Shawn-ation http://gamedesigncenter.com/blog Brain Thinking Things Wed, 22 Aug 2007 01:33:41 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.2.1 en Happiness and Beliefs (pt II) http://gamedesigncenter.com/blog/happiness-and-beliefs-pt-ii.htm http://gamedesigncenter.com/blog/happiness-and-beliefs-pt-ii.htm#comments Wed, 22 Aug 2007 01:33:41 +0000 Shawn http://gamedesigncenter.com/blog/happiness-and-beliefs-pt-ii.htm In my last post I explained the basics of how beliefs and happiness are tied together.  However, I didn’t get talk too much about judgments, or good/bad, right/wrong, etc.  I want to look more at judgments and how they tie in to our beliefs, and how to change beliefs from bad to good (or nuetral).

What are judgments?  Judgments are how you respond to stimuli based on beliefs

]]> http://gamedesigncenter.com/blog/happiness-and-beliefs-pt-ii.htm/feed Happiness and Beliefs (pt I) http://gamedesigncenter.com/blog/happiness-and-beliefs-pt-i.htm http://gamedesigncenter.com/blog/happiness-and-beliefs-pt-i.htm#comments Tue, 21 Aug 2007 18:38:56 +0000 Shawn http://gamedesigncenter.com/blog/happiness-and-beliefs-pt-i.htm Do you ever lie awake at night for hours on end wondering what you really want to accomplish in life? What comes across your mind at those times? Do you think of what life would be like with more money than you could possibly spend? Do you fantasize about the car you would drive, the house you’d live in, your career? Do you think about the special someone you’d hope to meet one day. Do you think about the wonderful blissfulness of the relationship, how that person would have everything in common with you and life would be absolutely wonderful? Would you be happy then? You’d tend to want think you would be very happy. Great.

How happy are you now? How’s your job? How’s your boss? How’s your bank account, stocks, investments, etc.? How’s your marriage or significant relationship? How’s your car. Behind that fantasy you think about while lying in bed, are you stressed or worried? At some point or other in our life, we find ourselves unhappy.

 

What is the difference between happiness and unhappiness? Happiness is a difficult term to define, but for arguments sake we will consider a very basic definition: the state of being happy. Simple enough. I think that many people have their own various forms of that definition, but happiness is being happy. Contributors to happiness may include love, peace, contentedness, relaxation, or just a sense that everything is going okay. In fact, I think, for the purpose of these articles, happiness can be defined as “Everything is going well.”

Unhappiness, transversely, can be defined as something or everything is wrong. Contributors to unhappiness include fear, anxiety, stress, worry, or depression. Again, these are vague definitions mainly to get on the right page.

Is it possible to always be happy? Yes. I know many people would argue that it is not possible; there are too many things that go on during the course of the day that tends to ruin happiness.

 

Why people think it is impossible to be happy all the time. Simple answer: Beliefs. Your beliefs are your way of viewing the world. Your beliefs are like a set of lenses that takes the objective world and makes it subjective to your life. Here are a couple examples. As you read, decide whether each example is good or bad.

  • Rain on a wedding day
  • Death of a close relative
  • Fired from a job

I’m sure that you took one look at each of those and decided it was bad. Why? Because that’s what we believe. But let’s look at this closer.

  • It rained on your wedding day. However, the area has been suffering from a drought and a hot summer, and the rain felt good, cooled everything off and made your stuffy outfit for the wedding a little more comfortable. Besides, the farmers in your town have been praying for rain all summer. The rain was neither good nor bad. It was your belief that decided it was bad.
  • Your favorite relative died. This is more cultural than anything else, but it still proves my point. In America we see death as the ultimate finality. However, in Mexico, death is celebrated with a great feast every year. Christianity sees death as the last step into glorious eternity, and so death should be celebrated. I know many older Christians who want people to have a big feast and party at their funeral to celebrate their life and their entrance into heaven. Again, death being neither good nor bad, it is beliefs that determine which.
  • You got fired from your job. Sure it paid well and had okay benefits, but did you really want to work at Wal-Mart for the rest of your life? Shortly after getting fired you find an add for your dream job and are hired. Being fired again is neither good nor bad.

So what’s the point in all this? From a simple reading it just seems a matter of perspective. Well, it is. Having the full picture allowed you to make a better judgment on the situation, and your judgment came from your beliefs.

 

Application: To begin to be happy all of the time, we must take a look at our beliefs and judgments and understand why we deem things to be good or bad. A simple way to break it down is to look at the stimulus/response method.

STIMULUS => BELIEF => RESPONSE

The stimulus would be something like rain, traffic, crime; pretty much anything in the outside world that you don’t control (which, by the way, there are a lot of things out there that you don’t control, despite how much you think you do, more on that later). For the rain scenario, the rain would be the stimulus. Your belief is that the rain feels good despite the fact that it is your wedding day. Your response is happiness, or joy, or that it is good.

Again, look at the world around you and begin to take notice on why things are good and bad and what belief causes you to judge things so.

]]> http://gamedesigncenter.com/blog/happiness-and-beliefs-pt-i.htm/feed The Responsibility of Happiness http://gamedesigncenter.com/blog/the-responsibility-of-happiness.htm http://gamedesigncenter.com/blog/the-responsibility-of-happiness.htm#comments Tue, 21 Aug 2007 16:39:13 +0000 Shawn http://gamedesigncenter.com/blog/the-responsibility-of-happiness.htm How often have you heard someone say, “You hurt me with what you said,” or “she makes me happy,” or something to that effect? I think at some point all of us have made some similar comment or other during the course of our day. However, I think most of us actually believe what we say when we say things like this. Do we actually let other people control our emotions, and in turn control our lives? Is that the way that most of us would actually choose to live our lives, riding the waves of feelings like a ship tossed at sea? The truth is that we don’t have to.

Now, I know you are probably thinking, I know that other people don’t control how I feel. But I think if you break it down, you’d be surprised. Think about the last time you were in a serious relationship and split up. Say you were the one that was dumped. How did you feel? Happy? Probably not. At the least, you loafed around feeling sorry for yourself listening to sad songs on the radio thinking that they’d make you feel better. You probably lost your appetite and will to do things. That’s about typical. But the real question is: Did you have to feel upset?

Over the next few weeks I’m going to look at the core of every persons ultimate desire in life: Happiness. You could argue that being rich or successful may be the ultimate desire in life, or being close to God or deity is the ultimate desire in life, but it really all does boil down to happiness. The biggest thing that I will look at is a person’s beliefs and judgments. From there I hope to help people understand that happiness is a choice, not a reaction. This will in turn affect every aspect of your life, from stress and relationships, to finances and careers. You will be able to wake up to life for the first time, free from the delusion of emotions and free to live as you will. You will be free to be happy.

]]> http://gamedesigncenter.com/blog/the-responsibility-of-happiness.htm/feed Who is Shawn-ation (pronounced Shawn-nation) http://gamedesigncenter.com/blog/who-is-shawn-ation-pronounced-shawn-nation.htm http://gamedesigncenter.com/blog/who-is-shawn-ation-pronounced-shawn-nation.htm#comments Fri, 17 Aug 2007 17:05:17 +0000 Shawn http://gamedesigncenter.com/blog/who-is-shawn-ation-pronounced-shawn-nation.htm My name is Shawn. I know. So profound. You feel like you’ve just drank water from a fire hydrant. I wouldn’t suggest it. Okay, so maybe I’ll tell a little more about myself. I grew up in Baltimore, MD. Well, until I was like 9. Then I moved to Carolina Beach. Talk about a culture shock. In Baltimore, I used to be cool. No really, I was. Remember when you were younger and always wanted to sit in the back of the bus because it was cool? (Side-note: not in middle or high school because then those people where jerks). Yeah, that was me. I was friends with everyone. I had a girlfriend (you know how it was, will you be go out with me, check yes or no. I checked yes.) Anyway, like I said, I moved to Carolina Beach when I was 9, and it was a huge culture shock. I moved from big city to a small island community. My first day of school was horrible. Recess rolled around and I was like “Hey guys, let’s play soccer!” “No, no,” they said, “we play basketball. We know not of this ’soccer’ you speak of.” What in the world was basketball? I thought there where only three sports in existance: soccer, baseball, and lacrosse. Needless to say, even to this day I’m no good at basketball. It may have something to do with the fact that I’m only 5′-4″ on a good day. I didn’t have too many friends here. Apparently these people had grown up around each other and where much better friends and didn’t care too much from some Baltimore punk. That’s alright. I got mine. When they all signed up for the new soccer league on the beach, no one could stop me.

But anyway, I grew up at the beach. For the first few years living there I boogie boarded, and refused to surf. My dad had bought me a surf board before I moved, but it took a few years before I even tried it. However, once I learned, I became a surf bum. My summers where like this: wake up in the morning, surf for a few hours, work, surf for a few more hours, go home. I also had the best job anybody could have asked for. I worked at a snowball stand on the boardwalk at the beach. It was awesome. My boss owned a pizza shop as well, so I had free snowballs, free pizza, and free donuts (If you are ever in Carolina Beach, you’ve got to try Britt’s Donuts. You will never want another donut again). I got free donuts because I traded donuts for snowballs. And to top it all of, it was at the beach. Girls in bikinis, friends chilling out in the store, snowball fights, some snowbird and townie flings (check out the song by Further Seems Forever “Snowbirds and Townies:” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2R45rdYKgw. Very much my life. And if you are a Dashboard Confessional fan, that is Chris singing. It was his band before Dashboard). But back to the job. It was awesome. By my last summer working there, my two best friends worked for me, and I ran the store. I miss those days.

Now I’m older. About a quarter of a century to be exact. I’ve finished high school, got an associates degree from UCLA (University Closest to Leland Area). Okay it was Cape Fear Community College, but if you live or lived in Wilmington, its UCLA or FSU (Front Street University). I’m working for a cabinet company doing all the architectural drawings. It may not seem like much, but it actually is. We have homeowners and architects meet with us, building homes in the millions of dollars range, and it’s my job to take their ideas and put it on paper to look as close to their finished products as possible. I’d want that too if I were spending a quarter of a million on cabinetry.

I’m also a musician. I write my own lyrics and songs, play guitar and bass, wanting to learn keyboard. I have a band. We don’t have a name yet, so don’t ask. This is probably my third or forth band. I’ll probably post some lyrics on here and maybe some links to my songs when I get them recorded. Expect to see a music column from time to time where I critique new releases or rant and rave about various aspects about music.

I still surf.

Last time I tried playing soccer I sprained my ankle at the first practice and couldn’t play for the rest of the season.

I’m trying to be a writer. I have a few book ideas already written, some work done on a fantasy novel, but I may restart that, and a few short stories I may post.

Oh, I’m a dork, too. I play Magic: the Gathering, Pirates!, D & D, Warhammer 40k. I’m also playing through Oblivion and hope to link up some mods soon.

But in general, this is me. I hope you enjoy!

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