17 Sep Is it good or is it bad? Time will tell…
I was thinkiing this morning, of a relatively trivial matter, but then realised, as I do often, that in many trivial matters are less than trivial lessons to be learned.
My thoughts, to be more specific, were to do with smartphones and especially the latest trend, with the new iPhone and most other newer smartphones, for larger screens.
This is obviously because what we're using these devices for these days is completely different types of activities; 10 years ago we weren't watching video, surfing the net or playing with "apps" on our phones. We were, quite simply, calling and texting people!
Accordingly, not that long ago, the smaller the phone the better. Now, the larger the screen the better!
Now again, I know there are all sorts of reasons for this but the bottom line is that what was considered great not that long ago (i.e. a small handset) is no longer so great and what's considered great and desirable now (i.e. a larger handset with larger screen) was not in demand back then.
Can we learn something from this regarding happiness?
I think so; I think many situations and events in life that seem bad at the time might not turn out to be bad later on; and vice versa! I think we've all experienced this when we look back on a range of events we can see that what was positive is now not so positive and what we thought to be negative might not actually be bad and might possibly even be good!
This is important because if we can remenber this at the time we might be able to minimise the distress associated with seemingly negative life events by withholding judgement, by delaying our assessment of events and/or by allowing ourselves and situations time to unfold.
It's also worth noting that this approach might minimise the positive emotion attached to seemingly positive events but overall, we can decide to make the most of positive events if we like and "manage" negative events if it seems more helpful.
And ultimately, maybe this is what happiness is all about…doing what we can to minimise or get through tough times while enjoying the good times as best we can.
What do you think? I'd love to hear/read your thoughts so take a minute to post your comments HERE on The Happiness Institute's Facebook Page. Thanks in advance… : )