions, how it arises and also some tips on how to respond. She says “It might help if you think of the emotion as an energy that is looking for a release and you are simply the conductor of that energy.” I also found it very helpful to understand the need to respond and not react and Deepa gives a very good perspective that’s easy to grasp. 

Walking the Sharp Edge – Garima shares her perspective on discovering our own self, finding out what we are good at and what we enjoy so we may discover our calling, purpose or passion in life. She shares a great example where she turned criticism into strength and applies that in her career as a teacher. She also coins an interesting new term Inherent-ness and poses a question that many ask at different points of their life, “ Did Newton know by birth his special calling of being a scientist, did Sachin Tendulkar just know he was meant to create magic with a cricket bat in hand? Do we know our (I coin a new term here) Inherent-ness, i.e., our personal truth for this life?”

Spiritual by passes – Nandini shares 7 Spiritual by passes, things we overlook or take for granted in the spiritual journey and I could definitely relate to a few. It’s a really good self check to make sure we are moving in the right direction. I personally find point number 3 very true for myself. “It’s natural as you move deeper within yourself you won’t be able to engage with everyone. That’s fine. But at the same time as you learn to move away from people who are no longer conducive to your vibration you cannot limit yourself . There is a story I read, there was a man who would have the deepest mediations, one day after his mediation he saw his servant do something that immediately angered him. He erupted and landed a few blows on the man. If you can only handle yourself around the right vibrations, you need to look at yourself again.”

Set it Down – This is a poem by Sadhvi Vrinda Om. She describes how this life is composed of components and sometimes we just need to stop running around and just pause to set it down a bit. Our life is so much but it’s also so little, so small, so short. Reading her words really made me just pause and set my life down for a bit. 

When we look in the mirror – This is a post outside of os.me from Seth Godin who is an author, blogger and marketer by profession. He shares his mental model on looking in the mirror and becoming a better version or seeing who we really want to see in the mirror. He says “It turns out that when you’re surrounded by people who care about you, you have freedom and a chance to lead, you can become a different, more generous, happier, more powerful, more friended version of yourself”. 

The Mood Pyramid – Danny Sheridan writes a substack called Fact of the Day 1 and he shares a very thoughtful infographic on the Mood Pyramid which has 5 components and lays out how many servings of each makes up for a good mood. Are you getting enough servings of these for yourself?

I am also inspired by positive habits that people are building and sharing in the community. I was reminded that kindness begins at home and there is always an opportunity to think about people in our lives and take a moment to think and perform an act of kindness. I really enjoyed this post by Vidit on Wildr. 

Here is a quote to inspire us towards living life well by the amazing late Maya Angelou.

 “My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”

Wishing you a fantastic month of February and look forward to reading your thoughts.