Stress as Personal Engagement Barometer
"The same circumstances that give rise to stress, also give rise to these positive experiences and that’s what I call the stress paradox. That even though we experience stress in the moment as distressing and we often think of it as being undesirable in our lives, we might wish for a less stressful life."
~ Kelly McGonigal
We Crave More
We assume that things we are attracted to will relieve our suffering and raise our happiness.
The Power of Negative Thinking
"Behind all of the most popular modern approaches to happiness and success is the simple philosophy of focusing on things going right. But ever since the first philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome, a dissenting perspective has proposed the opposite: that it's our relentless effort to feel happy, or to achieve certain goals, that is precisely what makes us miserable and sabotages our plans."
~ Oliver Burkeman
The Ghost Within Every Experience
"A poem is a place where the conditions of beyondness and withinness are made palpable, where to imagine is to feel what it is like to be. It allows us to have the life we are denied because we are too busy living."
~ Mark Strand