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Eight takeaways:

Bertrand Russell broke down the root causes of unhappiness into eight categories of common errors humans make. They are:

1. Fashionable pessimism: Presenting an outwardly negative or pessimistic attitude, often to seem more enlightened or sensitive.
2. Social comparison: Evaluating one’s worth based on what others possess, enjoy, or achieve. This leads directly to envy and discontent.
3. Envy: Feeling unhappy because others have more, leading to resentment and dissatisfaction. Envy can be channeled positively into healthy admiration.
4. Evading boredom: Fear of boredom drives an unhealthy embrace of distractions, preventing contentment in the present moment. We need to stop fearing boredom and be comfortable with what is going on around us.
5. Coping with fear: Refusing to face and rationalize one’s fears, leading to anxiety and avoidance behaviors. Russell said, “We must think about our fears rationally and calmly, but with great concentration, until it has been completely familiar.”
6. Senseless guilt: Feeling guilty without reason or due to undue privilege, hindering happiness. Guilt can be channeled positively to gratitude.
7. Virtuous victimhood: Identifying too strongly as a victim of circumstances, which can perpetuate feelings of injustice and unhappiness. Self-pity can stimulate anger and depression.
8. Fear of public opinion: Allowing the opinions of others, especially strangers, to dictate self-worth and decisions, causing distress and anxiety.

Brooks notes that Russell is not saying that misery is a moral failing – he is saying that by correcting errors in our thinking, we can avoid unnecessary suffering.

From Arthur C. Brooks at The Atlantic:
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Note: At the time of this posting The Atlantic offers five free article views per month.

Five takeaways:

Here are five tips to avoiding “the comparison trap” in defining your own sense of personal self-worth.

1. Define what success means to you: Defining your own personal concept of success shifts the focus onto your particular set of values and goals, reducing the tendency to compare with others. It makes your path distinct. Why apply someone else’s path to yours, when yours is so different?
2. Discover your own strengths: Recognize and utilize your own skill, talents, and passions. The more defined and sharpen your skillset, the less you will think that someone else’s success could possibly apply to your own path.
3. Think of the big picture: Remember that people only show you what they want to show you. There is always more under the surface; we are all contending with a particular set of challenges, stressors, and priorities. That is life.
4. Always be a student: Embrace a mindset of continuous learning by positioning yourself as a student with more to explore in life. This philosophy fosters collaboration with peers instead of competing with them. If you see yourself as an artist in the process of creating your masterpiece, you’re less likely to feel inferior when comparing your work to others, and more likely to learn important lessons from those you admire.
5. Focus on small successes: Counter comparison by concentrating on your own small achievements and projects. This approach allows for a sense of accomplishment, even if progress feels minute or incremental. Embrace the process of progress, rather than the destination.

Learning to channel the self-comparison impulse positively can shape your learning and sharpen your own sense of progress.

From Shiv Kumar for Tiny Buddha
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Five takeaways:

1. Opening with a reference to Tolstoy’s immortal opening to Anna Karenina, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” this piece argues that there are many ways to unhappiness– but that the successful journey to true happiness is rooted a single guiding principle- one’s relationships.
2. Research suggests that happier people tend to have common traits related to socialization, with very happy individuals engaging more often in social activities with relatives, neighbors, friends, and going to group experiences.
3. The quality of one’s relationships plays a significant role in happiness. Happier people cherish and nourish their close friendships, and their familial/romantic relationships.
4. The article then touches on family dynamics, with studies indicating that happier families follow a narrow but well-worn path to happiness: they focus on emotional warmth and strive for harmonious communication.
5. The path to happiness, Brooks argues, is not exclusively dependent on factors like net worth, family structure, or ideological views. Instead, true happiness requires a focus on allowing oneself to be loved, which can be achieved by consciously prioritizing and enhancing the quality of relationships.

From Arthur C. Brooks at The Atlantic:
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Note: At the time of this posting The Atlantic offers five free article views per month.

Five takeaways:

• In the 1920s, Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik observed an odd thing. While dining out, she was impressed by the complex orders the wait staff was able to remember at one time. Yet, as soon as the bill was paid, the wait staff forgot completely what the orders were. This observation gave rise to the study of what would become known as the Zeigarnik Effect: our tendency to remember incomplete or interrupted tasks better than completed ones.
• The thought of Incomplete tasks divides your attention, splitting your focus and making it harder to concentrate on whatever you’re currently working on. The Zeigarnik Effect also lingers in our minds when we’re outside of work, allowing thoughts of unfinished work to seep into time meant for leisure or relaxation.
• The article provides some tactics for overcoming the Zeigarnik effect:
  1. Write Your Tasks Down: Reduce your memory’s habit of lingering on work…habitually write down tasks as they come to you using a digital task manager like Todoist.
  2. Have a System for Organizing and Regularly Reviewing your Tasks: Establish a systematic approach for going over your tasks to build trust in your task management system.
  3. Have an End of Work Shutdown Ritual: Before ending your workday, plan out the following day’s tasks. This can prevent lingering unfinished tasks from occupying your mind.
  4. Find a Small Way to Get Started: Overcome procrastination by identifying a small initial step to beginning work on a big or difficult task. Taking that first step can trigger your brain to continue.
  5. Don’t forget to look back at how far you’ve come: Be intentional in going over your list of completed tasks, possibly in a weekly review, allowing you to appreciate your achievements.

From Becky Kane for Todoist
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