24 Mar The secret of happiness? Embrace the boring, lay claim to the mundane and rejoice in repetition
What if happiness was not to be found in the exciting and joyous but rather, in the mundane and boring?
There’s much research to support the benefits of being grateful and appreciative of the little things; and this is very consistent with those ideas.
If you think you could benefit and gain more happiness from embracing and appreciating the boring in your life then read on …
via the Guardian by Adrian Chiles
Upon a box containing some fancy collagen supplement stuff, it said: “Life is too short for hard-to-swallow pills and boring powders.” Ain’t that the truth? How many times have I contemplated swallowing a paracetamol tablet, or wearily stirred some Andrews liver salts into water, and wailed in desperation that life is just too damn short for such chores? Never, obviously.
In a similar vein, do you have an electric vehicle charger at home? Are you, you know, a bit bored with it? I mean, why wouldn’t you be? Worry not. Help is at hand. A company specialising in more exciting chargers – colour and finish combinations to choose from!” – invites you to “say goodbye to boring chargers”. Picture the scene: the whole family, dog and all, gathered together on the drive to bid farewell to the old charger. It charged very nicely but was just too darned boring. The man from Fancy Chargers Ltd has just fitted an exciting new one and he’s taking the boring old one away. You wave it off on its final journey, to landfill probably. Emotional.
Most of me despairs at the sheer fatuousness. On the other hand, you’ve got to grudgingly admire the ingenuity or shameless cheek of taking a commoditised product and trying to sell it as an object of desire. Hunter Boots (originally the North British Rubber Company) had been going for well over a century before its wellies suddenly became fashion essentials. Joseph Joseph has pulled off something similar with kitchenware. Respect, I suppose. No harm done.
But in other ways, the abhorrence of the boring is at the root of a whole lot of bad stuff. From before the South Sea bubble of the early 18th century, the catnip of big investment returns has driven us wild with desire and into many a financial crisis. If only we stuck to boring investments in boring companies promising boringly modest but steady returns. But no – just too boring. I was talking to a former banker about the 2008 financial crisis. “Hands up,” he said. “It was us driving the car when it crashed, but there were plenty of people in the back seat egging us on to go faster and faster.”
The older I get, the more I think the secret of happiness is the ability to embrace the boring …
… keep reading the full & original article HERE
And for another, similar argument, check out Jen Zamzow’s Psychology Today article titled “Why you should capture your ordinary moments now” … HERE