positive psychology....what do u think

Post Reply New Topic

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/200 ... main_x.htm

To be happy, you must always get what you want. To be unhappy is to be denied of something, or the unhapiness is the loss of control over one's existence.

Same goes for all those other people around you.

The two are unfortunately mutually exclusive. There's always going to be someone who will get what they want, and someone who won't, and finally someone who will take what they want from someone else.

We are all set up for endless disappointment and misery and conflict. (Except those hermits living in a cabin in the mountains. I bet they are happier than the city dwellers.)

I have heard that people tend to hang out with other people who are like them. Like Idiots tend to hang out with other idiots. I have also noticed the same on TV where people who are outcasts tend to hang out with nerds or geeks or other people who are also outcasts.

But I must not be that happy then since I spend lot of my time online, not little time. Maybe when I have a kid I will be too busy for the internet I won't be on as much. I also don't go out often and I still feel happy.

I dislike much of that article. I found the stuff about having a set-point for happiness disturbing. If most of happiness is genetic, I'm freaking doomed.

I think it's the Buddhists that say that happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have.. and more importantly, not wanting what other people have. Pretty much every religion says that last part. Wanting to "keep up with the Joneses" pretty much means coveting thy neighbor's fill-in-the-blank.

The website for positive psychology is http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn ... fault.aspx . I like it because of its focus on what you can do and what you can do better. I really dislike American society's fixation on disability and victimhood. I have known disabled people who were very good at there jobs. Focusing on what you can't do distracts you from what you can do.

Having said that, autism confers both strengths and weaknesses. While we can never boost our weaknesses to NT levels, we can definitely use our strengths. The key is to get NTs to think of autism as a difference, not a disability, that confers wild differences in strengths and weaknesses. Don't make use emotional capacities we don't have and do let us use the intellectual capacities we do have.

Interesting article. Thanks, Joshandspot.

I'd read the 'gratefulness' thing before, and it seems to be pretty easy to apply.

Out of my sense for fairness, I want to post the link to "Daily Afflictions".

http://www.dailyafflictions.com/

I've also read that people who live in large extended families have much lower rates of depression. The classic example (based on the research) is people who came to the US from Mexico. They started out poor, in a large extended family, with low rates of depression. Then they move to the US, but still have lots of contacts with their family back home, and some extended family in the US. The depression rate goes up, but not that much.

Their kids, though, grow up in the US and never experience the clan community. They have much higher depression rates, equal to other native born americans.

I wonder what the statistics are for aspies/auties? It would be difficult to test, because the families would need to be able to just accept the kids, and let them stim out and stuff. But I could see if the family was safe space, and especially if other family members are on the spectrum, it could be the best environment, and it would be a lot easier to be around people all the time.

That's true. But it is theoretical and unnatural. Of course people have desires and get frustrated when they are denied. And I'm not even talking about material acquisitions.

I want to live in Hawaii, surf all day, bum out on the beach, ride my bicycle, fly my Cessna around the islands, date gorgeous women, run Ironman Kona every year, and maybe work part time at a coffee shop or a bike shop or a surf shop.

That isn't going to happen.

Go to http://www.city-data.comp, and search around for Hawaiian cities; you'll find that like in Hawaii isn't all it's cracked up to be. Make sure to look at the forums. They have comments posted by people who live in Hawaii or planning to move there. If you're staying in a hotel, eating in restaurants, and exploring kitschy tourist sites, that's one thing. But when you're going through the daily grind, that's something completely different. People on that site talk about the outrageously expensive food and housing, poverty, having to fly everywhere outside the islands, drug use, and numerous bureaucratic rules and regulations. Unlike Alaska, you don't even get paid just for living there. And honestly, the "tropical paradise" environment will get old sooner or later. I don't mean to dash your fantasy or anything, but I'm a pessimist by nature, and I'm trying to point out the dark side of living in Hawaii, before you move there based on a fantasy perpetuated by the media.

but everything they wrote was so natural, surely I can't be the only one who didn't learn anything new,