Micro-moments of Joy

"Triggers" are widely understood, but few people know about their opposite: glimmers.

A glimmer is the exact opposite of a trigger. It's a kind of cue, either internal or external that brings one back to a sense of joy or safety. It can be anything from catching a view of the skyline of your favorite city, to seeing a picture of your pet.

The term glimmer was introduced in 2018 in the book The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy: Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation by licensed clinical social worker Deb Dana. It was popularized by a viral TikTok video in 2022 by psychologist Dr. Justine Grosso.

Put simply, glimmers are great for our mental health. On a bad day, or when we're moving through a more difficult chapter, glimmers can offer you a reset button. And from there, a healthier headspace gives you more energy and inspiration to do the things that might otherwise feel hard.

They're micro-moments that make us feel happier, hopeful, safe, and connected. And the best thing is, we can easily access them by looking for them.

Seek out more glimmers in your day for a happier, calmer, and more connected life.

Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators

 

~ Stephen Fry

Stop Caring What Other People Think

Please listen when I say that the shame and guilt you feel when you're trying so hard to not give a f**k. It's usually not because you are wrong to not give that f**k. I's because you're worried about what other people might think about you're decision.

And guess what?
You have no control over what other people think.

For God's sake, you have a hard enough time figuring out what you think! Believing that you have any control over what other people think - and wasting your f**ks on that pursuit - is futile. It is a recipe for failure on a grand f**king scale.

Embrace your not giving a f**k by reading more in The Life Changing Magic of Not Giving a F**k by Sarah Knight (2015). Worth a read!

Perspective

I love this story from Irvin D. Yalom.

 

One of his patient's with breast cancer who throughout adolescence had been locked in a long, bitter struggle with her naysaying father. Looking forward to some form of reconciliation, she looked forward to her father driving her to college; a time she would be alone with him for several hours. The trip turned out to be a disaster. Her father behaved true to form by grousing at length about the ugly, garbage littered creek by the side of the road. She on the other hand saw no litter whatsoever in the beautiful, rustic, unspoiled stream. She found no way to respond and eventually, lapsing into silence, they spent the remainder of the trip looking away from each other.

 

Later, she made the same trip alone and was astounded to note that there were two streams - one each side of the road. ''This time I was the driver'', she said sadly, and the stream I saw was as ugly and polluted as her father had described it. But by the time she had learned to look out her father' window, it was too late - her father was dead and buried.

 

Yalom remarks that the story remained with him, and on many occasions he has reminded himself and his patients, 'Look out the other's window'. Try to see the world from another's perspective.

 

It's so relevant to many things in life such as empathy and honing our compassion for others. I think it's just awesome, and makes me want to delve into more of Yalom's writings.

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No exceptions for nice people

I pretty much feel that this reading material today may be slightly taxing for being hung-the f**k-over (When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Harold Kushner); but sometimes you can't but help get roped into a few pages of thought provoking material.

 

''Laws of nature treat everyone alike. They do not make exceptions for good people or for useful people ... If Lee Harvey Oswald fires a bullet at President John F. Kennedy, laws of nature take over from the moment that bullet is fired. Neither the course of the bullet nor the seriousness of the wound will be affected by questions of whether or not President Kennedy was a good person, or whether the world would be better off with him alive or dead. Laws of nature do not make exceptions for nice people. A bullet has no conscience; neither does a malignant tumour or an automobile gone out of control ... '' (p. 67, 1978).

 

While the laws of nature have no consideration for my hangover right now; the sh*t load of burgers and absolute junk I've been throwing down my flavour shnout are putting up a fight. 

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''Nature never breaks her own laws'' ~ Leonardo da Vinci

''What is my name?'' ~ The Rumpelstiltskin Phenomenon

''Look at the head on that'', she thought.
''It looked as if he slept face down in a
box of pineapples''

This is the tendency for the naming of something to create an impression of imparting an understanding of it.

 

 

It applies, for example, to the naming of mental disorders: a person who tells implausible lies may be said to be suffering from pseudologia fantastica, but that term is nothing more than a name for implausible lying, and any impression that it imparts an understanding of the phenomenon is a cognitive illusion.

 

 

The phenomenon is named after Rumpelstiltskin. In a famous fairy tale called 'Rumpelstilzchen' in the German version collected by the brothers Grimm, a strange dwarf exerts a baleful influence over a miller's daughter until she eventually gains power over him by learning his name.
                                                                                                                                              (Colman, 2009)

Zasetsky

L. Zasetsky was a technical student completing his education when World War II began and hurled Germany and Zasetsky's Soviet Union into battle. Like many other young men, Zasetsky became a soldier. Sublieutenant Zasetsky was 23 years old on the second of March 1943, the day a bullet entered his brain as he crossed the icy Vorya River. Zasetsky did not die. He received emergency surgery and then began a process of recovery that was to last for the rest of his life. He kept a written record, a pile of notebooks totalling over 3,000 pages and spanning three decades. These notebooks describe the effects of a terrible brain injury. Of his earliest days, he later wrote:

Right after I was wounded, I seemed to be some new-born creature that just looked, listened, observed, repeated, but still had no mind of its own. ...Because of my injury I'd forgotten everything I ever learned or knew. ...Mostly because of my memory that I have so much trouble understanding things. You see, I'd forgotten absolutely everything and had to start all over trying to identify, recall and understand things. ...

I'm in a kind of fog all the time, like a heavy half-sleep. My memory's a blank. I can't think of a single word. All that flashes through my mind are some images, hazy visions that suddenly disappear, giving way to fresh images. But I simply can't understand or remember what these mean.

Again and again I tell people I've become a totally different person since my injury, that I was killed March, 1943, but because of some vital power of my organism, I miraculously remained alive. Still, even though I seem to be alive, the burden of this head wound gives me no peace. I always feel as if I am living in a dream - a hideous, fiendish nightmare - that I am not a man but a shadow.
                                                                                                                  (Luria, 1972, pp. 10 - 12)

The story in Zasetsky's notebooks tells of a courageous, continuing effort to restore his lost mental functions. Zasetsky's torment illustrates clearly the critical importance of learning and memory in the normal activity of the human brain.
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''Every man's memory is his private literature''   ~  Aldous Huxley
 

Fancy some light reading?




The human genome is made up of 23 chromosome pairs with a total of about 3 billion DNA base pairs. It is the complete set of genetic information for humans. When the University of Leicester's Department of Genetics decided to print out an entire human genome, it amounted to 130 volumes of some 300 pages!!!
 

You - in 130 volumes

A total of 3000 million characters - and you thought Game of Thrones had a lot!



The genome print out spans 130 volumes, with each page printed on both sides in 4-point font, with about 43,000 characters per page. The X chromosome is made up of seven volumes, while the Y chromosome occupies one. The total exercise cost a little less than 4,000 pounds.

From start to finish it would take approximately 95 years to read!
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''DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created''
                                                                                                       ~ Bill Gates, The Road Ahead