All tagged Happiness

Three Places for a Happy Life – Thoughts Inspired by Haruki Murakami’s Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki

Haruki Murakami’s 2013 book “Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage: A novel” drew mixed reviews. Some people loved it; other’s accused Murakami of relying too much on his proven plots and recipes.

I loved the book, so much that I read it in a single day.

But this article is not supposed to be another book review (if you like those, check out my “Food for Thought Posts”), it is a reflection based on an idea that was mentioned in passing in the book, but that I found quite profound. The idea of the “Three Places” that define our lives and our happiness.

Want to increase your Happiness? Fight off FOMO!

Some of the biggest obstacles on our path to happiness are inside of our own heads -- deep-rooted instincts that might have once served an evolutionary purpose, but that now are mainly lowering our quality of life.

One of the strongest and most destructive of these innate reflexes is FOMO. What sounds like an uptown art gallery, stands for “Fear of Missing Out” and is far less innocent than it appears.

I Fight, Therefore I Am! – More Reflections on Fear

This is the second Life-Sparring round on the topic of fear within four months. 

That I am revisiting the topic after such a short time is mainly motivated by two factors: a recent personal crisis on my side, and reading Daniele Bolelli’s excellent book Not Afraid: On Fear, Heartbreak, Raising a Baby Girl, and Cage Fighting. 

Trying to Break the Spell - Some Reflections on Fear

I never have been a particularly brave person. I guess in some aspects I was even a fairly fearful child. Only in university did I slowly start to break free from many of my fears. As it seems, being able to confront my fears is at least one positive side effect of aging. 
How about you? What are you afraid of? How do you deal with your fears?