I've had a good past week, which I suppose isn't that hard when it starts with having Monday off thanks to Memorial Day. I've been making an effort, especially this week, to do meaningful things with my free time, not just laze around on the internet and watch tv when I'm not at work, and it's really made a difference in how I feel about my day as I'm going to bed. We learned in one of my psychology classes a couple semesters back about Positive Psychology, a new field pioneered by Martin Seligman. Without going into it too deeply, Seligman covers three different important fields in order to lead a happy, positive life: the Pleasant Life, the Engaged Life, and the Meaningful Life. The Pleasant Life is about taking pleasure in the small things you do everyday, like eating a great sandwich, walking by a nice garden, or smelling cut grass. The Engaged Life is about really focusing on your work or what you're doing at any given moment. You don't necessarily have to enjoy the work, but if you're focused and "in the zone" it's a more rewarding experience. The Meaningful Life is about connecting to others, doing charity work, passing on skills to the next generation, things like that. This week I started really thinking about the Engaged life and the Pleasant life and I've definitely noticed that my general positivity level has upped. At work, especially, I've noticed a difference as I've made myself focus more on what I'm doing and not get sidetracked online or fall into a pattern of procrastination (definitely my biggest weakness, as usual). So, that's what I've been doing this week! Work has been challenging, but good this week. We finally started running our new study (which we've been working on for a year now) and we've run three participants so far. They've all gone really well and the data has been completely usable! Not to mention that the kids have been adorable and none of them have gotten fussy or given us any problems, which is the ideal when working with young children in Psych studies. I think that one of the reasons this week has been so rewarding is that I've been working so long in the lab preparing for this study (over a year!) and it's great to finally be running it and have it go so well. Yesss
Something else that has made this week awesome- perhaps THE thing that's made it awesome actually- is what I saw today while walking to the bank. Here's a picture I took, please excuse the bad quality, I took it on my phone:
It's a squirrel! Eating an ice cream cone! Like a person!
That is awesome.
How about something along these lines:
ReplyDeleteFor at least two hours of your challenge, you must do your activity while listening to a style of music/artist that you dislike?
Or for every person wearing [insert item of clothing] you see in the four hours, you have to give X amount of money to a cause to decrease Worldsuck?
I am always 'trying' to fill my days with meaningful activities, but I still catch myself sitting and watching movie trailers and scrolling through facebook book feeds more than I should... And instead, I should, and would rather be, learning guitar or going for a jog outside!
ReplyDeleteI really like that. I think I could benefit from changing the way I go about my day as well. For starters: get off friend's blogs while working... ><
ReplyDeleteWhat?! This is a completely positive and beneficial way to be spending your time!
ReplyDelete