Reframing Happiness and Failure for Your Health
When I was younger I heard all about using healthy foods to get the most out of life and accomplish my dreams. Never had I considered the idea of accomplishing my dreams through healthy thoughts.
Fast-forward four years, I am now, more than anything laser focused on how my thoughts affect my every day life and the power they have over my overall happiness.
In this article, I want to share how reframing both happiness and failure can be crucial factors in your health that when utilized correctly can help make your dreams a reality.
Reframing Happiness
Hedonic adaptation has impacted my life greatly. Hedonic adaptation is the tendency for humans to return to baseline happiness, after major positive or negative life events. In particular, it’s the practical idea of expecting constant euphoria following a major positive life event, but feeling unfulfilled in the minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, after. Hedonic adaption can commonly be associated with positive life events that are cumulative, obtaining possessions, in nature.
Researchers Bill Burnett and Dave Evans from Stanford University, authors of Designing Your Life, have simply put it:
• No: Happiness is having it all.
• Yes: Happiness is letting go of what you don’t need. If what you have doesn’t provide intrinsic value to you, it may be time to discard.
Your choice to discard, through a calm and safe means, can be done through our 21-Day Zest Wellness Minimalism Challenge! Download the challenge PDF.
Reframing Failure
Being immune to failure (Failure Immunity) may be interpreted as a mystic superpower to some, but to others (eg. Mr. Thomas Edison) they have brought Failure Immunity to life and have used it to accomplish THEIR dreams. Now it’s YOUR turn.
"I have not failed 1,000 times. I have successfully discovered 1,000 ways to NOT make a light bulb."
- Thomas Edison
How can you develop a mindset like that of Mr. Edison? Step one is to become clear on the learnings that failure may bring, so that the temporary pain of failure may dissipate. Failure is a raw material for success. Adapting this mindset is a healthy habit for Failure Immunity and overall health.
This is especially true when life is an infinite, not finite, game.
In other words, think about life as a journey, not a destination. A failure today can be a turned into a strength tomorrow. Always keep in mind, there is tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. No one steps in the same river twice.
The effect of reframing failure by developing the mindset of Mr. Edison coupled with the realization that life is an infinite journey, is an avoidance of the catabolic (muscle breaking, health deteriorating) effect known as stress.
Through this article, it is my hope that you now know that by taking control of reframing both happiness and failure, your health goals can turn to health accomplishments that manifest as a foundation of health for pursuing your life dreams.
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Nathan Kolar
