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Strive for Meaning

Emily Esfahani Smith’s distinction between a happy life and meaningful life were very interesting. I felt that I could identify with a lot of what she way saying. She believes that there are four pillars of a meaningful life; Belonging, purpose, transcendence and storytelling. Belonging revolves around the relationships with the people in your life. You must feel valued and accepted for you you are in order to feel that you belong. Purpose is more about what gets you out of bed everyday, what are you accomplishing every day that makes you proud. The third pillar, Transcendence, I understood to be out of body experiences or feelings. Emotional connections through religion, or the arts, anything that makes you feel apart of something bigger than yourself. The final pillar is storytelling. This pillar is entirely focused on your point of view. You are the author of your own story, your past. You deiced if you are going to let something dark in your past define you, or if you are going to grow from it.  Personally, I was able to relate to and understand these four pillars more than any article trying to tell me what happiness is and how to find it. I always felt that I am happy, but there is more I am striving for. Belonging, Purpose and storytelling are three that I feel I have done well with in my life so far. Transcendence on the other hand I have never been good at. I think that happiness come along with meaning and it is important we recognize this. 

Over the last week I tried to go out of my way to give more than take. I like to think I do this in my life normally, but I know I get lazy from time to time. Some examples ,At track practice I offered to help coach clean up drills, I drove a friend back to their dorm so they didn’t have to walk in the rain. Like I said I feel like I normally would offer to do these things. I definitely have done both of those examples previously, so I can’t say I feel different, but I can say that giving more than taking is always a pleasure. Even at Christmas I find giving someone a well thought out gift is better than receiving one. 

[kiram-blog2]

Fake it till ya feel it

For a little over a week I have been trying to “fake” my way into a better mindset. I am a track and field athlete at The University of West Georgia. Because of the Pandemic the starting up of practice was a little delayed, giving me an excuse to be EXTREMELY lazy these past few weeks. For the first time in years (literally) I was not going to some kind of practice 4 or 5 times a week. PLUS no parents to tell me to get out of bed and eat something other than Pizza bagels. I knew I needed to get myself back into the athlete mindset, so I saw this assignment as a perfect way to do that. Fake my way out of a lazy college student mindset. I found myself asking my friends to go to the gym with me, because athletes love to workout for fun of course.Then I said yes when a guy holding a “Follow me to a super fun workout class” asked if I wanted to join. I was pretending that I would much rather be going for a run or lifting weights than sitting in my nice comfortable bed binge watching Greys anatomy and it did work on those few occasions. I often had to remind myself of my task, but I will admit Greys Anatomy did win the battle more than a few times. Over all I think that this technique did way more good than harm. I had more fun than I would have had if I stayed in bed. I think having fun makes people happy so I do feel that I succeeded. I think faking yourself into a good feeling can’t hurt any situation and would recommend it to anyone.

[kiram-blog2]

Happiness Blog

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