Joy, Gentle Friends

By Will Brackenbury on May 11, 2012

Does the name Malcolm Gladwell sound familiar? If not, he’s the writer for the New York Times who has written several books, such as Tipping Point and Outliers, which are combinations of psychology and self-help. One of his most interesting experiments in Outliers showed that IQ, beyond a cetain point, become a non-factor. Instead, emotional intelligence, measured by EQ, is a much better indicator of success.

Yeah, this book. {Image by SimonDoggett on flickr.com}

One book I read recently that deals with this was “Emotional Equations”, written by a former CEO of a hotel chain in California. The book breaks down different emotions into sets of mathematical equations (they’re simple, don’t worry), and gives strategies for dealing with each emotion. For example, despair= suffering—meaning, anxiety=uncertainty*powerlessness, and other such equations.

The one that spoke to me most, however, was “Happiness=Wanting what you have/Having what you want”. In layman’s terms: you are most happy when you truly enjoy what you possess.

In college, a lot of what we think about is more. We want more education to get a better job with more money, to have more friends, to be better connected. Though, it seems, a lot of times, we think so much about getting more that we forget the things that we have already.

I know some of my friends feel lonely at college, because they feel like they want to hang out with people more often, but don’t get the chance. Whenever this happens to me, though, I remember that there are really plenty of people who I can hang out with, who I would count as my friends. Just because I don’t see them that often doesn’t mean that they aren’t my friends, nor does it mean that I’m really a lonely person, it just means that I need to make time to reach out to them.

Yeah, he's lonely. {Image by Anders.Bachmann on flickr.com}

Take some time to reach out to friends you haven’t talked to in a while, or rest for a moment and appreciate how lucky you are to be going to college at all. We often find ourselves unhappy because we simply forget how lucky we really are.

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