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How to Find Small Moments of Joy in Dark Times

Sometimes the smallest moments of joy are the only ones that feel possible. That’s what Nora McInerny learned in 2014, when she lost her 35-year-old husband and her father to cancer and her second baby to miscarriage—all within the span of eight weeks.

Her husband, Aaron, was a “naturally buoyant person,” says McInerny, who’s the host of the podcast Terrible, Thanks for Asking and author of the upcoming book Bad Vibes Only. “He just had this otherworldly ability to find the fun and the joy in anything,” she says. “I learned from him the importance of staying as present as possible in the moment, even when the moment sucks. Even as he was literally dying, he could make me laugh.” (Among Aaron’s final words to his wife: “I will always be with you … so you need to stop picking your nose.”)

It was a moment she remembers with levity, plucked out of an unbearable time. During these past few years—plagued by political strife, social unrest, and, well, an actual plague—many of us have struggled to even briefly escape morose moods. But experts say that incorporating just a little bit of joy into our lives can disproportionately enhance our well-being by reducing the risk of chronic illness, strengthening the immune system, and combating stress.

“I think joy feels sometimes like a really big emotion—like crazy happiness,” McInerny says. “But it can be a small point of light in the darkness. It doesn’t have to be throwing the light on in the dark.”

Remind me—what’s joy again?

Joy is the state of feeling freedom, safety, and ease. Unlike some other positive emotions, like compassion and contentment, experiencing joy often depends on preparing for it, rather than spontaneously feeling it, says Philip C. Watkins, a professor of psychology at Eastern Washington University who’s authored many of the leading research papers on joy.

One of the best ways to usher in joy is to strengthen bonds with friends and family. “The most intense joy experiences are probably experienced in relationships,” he says. Filling your life with meaningful goals and purpose is also essential, Watkins notes, as is cultivating an open mindset—and not just to the good stuff. “If you’re open to joy, you have to be open to disappointment,” he says. “Paradoxically, in terms of experiencing joy, there has to be a willingness to experience loss and sadness.”

If you’re not sure how to go about sparking joy, start with some self-reflection, advises Brie Scolaro, a licensed social worker and co-director of the New York City-based and LGBTQ-focused Aspire Psychotherapy. First, take an inventory of what joy means to you, and when you last experienced it. Ask yourself: What’s standing in your way of feeling joyful?

Then, think back on your favorite, happiest moments. Doing so will trigger some of that same joyful energy (just as reflecting on sad memories will make you feel upset). It will also give you a hint of how to achieve more joy in the future.

Next, “make a plan to bridge the gap between what you know brings you joy and what you’re currently feeling,” Scolaro says. What actionable steps can you take today to increase your odds of experiencing joy?

Finally, make sure you’re present enough to soak in joy when it washes over you. “Are you listening to your friends speak? Are you tasting the beer that you’re drinking? You have to be able to register joy,” Scolaro says. “Joy is in the moment. Building the capacity to move back to the present moment—like through meditation—is the best way I can think of to be present to joy.”

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How to have better arguments

Need to know

Arguing is hard. Chances are good that you are reading this because you’ve had an argument that went off the rails. Maybe the other person trotted out an anecdote as definitive proof of some general claim, or they misrepresented your reasons in order to make you look foolish, or they called you nasty names, or did any of the other too-many-to-name things that people who argue tend to do. These experiences are partly why people view argument as hostile and intellectually unproductive – something to be avoided.

Perhaps you are looking to learn some new terms to describe the annoying moves people make, or maybe you’re looking for ‘one weird trick’ to ‘own’ others with facts and logic. Well, we have some good news and bad news. Fancy terms, we’ve got a few, but our focus in this Guide is primarily on how to think about what is truly at stake in arguing, why it goes awry, and how to get it back on track. To our minds, the key to arguing better consists not in learning new tricks, but in recognising how arguments work and why they are important.

Arguments and the problems they pose

Let’s first get a handle on argument. To start, we need to differentiate between an argument as a product and argument as a process. As a product, an argument is a collection of reasons (called the premises) and the thing that the reasons show (called the conclusion). So, for example, the utterance ‘Bring your jacket because it’s going to rain’ is an argument in this sense. So is ‘God exists because the world needs a first cause, and God is the first cause.’ In contrast, as a process, an argument is an exchange of reasons between interlocutors. Two people exchanging reasons over jackets or God’s existence is an argument in process. From our perspective, the rules for a better argument process are ultimately derived from the rules for good argument products. This is because, in the end, what people who argue are wrangling over is what conclusion everyone’s best reasons jointly support.

What are arguments for? This is deceptively easy: we exchange reasons with others in order to affect their beliefs or commitments. I give you reasons to believe that something is true because I want you to believe that it’s true, or to believe more strongly. Maybe we disagree about it, maybe we don’t. Either way, I give you my reasons. And you weigh them. People do this so often, and about so many things, that they rarely note it. ‘Bring your jacket,’ one might say, ‘because it’s going to rain.’ This is an argument, a mundane one, but it’s worth noting that it’s out for belief-change and then actions in accord with that belief.

We disagree, and so argue, over things both big and small. Many of these disagreements pose a problem for how to go forward, in light of the differing views. Let’s say you and a random Twitter user, let’s call him HockeyDad1989, disagree over abortion. On his view, abortion ought to be illegal in all circumstances; on your view, it ought to be legally permitted in most cases. Clearly the answer to this question matters greatly to whether people can have abortions. It’s not like a dispute over whether it’s OK to put ketchup on a hot dog (don’t do this in Chicago, by the way) – it must be settled. Sure, we could settle it by any number of methods, like rolling dice, examining entrails, or (God forbid) trial by combat, but reasoning it out together offers the highest chances at arriving at the best answer and improving everyone’s cognitive standing. Under ideal conditions, HockeyDad1989 offers his reasons, and you offer yours. And then you, together, see where those reasons go. But it’s here that we get into trouble.

The primary problem is tied to the very nature of the thing that argument is intended to affect: belief. It’s manifestly obvious that you think your beliefs are true, just as other people think their own beliefs are true. This is what makes them beliefs rather than hopes, desires or fears. This starting point can make it difficult to even contemplate the possibility that someone else’s opposing belief is correct.

Another important feature of beliefs is that we lack direct, voluntary control over them. You cannot simply will yourself to change what you believe. No amount of money is going to make you genuinely believe that the Pope is Buddhist or that 2 + 2 = 5. What can change your beliefs is exposure to information and reasons. Yet people tend to gravitate to sources that support their existing beliefs and selectively attend to evidence that confirms those beliefs. Much of this we do without noticing. Incentives, financial or otherwise, can play a role in this. As Upton Sinclair, author of the novel The Jungle (1906), quipped: ‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.’ The existence of these belief-preserving tendencies underscores the importance of argument: to continue to work for the evil meatpacking company in Sinclair’s novel, one must carefully avoid exposure to evidence or arguments that might weigh upon one’s beliefs. Argument threatens to burst that bubble.

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AWS Lambda and its Benefits

All modern businesses having web-based applications run their apps on the cloud. If you’re in the initial phase of choosing a cloud computing system or planning to switch to a new cloud computing system, then you’re reading the right post. We’re here to discuss AWS Lambda and how the benefits of AWS Lambda can enhance your business.

As we all know, Cloud computing generated various services to prevent companies and professionals from having to make huge investments in hardware and software. As the business expands, they look forward to gaining more benefits by running their applications in the public cloud. If you’re a startup having limited resources and cost, then start using the cost-savings feature pay-as-you-go. It can be beneficial for businesses, lower costs, and can improve agility levels by subscribing to on-demand IT resources.

According to research, businesses are gaining advantages of the low cost of ownership by migrating to cloud-based architectures. The cloud makes it easy for you to develop and deploy the software applications that run on them and reap the benefits of cloud technology involving a unique approach for application design.

Businesses are already expressing the powers of web services to satisfy their unique business requirements. AWS is a powerful and compatible platform for every type of business as it allows them to smoothly run their codes without any errors. Many big names have already started using AWS Lambda like Autodesk, Netflix, and some more. One of the best functionalities of AWS Lambda is to migrate to cloud computing infrastructure for coding, deploying, scaling, monitoring, and all other services.

In this post, we’re going to discuss the main AWS advantages, but before that, we’ll have a quick look at what exactly AWS Lambda means? So without any further ado, let’s get started!

What is AWS Lambda?

AWS Lambda is a service-based function that allows you to easily run your application code without managing servers and sustaining the underlying cloud ecosystem. Lambda runs your code and performs all administration of the compute resources such as code monitoring, operating system maintenance, automatic scaling, and capacity provisioning.

With AWS cloud services, you can run your code virtually and you are charged only when your code is executed. Just make sure that you’re delivering your app code in one of the languages supported by Lambda.

Despite this, you’ll get a wide range of potential triggers such as customer emails, texts from a queue, messages coming to web sockets, incoming HTTP requests, user authentication, modification to database records, and much more.

Top 10 Benefits of AWS Lambda

1. Modernize your applications

For every business, it is important to modernize their applications and upkeep their products while making the best use of them. For web-based software applications, the improvement goes with serverless applications as it helps you to reduce the load time compared to conventional software products.

This modernization plan aims to have all runs running in cloud environments and scale them to operate on it. If you modernize your apps you’ll get productivity and scalability both of which will be beneficial for your business. And to achieve this, make sure to migrate to AWS Lambda Serverless, just don’t stick with the old system and applications. This can be done by considering each code section that should be migrated to microservices.

2. Improved productivity

Are you already familiar with AWS Lambda? If yes, then you must be aware of the fact that it has a simplified development and deployment model that allows you to improve the productivity of developers using the mature tooling solutions.

The FaaS model in AWS also assigns development teams to embrace modern and scalable architectures. You’ll be surprised to know that Microservices, event-driven development, and asynchronous processing are all well suited for AWS Lambda.

3. Automatic scaling

Another great advantage of using AWS Lambda is that it gathers your code when you need it and scales to support the rate of incoming requests. When it scales these requests, it doesn’t require any manual configuration. You can find plenty of incoming requests that your code can handle and then gradually start running your code within milliseconds.

Now that you know, Lambda scales automatically, the performance remains high and the event frequency also increases. As your code is stateless, Lambda can start N number of instances as needed without configuration delays and lengthy deployment.

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Google Chrome has a stronghold grip on Android users. It’s pre-installed on many Android devices, which gives it a clear advantage over the alternatives. One such alternative you’ve probably heard of is Firefox, and it deserves a try.

I grew up learning about finances, the stock market, and how money works. I've tried to apply these lessons along my salary journey.

Techygossips is a leading technology blog dedicated to provide latest news related to new technology, Digital Marketing, SEO, eCommerce & Gadgets.

The serverless infrastructure is an evolutionary phase that allows you to leverage the advances in the serverless platform and create a paradigm shift in DevOps. You can easily achieve business agility and foster rapid delivery of business value through continuous improvement, learning, and collaboration. When companies choose to go serverless to run their firm, they can grasp various benefits such as improvised scalability, enhanced productivity, flexibility, and affordability. We are now glimpsing an era where there is an increasing demand to scale and leverage applications which means serverless is the future of cloud technology.

#Advantages serverless computing techology tech

John Burn-Murdoch of the Financial Times says small differences in vaccination rates can make a big difference.

#omicron variant #covid-19 #vaccine #one great story

Fearful thinking can stop us finding happiness. Life coach Liz Wilde reveals the five most common worries – and ways to break free from them.

Angular is becoming the first choice of the development fraternity. Lets look at the Popular Angular Websites of 2022.

Now since Angular is already a hot potato, I am sure you must have stumbled upon several posts regarding what is the angular framework, how is it beneficial in the long run, what are its astounding features, some Angular best programming practices, and what not! Well, this one is a bit different. It emphasizes some of the finest websites built using Angular web development. In short, the best angular websites to take into account. So without any further ado, let’s begin!

#angular websites #angularjs #angular

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