Categories
Interconnectivity Quotes Relationships

Happiness from Relationships and Minor Random Connections

By now you may have heard of many studies finding that the health of our personal human relationships is the biggest indicator of how happy we might be. In other words, the healthier our connections and relationships, the more likely we are overall satisfied with life.

There was a related finding in a recent New York Times article that I found interesting, that small, random acts of connection with strangers can help increase our happiness for the day. Here’s a few quotes:

“…conducted an experiment in which they asked people to interact with strangers on public transit — to try to have a moment of connection — and found that the commuters seemed to get a mood boost from the exercise. Epley and Schroeder’s research and other studies have found that people underestimated both how much they would enjoy the experience and how open the strangers would be to it. ‘We have this innate reluctance to socially connect, particularly with strangers — and then we’re happier when we make ourselves. I find it a really useful thing to know.'”

“What she found more surprising was just how effective even having smaller points of connection throughout the day could be for happiness — and how achievable that is, if people could only overcome their own hesitation. ‘If someone were to ask me what’s the one thing you could do tomorrow to be happier, that’s my answer: having a conversation with someone — or a deeper conversation than you normally do,’ she says. Talking to strangers — on trains, in a coffee shop, at the playground, on line at the D.M.V., in the waiting room at the doctor’s office — could be dismissed as an exercise that simply makes the time pass. But it could also be seen as a moving reflection of how eager we all are, every day, to connect with other humans whose interiority would otherwise be a mystery, individuals in whose faces we might otherwise read threat, judgment, boredom or diffidence. Talking to strangers guarantees novelty, possibly even learning. It holds the promise, each time, of unexpected insight.”

“Lyubomirsky’s own research, over many years, pointed toward the importance of a person’s mind-set: Happy people tended to refrain from comparing themselves with others, had more positive perceptions of others, found ways to be satisfied with a range of choices and did not dwell on the negative.”

“Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period.
Strong, long-term relationships with spouses, family and friends built on deep trust — not achievement, not fortune or fame — were what predicted well-being.”

From the following New York Times article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/01/magazine/happiness-research-studies-relationships.html

 

Categories
Exponential Potential Interconnectivity Life Is Yours Quotes Using The Brain

The World Belongs to Optimists

The world belongs to optimists.
That’s all you have to say.
Just keep your eyes on those blue skies
And you will find the way…

To climb the mountain of success-
Now here’s the magic key:
That while you earn, you have to learn
To help humanity.

-Dr. Robert Kavesh (recently deceased)

Categories
Chillin Interconnectivity

The Way of Water

Beautiful quote from Avatar 2. As I was hearing it in the movie, I was thinking the quote could also be used to describe air / breathing. Here is the original quote:

“The way of water has no beginning and no end. The sea is around you and in you. The sea is your home — before your birth, and after your death. Our hearts beat in the womb of the world, our breath burns in the shadow of the deep. The sea gives, and the sea takes. Water connects all things, life to death, darkness to light.”

-Avatar 2

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Chillin Interconnectivity Live Events

Pitch to Speak on Humanization at SXSW Edu

I made a short video as part of the application process to speak at SXSW Edu, which is a yearly conference on education in Austin, Texas.

Here is the video. Enjoy!!!

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Chillin Quotes In Person

The Confidence to be Humble

The other day I sat in a webinar where I heard LL Cool J say something very close to the following:

Humility is a super power. And I’m not talking about pseudo humility, where you are sitting at the back pew of the church thinking you should be sitting in the front. I’m talking about real humility – having the confidence to be humble; embracing your humanity.

Categories
Quotes

An Example of Love

“Love is complete when one human being says to another:

You have wounded me and disappointed me.

You have hurt me beyond description.

But I forgive you with all my heart

because I believe you will heal me also

and I refuse to lose faith in you.

I too have not been blameless.

We need to forgive each other.

-Anthony T. Padovano

Categories
Life Is Yours Quotes

Belonging vs. Fitting In

The opposite of belonging, from the research, is ‘fitting in.’ Fitting in is assessing, and acclimating. Here is what I should say, be. Here is what I shouldn’t say, here’s what I should avoid talking about. Here’s what I should dress like, look like. That’s fitting in.

Belonging, is belonging to yourself first. Speaking your truth, telling your story, and never betraying yourself for other people. True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are. It requires you to be who you are. And that’s vulnerable.”

-Brené Brown

Categories
Chillin Quotes

Brené Brown on Foundations of Self-Acceptance

This was an interview by Tami Simon from Sounds True publishing.

Brené talks about alot here, but she keeps things very simple and fundamental in a way that probably most of us can immediately connect with.

Categories
Chillin Exponential Potential

What Do You Do When You Have Control?

What do you do when you have control?

You make the right choice.

In other words, act responsibly with the power you wield. This is your chance to perpetuate harmony, or to cause disharmony, in your life. Life will reciprocate to you harmony or disharmony, based on how you handle the power you wield.

Categories
Quotes Relationships

Healthy Power of Human Relationships

A deep and beautiful talk on the healing, fulfilling, and transformative power of authentic human connections.

Categories
Chillin Life Is Yours

More on Meaning in Life

I love what Emily Esfahani Smith says. She is someone I can always count on, much like Brené Brown, to speak very authentically, with a powerful, conscious heart. Emily Esfahani Smith is a researcher and author. The findings that she speaks about are much of what I have noticed in my own explorations and trials and tribulations of experiencing meaning in life. I am grateful also for the interviewer who goes in rapid pace to ensure that Emily covers a lot of ground in useful depth of her knowledge in this area. I truly hope you enjoy this amazing interview.

Categories
Reality Spark the Flame - Long Podcast

Spark the Flame – Long Podcast 28 – Spontaneous Meaning from Authentic Connection

Categories
Interconnectivity Quotes

Act as if What You Do Makes a Difference. It Does.

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.

-William James

Categories
Life Is Yours Spark the Flame - Long Podcast

Spark the Flame Podcast 26

Categories
Life Is Yours Quotes

A Talk on Having Both Happiness and Meaning

I ran into this very nice talk, and included some great quotes below:

“…for a life to be meaningful, you cant keep looking at the life. You have to see how that life is placed in larger, broader context.”

“…a life that is rich in happiness and rich in meaning….theologian Frederick Buechner I think would label that: finding your calling.”

“Your calling, Buechner says, is that place where your deep gladness, and the world’s deep hunger, meets. Your deep gladness is about you, about what makes you engaged and alive.”

“Finding your calling is discovering what it is that makes you feel alive. And then taking those gifts and skills and moving them out into the world to feed the world’s hunger.”

“…the tension we feel between what we want and what the world needs, is in fact something we don’t want to eliminate, but instead we want to encourage and cultivate.”

“When the world pushes and presses and prods and occasionally pummels you, it is in those moments that you can begin to imagine something different. You need the world and all its adversity, just as desperately as the world needs you.”

“To lead a happy and meaningful life, is to understand the tension that exists between what we want and what the world needs, and to recognize that tension as the gift that it is.”

-Mark Hébert

Categories
Spark the Flame - Long Podcast

Spark the Flame Podcast 13

Categories
Quotes

…if there’s one thing that I’ve come to realize, if there’s one thing that I see as the biggest problem,

it’s not in building a world where we eliminate the ignorance of others.

It’s in building a world where we teach the acceptance of ourselves,

where we’re okay with who we are, because when we get honest, we see that we all struggle and we all suffer.

Kevin Breel – Confessions of a depressed comic TED talk

Categories
Chillin

Vulnerability is a Powerful Thing

Vulnerability is a powerful thing. It directly helps to counteract shame. Vulnerability and empathy. Which all leads to compassion.

Categories
Exponential Potential Oetics Spark The Flame (el libro)

Love Is Key, And You Are The Keyhole

Love is key, and you are the keyhole

Categories
Free Hands Interconnectivity Oetics

True Love Inwards Flows Outwards

energy_refraction

Categories
Chillin

Thank You

Thank you

Categories
Quotes

The Wound is the Place Where Light Enters You

“The wound is the place where light enters you”

-Rumi

Categories
Inserts Interconnectivity

Everything Is Connected

 

Everything is connected therefore everything you do affects everything