White noise and Happiness
The title of this post may be a tad misleading; it is worth noting that I wish to talk about these two topics here and that they may not have anything to with each other.
From WiseBread.com:
Here are two ideas you already know: You won’t achieve maximum happiness by always doing the most pleasurable thing you can think of at each moment, but neither will you find it by always deferring present happiness in favor of greater future happiness. The key is balancing these two things. And the genius in this book is that it gives you tools for finding that balance.
This quotation appeared at the beginning of a book review pertaining to Happiness. I include it here because despite the author’s belief these weren’t things I knew. Or at least this realisation hadn’t really crystallised until I read this article.
I knew deferring didn’t make me happy. Sure, it felt ’safe’. It felt ‘responsible.’ Every now and then some pleasure I denied in the present moment was felt and rewarded somewhere down the track. However leading a life based exclusively on deferment was depressing and uncomfortable. I couldn’t spend money without feeling guilty. I couldn’t indulge some of my greatest desires because my brain decided they were silly or irresponsible. All in all it is a funny mode of operation. Denying pleasure almost becomes pleasurable of itself because you can feel good that you’re doing ‘the right thing.’
Lately I’ve been trying to have more fun. All in all having fun, being more hedonistic, feels a great deal better (and less conflicting) than living in a constant state of deferment. The only problem is that this stuff feels great while you’re doing it. I don’t know, perhaps the answer is to have fun constantly.
Tony Robbins suggested that in The West people went out and achieved things before they could feel good. Whereas in The East people just decided to feel good. I guess the idea is similar to that posed above. Either you’re always relying on external stimuli to dictate when you can feel good, or you sit around in a state of perfect Zen while they repossess your furniture…
In one of my shall we say ‘weaker’ moments, I changed my twitter status to what appears below.
I woke up to the most unlikely source of inspiration and wisdom. I say this only because I don’t really know the person it comes from very well and that he is known primarily for, well… celebrity gossip.
In other news, I was fascinated to discover SimplyNoise.com. I confess I am baffled at what benefit there really could be in an in-browser White Noise generator, though still decided to listen to the ‘noise’ for several hours tonight. Still puzzled (and finding it difficult to collect my thoughts enough to pen this entry) I took the lead SimplyNoise suggested: For more information about White Noise, visit Wikipedia.
While SimplyNoise.com suggested benefits included improved sleep and an ability to block distractions, Wikipedia took a slightly different view. It pointed out that white noise was used to help configure audio equipment, and was even sometimes used as the basis of random number generators. The one ‘application’ that really intrigued me though?
White noise can be used to disorient individuals prior to interrogation and may be used as part of sensory deprivation techniques
Yeah. No kidding…
I had thought perhaps it would be a good tool in aiding my ‘creative recovery.’ That perhaps it would help interrupt unhelpful behavioural patterns. However the benefit is still very difficult to gauge despite several hours of use. If nothing else, though, I guess we can conclude White Noise has the potential benefit of inspiring blog posts.
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