How do you focus?

There's an old saying about the glass being half-full or half-empty. It's true that some of us opt for seeing the bad side of experiences and events forgetting about the good things.

What people do (some people)d is to focus unhealthily on one negative detail, excluding a host of positives that surround it. That kind of person is usually more prone to depression and you don't need a Psychology graduation to see why.


Our contemporary way of life doesn't help. Being more about having than being, underligns appearances and tends to make us blind to small and pleasureable details in our lives. The ancient Greek philosophers were aware of this nasty tendency and took pains to caution people about it.

If you don't feel like reading Plato or Aristotle - and they can give you great moments of reflexion - there are contemporary authors who write about the same issues in a more modern way. Alain de Botton and A. C. Graylings come to mind immediatly. Both can be found in Amazon.

 

Finding moments of happiness (note I wrote "moments of happiness" and not happiness) is not a question of being merry and oblivious to reality. It's a question of intelligence.