Dogs For Internal Motivation Against Despair
Weekly Wellbeing Zest #3 - The Most Unrecognised Wellbeing Articles On Substack
Weekly Wellbeing Zest #3
The title will always be a creative meshup of thematic aspects from the 5 articles for the week - so yes, sometimes a scrambled mess of my mind!
What is this?
This is a weekly summary of some of, what I consider, hidden gems, undervalued or simply not-so-obvious but remarkable articles that relate to our health and wellbeing. If you want to know more what this weekly “zest” is about, please check out the introduction the first one here!
For week 3 of the Weekly Wellbeing Zest we got (in no particular order of significance or preference):
Kindness is (Still) a Show of Strength by
(Dr Marcin’s category: social health)I know literally close to nothing about US politics. I generally try to stay away from political topics completely – with the strong exception of health and wellbeing related systems. Thus, I found it interesting and fascinating to learn that there are dogs in the white house. Whether people agree with me here or not, I do not really care, but one comment put it best (by
):Among the many good and useful things my parents taught me:
Watch out for people who don't like animals.
Watch out for people who do not have a sense of humor.
Steven does a good job of quickly highlighting how being kind is almost never a political pawn, move, tactic or strategy. Your actions then need in the first place to be, at least usually, justified for nothing but the pure means of “goodness” – ok, we can probably argue all our lives about what that means. “Be kind and have courage” is what my wife loves a lot. So this read I think can highlight a lot of how we are, unfortunately, looking less and less after others (including most of the animals that I think we are supposed to be responsible for).
I like to think myself being a kind person, so maybe some of my other writing my connect with you too! Please consider subscribing:
Nurturing counterpoints in 2024 & Substack as mini-press by
(Dr Marcin’s category: mental health)An artful statement for thyself. How ever that looks for you. That is probably the best one liner I can think of for Ruth’s writing here. So often we overload ourselves with exterior factors that are trying to push and pull us from what we might want to do, but then decide that for those ultra-specific important reasons we probably should do something else. That is a long and convoluted way of saying what Ruth is able to formulate way more precisely as “pleasing others”. Although I think that our lives need some sort of depency on other people, their suggestions, opinions and directions, it is important to keep our true self expressed through our actions. There are many reasons why our mental health capacities are dwindling, and in many cases it is because people do not really know themselves, and if they do then they struggle to act upon it.
If you can't take in anymore, there's a reason by
(Dr Marcin’s category: emotional health)Nadia lays out her struggle with knowing what to do. Like seriously, with full contemplation and emotional attachment to all the things that she thinks and cares about. I like particularly how she points out her specific empathetic sensitivity with everything that touches her and she feels it – but then struggles to deal with the fact that, well she probably cannot really do much about most of the worlds, and even her closer surroundings, problems. This is tough, I personally get very angry if something that relates to our health, environment, children, education or anything else that is generally supposed to be helpful, is done in a subpar and low quality way (that I usually know has a better available option). I am working a lot on trying to figure out how to only deal, mentally and emotionally, only with the things that I can influence. Nadia’s article helped me a lot, because it is always good to read that other people out there struggle with the same… well, struggles!
Gerontocracy Versus Western Civilization by
(Dr Marcin’s category: all of them)Ah yes, something where we can shout a bit more “Boomer! Boomer!”. I personally prefer ignoring the whole age and time debated, even if there is a multitude of data sets showing the advantages of that “boomer” generation. What I do like referring to is the boomeresque type of thinking and acting: a way of just doing things the old ways, without much thought or foresight, to the absolute ignorance to what could happen in the future, or even just to leverage others for own pure greedy benefit. That one to me, is age, generation and time independent. Yeah, I know I sound like a hippy in prime season, and that is ok – I can live with that. Instead, go read Richard’s good writing about way more logical issues around relying solely on older generations, there attitudes, their principles, and their guidance.
This is just well balanced writing about joy, happiness, sadness, grief, and how it all connects together – all in our world full of self-obsessed individuals. It is interesting that Alicia here manages to quite well highlight that just “raining on someone’s parade” for the sake of it is just silly, while at the same time completely understanding that happiness (joy and niceness in her writing) just for the sake of happiness have become a detrimental tool wielded by many. I am personally and professionally greatly against happiness and “positivity” being wielded as some sort of do it all. Whitney Goodmann has a supreme book on this, but in the mean time just read Alicia’s article.
Big thanks to all the writers, it is a continuous pleasure to be able to read that much though provoking writing!
If you read all the way here, I would like to share:
For some reason, last week was tough. I kind of drafted one article, and then more or less abandoned it. Like it was not a first draft or anything, but more like a “final” edit draft. And then I went and thought a lot about another topic I wanted to write on, but I fell back into my habit of not actually sitting down and writing it. This week I would like to iterate on it! It is likely that getting another set of job application rejections (read: no interview) really did not help. For everyone out there like me, trying to just find their place – please hang in there, do not stop, just reset, get up, and go again.
Aww this is so great thank you! I feel very seen. But more importantly I'm going to read the others immediately. Also, the title of this piece is perfect 🤣