How to be Happy (An Unexpected Formula)

Puh, I just finished a long compilation of my recent Unintentional ASMR, which you can find here (presented from my bed 😅 It took my almost 2 days to finalize).

But ok, let’s get to back to the important things in life:

🤔 What I’ve been thinking of

How can we live a happy life? Everybody has their own ideas about that, I guess.  

I came across a somewhat unusual happiness formula (it doesn’t include love, gratitude or mindfulness) in Scott Adams’ book (he’s the creator of the comic Dilbert). First off, I like his take on why maximizing happiness is a reasonable life goal which isn’t selfish:

“Only a sociopath or a hermit can find happiness through extreme selfishness. A normal person needs to treat others well in order to enjoy life. For the sake of argument, let’s assume your normal(ish)”.

Here’s the first part of the Scott Adams happiness formula, which isn’t all that surprising: Exercise, diet and sleep (most of your happiness comes from your body feeling healthy, and not your genes or circumstances).   The other components of Scott’s happiness formula are more interesting to me:

• Having a flexible schedule (i.e. being able to do what you want, when you want). According to Scott, a person with a flexible schedule in his career and personal life and average resources will be happier than a rich person without a flexible schedule. I agree that being in control of my time increases my happiness immensely, as I can take naps or walks outside when I feel like it, and choose what I want to work on at what time
• We are happy if things move in the right direction. “Happiness has more to do with where you’re heading then where you are”. Ideally, choose a career that will lead to a lifetime of improved performance. You should have at least some areas in your life where you can see steady, visible improvements, like a sport or creative hobby
• Master your imagination: “Pessimism is often a failure of imagination.” If you can imagine the future being brighter, you’ll be much happier. By contrast, if you can’t even imagine an improved future, you’re basically in depression. Scott Adams claims that he finds it useful to daydream “that the future will be better than today, by far”
• Create routines so you don’t have to think about what you do every day (this one is pretty obvious)

My take-aways: I like how little this formula relies on “thinking your way into happiness” or expecting others to make you happy, and instead focuses on daily rituals and lifestyle choices that make you healthy, independent and optimistic.

More concretely, I want to incorporate the “imagination exercise” when journaling in the morning and daydream in as much detail as possible about a better future (I think this will help me as I’m usually somehwat cynical).

My question to you: What do you think about this formula, and how many of these compoonents have you already incorporated into your life?

😴 What helped me find calm this week

Unintentional ASMR Picks:

Here’s some Unintentional ASMR which I think you’ll enjoy:

• This Spiritual Healer (I’m not sure what he does exactly) gives me tingles, I think it’s less about the massages and hand movements and more about his hynotic voice 
• Demonstration of the Gutenberg Printing Press with a lovely man (see image above) – the inkball tapping sounds are great
• This might be the craziest accent I’ve ever heard (it’s a Finnish guy reading a story)
• What a nice and interesting space documentary about the Black Hole Cygnus X-1 – the retro 70s narrator is on point
• I enjoyed this man showing us Stephen King’s Dark Tower Graphic Novels. The illustrations are nice, the page turning and narrating too
• A senior Guitar Repairer (channel StewMac) gently fixing the frets – I love watching people concentrated on and passionate about their work

All videos are on my second Unintentional ASMR Channel (I’d be cool if you subscribed by clicking the button below) Click here to subscribe to the YouTube Channel

Intentional ASMR Picks:

Here are some cool intentional ASMR videos that I added to my “ASMR Favorites” Playlist:

• FredsVoice made a fantastic new video with nice spraying and spritzing sounds with different water bottles (I love this trigger)  
• “White Triggers”: I almost missed this gem by Made in France ASMR, which is visually beautiful, with various creative triggers (no talking)
• Intense Mouth Sounds by ASMR Glow: I’m not a huge fan of these usually, but she does it well and maybe you’re into that. If not, she also made a really good fast tapping video
• Gotta have a hair-related video in the mix, and Tingting delivered (as usual) a great Relaxing Hair Dye Treatment video

💎 Hidden gem ASMR channel of the week: Angelica – I love her artsy and creative roleplays (there’s one where she prepares your crucification, and a newer one with a 1900s seamstress shop with a southern accent which I enjoyed). I don’t know how many subscribers she has (it’s hidden), but I haven’t heard of her before!

💜 Something I’ve been enjoying

I started training Kickboxing and Grappling – I should have started earlier, I love it so far! I think such a sport is especially good for “in-their-head-people” like me, since it’s very physical.

I’m completely sore from last week though, and I’m not sure if I will survive training 4 times a week, which was my goal (I’ll tell you in a few weeks:)