This is the No. 1 kind of person we need in our lives to ‘feel our best’ “They can be equal parts role model, mentor, therapist, coach, and co-conspirator,” says Ximena Vengoechea, author of “The Life Audit.”
These are the most common habits that prevent you from achieving happiness, Arthur Brooks says Happiness starts with asking yourself questions that will help you understand the meaning of your life, Brooks says
And as I go on with my life, it’s clear that with every moment, the uncertainty of this statement diminishes while its certainty grows.
Yes, I may die today
And when that moment comes, the only thing that will matter is how I made everyone feel in each of my interactions.
Yes, I may die today
The core of my character defines how I live and what motivates my every action.
Beyond what I say, my character speaks volumes about who I am.
Ethics, character, principles, consciousness, and morality define who I am.
This election could be the last one I vote in. Yes, policies are important—but only if they arise from a consciousness grounded in ethical and moral values. My vote reflects who I am and what truly matters to me in my life and in my relationship with you.
“I may die today” is a Tibetan mantra that reminds us of our priorities in life.
How to enjoy the music and sounds of the world that surrounds us Breathwork for Beginners: What to Know and How to Get Started
The Tchaikovsky Cure for Worry
NCPC Volunteer Awards Celebration where ticket sales close Oct 25th
Join us at this annual celebration of philanthropists that invest their time not necessarily their money…
‘Ear-marvellous’: how to enjoy the music and sounds of the world that surrounds us A fuller appreciation of the sounds that surround us can transform your life.
Breathwork for Beginners: What to Know and How to Get Started Breathwork refers to various breathing exercises that involve intentionally changing your breathing pattern. Many people practice breathwork to support their mental, physical, and spiritual well-being.
The Tchaikovsky Cure for Worry If you have anxiety, or simply want a greater sense of well-being, getting creative is just about the best thing you can do. June 27, 2024, The 19th-century Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky—still popular today for such works as The Nutcracker and the 1812 Overture—was not a happy man. In his 5,365 extant letters to friends and family, we find constant references to his sadness and unremitting anxiety. Over and over, he wrote versions of the line: “I suffered incredibly from depression…
NCPC Volunteer Awards Celebration where ticket sales close Oct 25th so sign up NOW!
Join us at this annual celebration of philanthropists that invest their time not necessarily their money and change lives and communities in San Diego…
5 science-backed habits that will actually make you happier
Brunch with a View Gala to Support Mental Health, Oct 19th at Viewpoint Brewing in Del Mar
The Zen Den Experience at Cause SD Oct 23, 2024: From Purpose to Action
“Adventure is not outside man; it is within. ”― George Eliot
The Case for Explorers’ Day: This year, I won’t be celebrating Columbus Day or Indigenous Peoples’ Day. More than 530 years after Christopher Columbus led an expedition across the Atlantic Ocean to the New World, many Americans still see the navigator as a symbol of their country’s origins. Others see him as a progenitor of colonialism, enslavement, and genocide. So, the day that honors him, the second Monday of October, is unusually polarizing among federal holidays.
While Astronauts Probe Outer Space, Psycho-Nauts Probe Inner Space
What we can do to help ourselves and others navigate the journey towards joy and happiness…
The Pleasure Principle:
Moons ago, Dr. Paul Pearsall, elegantly blending neuropsychology and the kahuna traditions, inviting us to go beyond the conventional questions to determine our health and wellbeing we hear in our average of “7 minute annual doctor visits” – from gleaning familial history, to our diet and what we ate, to exercise and how much and how often, to our stress level and how stressed we felt, to asking if we were happy!
Many with genetic predispositions, lousy diets, limited exercise, and high levels of stress, seemed to offset these “preconditions” because they loved what they were doing and self-reported as happy.
The Pleasure Principal matters!
BTW, this is not an excuse to eat poorly or be coach potatoes, but speaks to the power of pleasure in our lives…
You deserve Joy!
A New Model for Assessing Mental Health:
Recent frameworks, rather that simply focus on symptomology and severity of symptoms, adds an additional dimension to the consideration set on the “WHY” axis; namely flourishing or languishing.
Some of us have tons of symptoms but are seemingly flourishing. Others are asymptomatic but seem to be languishing.
DSM-5 “labeling” is less about helping us, and more about managing cost (not managing care) in a system that cares more about money management than real people issues, so explore both symptoms and the languishing/flourishing continuum for your own wellbeing!
An Updated Reframing of Stress and Addressing It:
Our old model for dealing with stress, asked limiting questions such as “how do I cope”? The new model posits higher order questions and reframing like when demands exceed resources, we are stressed, so it is up to us to resource ourselves, rather than hunker down, bite the bullet and pretend nothing is happening…
If you just need some modest tweaks to your current state, the next link will help you resituate.
If things are a bit more severe than that, for you or loved ones, please consider professional support like Fundamental Health with “Brunch with a View” happening locally on October 19th (read on)
5 science-backed habits that will actually make you happier: They’re all easy, don’t worry.
The Brunch with a View Gala to Support Mental Health, Oct 19th at Viewpoint Brewing in Del Mar:
Wyatt Hinshaw, Founder & CEO of Fundamental Health, is joined by the mother (Cate) of Fundamental Health’s first client, to chat about the mission of the organization and how Fundamental Health connected Cate’s son with a health provider that changed the son’s life. Hinshaw and Cate discuss Fundamental Health’s impact since its December 2022 inception, along with the October 19, 2024 “Brunch with a View Gala” that will be held at the Viewpoint Brewing Company, with me co-hosting this podcast interview.
Use the Code: Causeconf30off and get 30% off the ticket price and connect with kindred spirits to do purposeful work both for yourself and at the systems level.
You can Tune up and Tune in at the Mission Fed Zen Den with massage stations, yoga, singing bowls, breath breaks and 13 practitioners offering you personalized self-care all day!
Oct 23, 2024, from 8am to 5pm at the Sharp Prebys Innovation and Education Center
Use the Code: Causeconf30off and get 30% off the ticket price and connect with kindred spirits to do purposeful work both for yourself and at the systems level.
We will be sharing a San Diego Doughnut Economics Portrait, and Mission Fed is sponsoring a Zen Den where you can get complimentary wellness and self-care sessions all day in multi-modalities from massage to relaxation to acupuncture and more…
More on the Doughnut-
How Do We Measure Success?
“What if economics didn’t start with money but with human wellbeing”?
Even the creators of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) felt it was an inadequate measure as it does not count intangible upsides like Taylor Swift’s IP or the value of Childcare, or on the other side of the ledger, the adverse consequences and downsides like climate change, deforestation, ocean apocalypse, extreme heat, etc.
We are putting together a San Diego Doughnut Portrait with CalDEC (California Doughnut Economics Coalition) to solve for this important but complex question- in partnership with academia, business, government, and the social sector (nonprofits and philanthropy)
“The future is not the result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created – created first in the mind and will, and created next in activity.
The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating.
The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them changes both the maker and the destination.”
“The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.”
Confront the Brutal Facts-
Earth just sweltered through the hottest summer in recorded history: Amid an onslaught of lethal heat, surging disease and record-breaking storms, global temperatures this summer climbed to the highest levels on record.
A critical system of Atlantic Ocean currents could collapse as early as the 2030s, new research suggests It uses state-of-the-art models to estimate the shutdown could happen between 2037 and 2064, and that it’s more likely than not to collapse by 2050.
Teens invent remarkable device while searching for way to save community: ‘Can be implemented anywhere in the world’ The team intentionally designed its product for use in even the poorest areas of the world. Beyza and Diyar are two members of the Turkish Team Ceres, runners-up in the Earth Prize who created a new crop-boosting technology called Plantzma. Euronews reported that the idea came from Beyza’s reading on exoplanets, faraway planets orbiting stars other than the sun. “I was reading NASA’s articles so much, and NASA has so much work about plasma and its wide range of uses,” she told the publication.
These reviled birds of prey literally save people’s lives As a young man in the 1990s, walking to school in New Delhi, Anant Sudarshan would watch the vultures perched along telephone wires, waiting for the discards of nearby leather tanning factories. So, when the birds started to disappear, he couldn’t help but notice…
6 Life-Changing Lessons from the Biggest Studies on Human Happiness
The Autumnal Equinox
The 6 Qualities of a Wise Leader–and How to Cultivate Them In the age of AI, human wisdom is more valuable than ever. But true wisdom requires these six skills
6 life-changing lessons from the biggest studies on human happiness: Sick of chasing happiness, instead of enjoying it? You may be stuck on what psychologists call the hedonic treadmill. Here’s how you can step off it. September 16, 2024 What’s the one thing in life that you know could really make you truly happy? Getting a raise? Buying a new car? Winning the lottery? Whatever the key to the happiness puzzle looks like for you, chances are you’re searching in all the wrong places.
The autumnal equinox was this past Sunday, September 22, 2024, at 5:43 am PDT.
It marked the start of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere.
The equinox reminds us about the passage of time, the motion of the Earth, and the changing of the seasons.
Translated literally, equinox means “equal night”.
On the equinox, the length of day and night is nearly equal in all parts of the world, about twelve hours of each. This is because the sun is positioned above the equator.
On this day, the Sun rises directly in the east and sets directly in the west.
At the moment of the autumnal equinox the Sun crosses the equator from north to south.
After the autumnal equinox, the days become shorter and the air cooler.
Wishing you a special day, symbolic of balance in our life and with the environment.
My first experience with volunteerism, at about 11 years old was feeding formula to undernourished kids in a slum in Bombay, now Mumbai, which less than a mile from where we lived, housed nearly a million people in a couple of square miles!
My peers thought I was nuts, but it shaped my world view and sparked a profound appreciation for how different life can be based on luck of the genetic draw, circumstances, and how each of us can do our part to make life a little better for those around us.
Decades later, I would never have imagined, that in one of the most prosperous nations on earth, kids in San Diego were going home hungry over the weekend.
I thought this was a developing world problem not a firstworld problem, but alas, this is a reality for way too many San Diegan kids and their families.
Indulge me in watching this 5-minute video and if you feel inspired, donate even $1 to help address food insufficiency in our community.
Thanks for your open heart, generous soul, and consideration!
But for the grace of God and winning the genetic lottery go I and perhaps you too…
The surprising truth about loneliness in America American men were said to be in a “friendship recession,” with a survey finding the number of men without any close friends increased fivefold since 1990.
Young people today are stressed, depressed and reshaping the happiness curve Young adults — ages 18 to 25 — report being unhappier now than people in their 40s and 50s. Here are some potential explanations and solutions.
Buy Experiences instead of Possessions to Build Social Connection Shared experiences, more than material things, bring people together Mind & Brain The human being is a “social animal,” as Aristotle suggested. We have a fundamental need to belong. Yet we are living in a time when the U.S. Surgeon General has warned about an epidemic of loneliness and isolation. A lack of social connection can have negative consequences for both our mental and physical health. How, then, might we encourage the feelings of connectedness that are so integral to our well-being?
Neuroscience Says Doing This For Just 1 Hour a Week Can Make Your Brain 5 Years Younger Research shows keeping your brain sharp as you age is easier than you probably imagine.
6 Expert-Endorsed Techniques to Help You Get to Sleep Fast (and Stay Asleep!) Here are some real tactics you can use next time you’re having trouble falling asleep
“Life is like a game of tennis. The player who serves well seldom loses.”
Tennis is a Gentlemen’s (and Gentle-women’s) Sport!
I have been playing tennis since I was 11 or 12 in India, was Captain of my High School team when we moved to California, and am still a huge fan of the sport, playing several times a week.
With the US Open ending and wrapping up the Grand Slam season, here are some great articles on the game.
Recognize anyone below?
Is Tennis Really the ‘World’s Healthiest Sport’? Fact-checking the U.S. Open claim
Oda Becomes the Youngest Paralympic Wheelchair Tennis Singles Champion!
With the 6-2, 4-6, 7-5 victory over the world No. 1 Hewett, 18-year-old Oda became the youngest Paralympic champion ever in the men’s singles. Then he took the wheels from his wheelchair and dove onto the court.
Awe-inspiring images of the world’s most remarkable tennis courts: From cliffside clay courts in the Swiss Alps, to the salsa capital in Cali, Colombia, photographer Nick Pachelli highlights the world’s unique courts.
Order in the court: An animated look at how tennis surfaces change the game: Tennis is played on three distinct surfaces. But why do they have such an impact on how the sport is played?
North County Philanthropy Council (NCPC) Volunteer Awards Celebration: November 1, 2024, from 2-6pm Today Friday the 13th is the deadline so submit your nominations before it is too late!
Happy Soul Food Friday! 