Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Adding more life to your days

I have been reading a new book, "Moonwalking with Einstein," and a specific quote (actually, a few) I read really caught my attention. Here they are:

"Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it... If you spend your life sitting in a cubicle and passing papers, one day is bound to blend unmemorably into the next- and disappear. That's why it's important to change routines regularly, and take vacations to exotic locales, and have as many new experiences as possible that can serve to anchor our memories. Creating new memories stretches out psychological time, and lengthens our perception of our lives." (p. 77)

"Life seems to speed up as we get older because life gets less memorable as we get older. 'If to remember is to be human, then remembering more means being more human'." (p. 77)

After reading this I thought that along with happinizing, or maybe even to further happinzing, we need to add more life to our days. So take a different route on your daily run, finally go to that new restaurant you've been meaning to go to, there's a street party? well, go! It is these memorable experiences that add to our humanness and make our lives more memorable. In the "Happy" documentary one of the happiness researchers comments that novel experiences are extremely important in helping our brain produce the chemicals that are needed for that happy feeling, and additionally all of these things are vital in strengthening neural pathways as well as creating new ones (furthering learning and information retention), so go, thrive, try something new, and add life to your days!

*Happiness is a skill, happinize on!

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