What are you reading?

Designing your life, how to life a well lived joyful life.....it’s based on the concept that design can tell you what you want to be when you grow up or for your encore career...also based on a successful course at Stanford ....will let you know any useful tips. 😀

I like this book, one of the first exercises has you fill out a dashboard where you rank in quarters how well you are doing in work, play, love and health. Anything too low is a red light. I only rated work and play at 25% each because I’m just studying now but I noticed that even though I’m not really working I’m not really playing very well either....I think I need to increase both in the short term, study more but schedule time where I can be free and not feel guilty. Right now I feel like I spend too much time doing nothing, checking pc and Facebook etc....it’s not really play and it’s taking away from time I could be doing something more fun.

Still reading Les Miserables, it's a long book. Also reading one of my books I own, The Bipolar Disorder Survival Guide and I am picking up Madness: A Bipolar Life from the library today. Have been into memoirs lately

This is an incredible book, they also talk about kind mapping which is like a really innovative type of brain storm. And they discuss problems such as gravity and anchor problems, you can’t fight gravity but you can reframe an anchor problem. I think a lot of how this book works is like cognitive restructuring but they call it reframing.

Is "kind mapping" a typo of mind mapping?? I've heard of mind mapping before, but not kind mapping... If it's not a typo, how does it differ?

*Willow*

Yes typo hehe....

Thanks! lol I found mind mapping really useful for revision over my years of studying.

*Willow*

Omg so many blogs on mental illness, flowers, photography etc.....I would have never found these through google. I recommend becoming a blogger just for the ability to find more people’s stories....😀

Yeah, i found a lot of philosophy and literature blogs, it's interesting to get an academics view on Homer. Footnotes to Plato is a pretty good one, i think Newt would like him. I believe he's a professor, reviews a lot of books and posts philosophy stuff.

I wish i could get somewhere with it though. Somehow get paid for all the hard work i put into mine. Like with a Patreon. :/

Yeah yours is so in depth....some people do add a patreon or a donation button....I’m not entirely sure which plans that works with for Wordpress though. If you ever publish your book though a blog following can help with that.

I got this book called "Rock Steady: Brilliant Advice From My Bipolar Life" by Ellen Forney at the library today. It was released this year. It's a graphic novel that gives tips for living with Bipolar or any mood disorder and maintaining stability. It's really cool!

I'm also on book 3 of The Iron Fey series.

The little book of hygge.....it’s a book on why danish people are so happy ....I’ve been into reading about happiness lately....like how do you get there, how do you maintain it etc.

This is such a cute book it’s like a culturally encoded version of happiness embedded in the language itself......

My last name is Danish from my father's side. My mother's side is Norwegian so I'm about 100% Scandinavian. Their history shows struggles with the rich and the common folks who eventually won and created socialism for their democracy. So they have universal healthcare, college education, huge paternity leave I think 6 months. They pay high taxes but their wages are higher too. They seem to really identify with each other's problems. Their classrooms are revolutionary. They actually let the kids play with their lessons, and get this--NO HOMEWORK. Why did my great grandmparents leave Scandinavia???

I remember after I broke up from my 9 year relationship I bought a book "How to be Happy." I remember looking at the cashiers face when i gave him the book to scan. He raised his eye brows and took a double look at me and frowned. That was 9 years ago that i bought that book. My depression was dark and the book didn't really help. I think what finally helped me was when I found a purpose in academia in philosophy. That's why I clung to it even during my psychosis. Even though there was no chance of getting letters of recommendation I couldn't let go for the longest time. It was really nice having a meaning to life to look towards where I could play in my field. It meant the world to me that I had hope of living such a dream "Living on the isle of the blest" as Aristotle calls it, where one can live the contemplative life that mostly only gods are capable of.

I'm reading Goethe's Faust again. I'm hoping for some much needed inspiration that it once gave. It've been 5 years since i've read it carefully. Every page has a good quote. ANd I love my notes I've collected over the years of reading it and annotating it myself. I wish I could annotate boks for a living like the Norton Critical Edition annotated books for scholars but with more philosophical and aesthetic back ground.

I'm glad that you are enjoying the book. Words are important. I know that I bang on about it, but how can you understand or share ideas if there are no words for them?? That's exactly why they removed words from the language in the book '1984' - you couldn't have 'bad' thoughts if the words and the concepts themselves didn't exist.

And culture is so important for happiness too. In Italian (I don't speak any Italian, so forgive me if I'm getting this slightly wrong), they have a word that basically translates as 'the art of doing nothing'. I find that interesting because 1) it seems to be an active process of doing nothing (rather than passive like we would see it in English), but also it doesn't have the negative connotations that we give 'doing nothing' in English.

At least in the UK and US, I know that doing nothing has bad connotations of laziness etc. Everybody likes to humble brag about how 'busy' they are all of the time, which, IMO, is why we're all so stressed as a society! For me, I have found great pleasure in practising 'the art of doing nothing' (as I understand it, not speaking Italian or knowing their full interpretation of the saying) of trying to live in the moment and enjoy the simple pleasures in life, such as a warm breeze, a nice cup of tea, spying a ladybird on a leaf in the garden etc etc. That's happiness to me, and I've found little elsewhere, especially not in the 'busy-ness' that is 'worshipped' by society these days.

*Willow*

Yeah its interesting but there seems to be a flow state for play as well as work and its in doing things like watching a fire where your mind is watching the gently shifting patterns or other simple activities that really engage us in a calm playful way.

The man who wasn’t there.....

Error coding manual. :P
I thought it would help me sleep - but actually i liked it!!!

So this is an interesting book.....they are talking about estatic seizures and where they act in the brain.....they make you super happy and feel connected to the universe.....has to do with the acc and anterior insula....apparently our emotions come from there good and bad.....make me think of DT. There apparently is a way to increase activity in this area but it has to do with psychedelics used in shamanism..

Called ayahuasca.....