The Moral Life
So when we say someone is living well or that they have lived a good life, we may simply mean that they are a good person, someone who is courageous, honest, trustworthy, kind, selfless, generous, helpful, loyal, principled, and so on. They possess and practice many of the most important virtues.
A good life can be described as a life that is self-satisfying and self-fulfilling. It is characterized by personal joy, fulfillment, and enjoyment of the small pleasures of life. When someone says their life is good, it means that they can access the basic things that give them comfort and pleasure.
Ordering Concepts and Measures of the Good Life
Together these dichotomies imply four qualities of life: 1) livability of the environment, 2) life-ability of the individual, 3) external utility of life and 4) inner appreciation of life.
Negative Self-Talk
If our self-talk becomes negative towards ourselves, it can lead to anxiety, depression, stress, and burnout, making it feel like life is hard. Awareness of our thought processes and practicing challenging negative self-talk when they arise can lead to a more neutral or positive view of life.
The real key to a good life is doing less of what makes you miserable. Anything that makes you unhappy is stealing your joy. A happy life is a process — a lifestyle. Find what makes you come alive and build your life around them for a consistently happy life.
What is rumination? Rumination is when you're stuck in a loop of repeated negative thoughts about the past, and you can't seem to stop even if you want to.
Unmet goals tend to leave us focused on the goal. Feelings of shame — for example, shame at not achieving what others have, shame at not being good enough — can cause us to overthink things and become stuck in negative thoughts of past failures.
Finally, an excessive, repetitive dwelling on your past, without generating solutions, can be unhelpful. It can result in emotional distress and in extreme instances, emotional disorders, such as depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.
There are many reasons you may feel unhappy: you may be going through a stressful time at work or school; you may be too hard on yourself; or you may be experiencing a mental health condition like depression or anxiety or substance abuse.
We spend so much of our time thinking about what we didn't get done yesterday – or what we need to do tomorrow – that we lose sight of today. As a result, we're very rarely fully present in our lives. One of the biggest reasons we don't live in the present is because we never shut up. We constantly talk to ourselves.
Inherent to our existence is that we learn, adapt, and grow. Health, happiness, and longevity are the payoffs for this. Since our biological evolution is the foundation of our existence, a purpose of our lives is to continue to "evolve" during our lifetime by learning and growing.
Some people struggle to let go of painful memories or relationships or to move on from past experiences because they believe that whatever has happened to them is part of their identity. But ruminating on the past won't change it and holding onto pain won't help relieve that pain.
Take a look at the three main rules of accounting: Debit the receiver and credit the giver. Debit what comes in and credit what goes out. Debit expenses and losses, credit income and gains.
Specifically, this includes the positive formulation of the rule (treat others the same way you would want to be treated yourself), the negative formulation (don't treat others in ways you wouldn't want to be treated yourself), and the empathic formulation (when you wish something upon others, you also wish it upon ...
Rule 1: Answer the question that is asked. Rule 2: Write your answer in your own words. Rule 3: Think about the content of your essay, being sure to demonstrate good social scientific skills. Rule 4: Think about the structure of your essay, being sure to demonstrate good writing skills and observing any word limit.
It's natural to feel more pessimistic when things aren't going so well in our lives. Regular or even constant negative thinking can also be a sign of anxiety, depression, stress or low self-esteem. This sounds a bit strange, but negativity can also be contagious.
A difficulty with letting go of the past will likely be related to one or more of the following key emotions: guilt, regret or sadness/anger. Guilt is an emotion that tells us we have violated some rule or norm. For example, “I should have done this” or “Why did I do that”.