⚡️ Enlightening Bolts

✨ Choose The Life You Already Have: The opposite of settling. Read it here.

🧠 Where thinking ends and life begins Breaking your addiction to thought and waking up the right side of your brain. Read it here.

👁️ No Small Wonder: Dacher Keltner On The Science Of Awe. Read it here.

🎇 Image of The Week

An enchanting image captured by Hungarian photographer Csaba Daróczia:

“I was photographing a wedding in a forest clearing in the beautiful surroundings of Uzsa, Hungary. The hall lights attracted a lot of insects to rest on the windows. At one point, I saw some guests taking pictures with their phones next to one of the red lights. As I moved closer, I noticed an oak peacock moth (Antheraea yamamai) had taken up residence on the window. I waited until everyone had finished their pictures, and then it was my turn.”

🧐 The Pursuit of Wisdom

While in college a friend told me he didn't think chasing happiness was the point.

I asked him what then?

He said...

"Wisdom."

He was right.

Happiness is one particular state of emotional weather patterns.

Wisdom is knowing how to embrace the storms, seeing the beauty in the blizzard, and not wishing away the rain because we know it's nourishing.

Trying to freeze your emotional state into happiness is like trying to lasso a cloud. It's not going to work and the whole enterprise distracts from enjoying the shade.

Wisdom is escaping from the notion that we should only experience positive emotions and negative emotions should be shunned.

The other side of the emotional spectrum is fertile ground for so much richness.

Grief and sadness point us to what matters.

Anger points us to what must be done.

Embrace the totality of your being.

Allow your full humanity.

Let happiness arise and emerge.

Don't chase it when it drifts or you'll find it fades even faster.

Simply welcome the emotional weather patterns with open arms and you can find the peace that lives beyond the need to chronically seek change.

That's wisdom.

🛟 From Thrashing To Floating

Drink in these words from Henry Shukman:

🤓 Learn This Word

Symhedonia: Learning to enjoy someone else's accomplishments

🕸️ From Around The Web

Try seeing your personality as dimensional

‘I’m not very hopeful,’ I caught myself saying to a friend the other day about an application I’m anxious to hear back about. ‘I’m just so impatient to know!’

In that one conversation, I had labelled myself as a ‘hopeless’, ‘anxious’ and ‘impatient’ person, the implication being that I am not hopeful, calm or patient. What chance did I have at stomaching the wait?

It’s easy to think of ourselves and others in such absolute terms – to say with certainty ‘I am an empath, so I feel things deeply’ or ‘They are an introvert and this is why they don’t like group activities.’ The internet is awash with quizzes that seek to satisfy this need to put ourselves in boxes.

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