Notes from "What to do until the psychiatrist comes", a talk given by dr Murray Banks

The four things people want:
1. I want to live.
2. I want a feeling of importance.
3. I want someone to love me.
4. I want a little variety.

Free mental health checkup:
1. Are you happy? (Thermometer of mental health)
2. Do you have zest for living?
3. Are you socially adjusted? (First symptom of mental illness)
4. Do you have unity and balance?
5. Can you live with each problem in your life as it arises?
6. Do you have insight into your own conduct?
7. Do you have a confidential relationship with some other person?
8. Do you have a sense of the ridiculous? (Laughter)
9. Are you engaged in satisfying work?
10. Do you know how to worry effectively?

Happiness is just like chasing a butterfly. The more you chase it and chase it and chase it directly, then it will always just elude you. But if you sit down quietly, turn your thoughts to other things, then the butterlfy will come, and softly sit on your shoulder.

Ink on paper/Bytes on a disk.

If it's not written down, it never happened.
If it's not written down, it will never happen.

Why I should try to be happy.

The last chapter of Undoing Perpetual Stress contains a summary of what needs to be done:

How to Rewire the Brain (In twelve easy steps.)

1. Get good at mindfullness.
2. Use mindfullness to develop a deeper awareness of your feelings.
3. Use mindfullness to recognize the biases and limits of your assumptive world.
4. Build will-power, self-control, and self-respect.
5. Control the effects of stress.
6. Be skillful about your body
7. Learn to appreciate your symptoms.
8. Think with your whole mind.
9. Construct and reinforce your support system.
10. Learn intimacy skills.
11. Learn how to be happy.
12. Practice, practice, practice.

See more progress on: create my own Happiness Project

Untidyness

Expect splatter and tumbling and bouncing.

Above the parapet.

Cultivate a willingness to be seen. Leer om jou kop uit te steek.

Five rules for eternal misery

1. Always try to exhort others to look upon you favorably.


2. Make lots of assumptions about situations and be sure to treat these assumptions as though they are reality.


3. Then treat each new situation as though it's a crisis.


4. Live in the past and future only (become obsessed with
   how much better things might have been or how much worse things might become).


5. Occasionally stomp on yourself for being so stupid as to follow the first four rules.

Commandment

Happiness commandment: Never expect things to be the way they were.