Like anyone who has struggled with feeling lonely, depressed, or lethargic, I’ve been keenly interested in anything that shifts me into feeling connected, content, or energetic.
Over the years I’ve collected clues and gathered them into an outline of what makes me feel like “the best version” of myself. This isn’t to say that I’m an inferior version of myself when I’m sad or lethargic . . . But I like myself and my life best when I’m inspired, creative, and trail-blazingly energetic.
What follows is a series of journal entries where I expounded on key ingredients to feeling fulfilled, inspired, and satisfied. After the journal entries I’ve included my Formula for Happiness, and my checklists for feeling Energized versus Sapped. However, please note that all of the information on this page is about reflecting on what makes me happy. I’m not promising that anything here will make you happy. However, it is my hope that these ideas help you reflect on your personal truths.
Happiness comes from Connection
December 15th 2017
Several years ago I came up with a rough sketch for “staying happy.” The magic formula I developed was an inclusion of all of the following things in my life on a consistent basis:
An exciting project I work on daily.
An enjoyable book I read daily.
Something I look forward to.
Someone to talk to right before going to sleep who listens with presence.
This formula still proves to be true in my current life, but today I have realized why it works. It is about connection. These are all different strategies to avoid an aching pit of loneliness – but these strategies have a synergistic magic which, all together, make me feel like I have connection with myself, my culture, my timeline, and a special ally.
A project is about connecting with myself. By taking aspects of myself and using self-expression to support my values through a project, I feel seen and understood by myself. This “feeling seen” is the sensation of connection. It is rapport, reflection, and recognition.
A book that I enjoy is enjoyable because I feel connected to it. That connection is created through feeling understood. I know the author understands me, even if they’ve never met me, when they write characters that I can relate to deeply. (This is tricky for me, as I relate to so few characters in books – but some authors demonstrate that they do, indeed, understand or know someone who is like me in some fundamental way.)
Having something to look forward to creates a sense of anticipation which replaces my sense of anxiety. Anxiety is about dreading all the things that could go wrong in the future. Anticipation is about looking forward and feeling positive emotions about what good things I expect to happen. I can’t seem to help but “look forward,” (even after reading The Power of Now) but I can be excited for the future instead of dreading it. (This may be particularly important for IN*Js, the two Ni-dominant types.)
Having someone to talk to at night before I go to sleep allows me to discharge any negative energy that I built up over the course of the day, allowing a more deep, rejuvenating sleep. In the morning I can start fresh, no longer cluttered with yesterday’s burdens.
When I don’t have a specific project I’m working on, an alternative that may allow me to “see myself” is journaling. When I think of “projects” I am usually imagining something fairly large – like a book or board game – but small projects can give me the reflection I crave as well, such as an artowrk. Nonetheless, having a project that is large and ongoing creates a more lasting sense of satisfaction and self-connection because of my habitual pattern of working on it. To expand upon the theme of connection, an ongoing project is like a relationship: connection over time.
When I don’t have a good book to read, I can alternatively (if I’m very lucky) receive a sense of being “seen” by the “world” through a gratifying social experience or good movie. Most movies don’t do this for me, but The Peaceful Warrior did, as well as The Green Beautiful. Most social experiences don’t give me the sense of being “seen” because most people have trouble grappling with all of the vast lifestyle and perspective differences between myself and the dominant culture. A book, however, when it is very good and long, can give me that sense of being “seen by the world” (and thereby connected to the world) for weeks. I read a chapter each day and I get my daily dose of connection and intimacy with society in the abstract.
When I don’t have something to look forward to, one alternative is to become highly distracted by enthralling day-to-day experiences such as falling in love, an engrossing project, or events such playing board games, attending karaoke, or hosting a craft’n’chat. This sort of present-day engrossment rarely lasts more than two days at time. Eventually I tire and I begin to reflect on my life outside the scope of today and tomorrow, and without anchors in the future of things that I’m looking forward to, I inevitably begin asking, “Where is my life going?” And without an answer that feels definitive and positive, I begin to feel listless and depressed.
When I lack someone to talk to at night I can sometimes substitute with one of the other three – an engrossing project or journaling, a good book or phone call, or thoughts about something I’m looking forward to, such as the blossoming of the many flowers in my garden which will happen in the spring. However, these substitutes rarely are enough to overcome the sadness of lacking a companion to talk to. The most reliable alternative is a good book, but if I’m really sad then my mind will stray repeatedly away from the book.
All in all, these are all ways of seeking feeling “seen” – a sense of connection, camaraderie, belonging. These four “happiness keys” are all forms of connection:
Connection with myself
Connection with society at large
Connection with my timeline, or purpose
Connection with an ally
All in all, connection is what makes me feel good about my life.
Ingredient for Happiness: Body Care
June 20th 2018 (Six months later)
I’ve uncovered another vital ingredient for happiness: body care. It doesn’t matter what condition my body is in, there seems to be some level of attuned body care that I require to feel connected to my body (“embodied”) and thereby feel contentment as an integral being.
I was sad yesterday. When I tried to journal about my feelings, I recalled how someone had once promised to massage the knots in my neck until they went entirely away – something that nobody has ever been able to do. These knots have chronically existed since I was nine. Thus, the promise had been very meaningful for me, but it’s a tall order. Even though they tried, they didn’t persist long enough to succeed. I resented the fact that they gave up.
After journaling, while brushing my hair, I noticed I hadn’t washed my hair in several days. In fact, I hadn’t been showering as thoroughly overall. My hair was fairly tangled and it also occurred to me that I had been brushing my hair a little less often. Perhaps I’d also been spending less time on dental hygiene. I certainly haven’t steamed my face or done a neti pot recently, I thought. I put these clues together with what I’d journaled about and I realized that these are all forms of body care.
I have also previously noticed a trend where showering more often seems to be directly connected to my mood. The happier I am, the more I seem to want to pop into the shower for a “quick rinse” after gardening or any other sweaty work. When I start to feel down, I go much longer without a shower. I’ve noticed that making myself shower even though I don’t feel like it helps break me out of my funk. Pun intended.
When I get sick, then I need a lot of body care. Is getting sick simply a need to reconnect with my body? I’m betting there isn’t actually a difference. Whether it is yoga, grooming or massage, I think I need at least an hour a day of body care to be happy, connected, and integrated (which, I think, are all different faces of the same thing).
Happiness from Fulfilling Programming
October 1st 2019 (Sixteen months later)
I didn’t wake depressed, but I noticed I soon felt that way. Why does this pattern keep repeating? Should I just make a point of forcing myself to get up first thing and kick into action before I have a chance to “think too long?”
If happiness can only be accomplished by fulfilling programming (which may require rewriting it first), then it is easy to see why I’ve been struggling with depression my entire life. I repeatedly suffer from guilt about not fulfilling my “productivity” programming; this has become particularly challenging because I have begun to embrace something else: being restful and not obsessed with doing things. Yet as I lay around, thinking and dreaming up things, I quickly become unhappy. A voice inside tells me to actually act on these thoughts and dreams in my head, and all of society would applaud my acting far above my lying around and thinking.
It is hard to defend “laying around and thinking” without justifying it through the argument that it will lead to action later. We – I think it is safe to say “we” here – are so attached to the notion of accomplishing something with actions that we have even created a term for people who do not act: lazy. Being accused of laziness can feel like an awful attack; the stronger your belief in the all-important goal of accomplishing things the more it will hurt for someone to interpret your need for a rest as you being a “lazy person.”
I assert that there aren’t any lazy people. There are only people in need of something that “acting” is not providing. People play video games to meet emotional needs. People sleep or lay down to meet emotional or physical needs. People avoid certain kinds of activities because it would directly conflict with meeting their needs. In the end, it always comes down to meeting needs.
I’m comfortable with writing off “lazy” as a nonsense word. People inherently want things, and that wanting always entails doing something at some point. It isn’t laziness to give your body, mind, or heart the rest it needs.
And yet . . . I’m clearly not comfortable with myself merely lying about when I could be “making my dreams come true.” There is something horrifying about how long I can stay in place just thinking, thinking, thinking . . . It clashes so completely with my childhood programming. I recall being so proud of myself for learning to bounce out of bed with “bright eyes and a bushy tail.” Dad insisted on this, and I did it.
I remember being so proud of myself for virtually everything I did as a child – making a new drawing, filling up a page with words or math problems, planting a few flowers. I’m not very different today, except my art is far better. I still love the feeling of a page filling up with my creations. I still get that satisfying sense of being real and justified and important when I fill up a page with me.
When I stay in my head thinking, thinking, thinking for an hour or two . . . I feel loosely connected to myself, as if my body isn’t quite real, as if my room isn’t quite real, as if my entire life isn’t quite real. There is a knowing that everything is real, and yet there is a sense that I could just slip away from “reality” and go elsewhere. This dissociation concerns me.
If my programming is clashing with my behavior in a persistent, depressing way, then I have three options:
1. Stay unhappy.
2. Change my programming to match my behavior.
3. Change my behavior to match my programming.
Like everyone else, I’ve tried repeatedly to shift my behavior to reflect my programming. I’ve surrounded myself with inspiring quotes. I’ve woken to music. I’ve created morning rituals including writing my dreams and exercise. None of it has stuck, although all of it felt like it helped for a time.
I’ve also done a lot of “staying unhappy.” Being depressed is an art form where you manage to respond to even the most lovely weather, the most lovely conversation, and the most lovely food with total apathy or despair. Anyone who has ever felt depressed knows what it is like to become an instant master at this art. Like most depressed people, I’ve tried reasoning myself out of it. “Look at how much you’ve got going for you,” I say to myself, listing off multitudes of things to be grateful for. “Yeah, but there is this one thing here I don’t have, and I just can’t seem to get over it,” I reply to myself.
The second option, also known as transcending one’s programming, is also something I’ve worked on a lot, but it is the hardest of the three options to accomplish. It requires a foundational shift of deeply-held beliefs. If I have a mountain of evidence for why productivity is good (and I do), then I have to come up with an even larger mountain of evidence for why lounging around is better (which I haven’t).
I have a lot of good arguments for why taking some time for rest is essential. I have a lot of evidence supporting the power of meditation, introspection, journaling, and so on. But despite those arguments, I still can’t justify a life-long dearth of accomplishment. Thus, the real crux of the issue is how it feels when I’m laying around at times: like I just never want to get up.
I might know that I will get up, but the other half of the picture is missing, which is the feeling that I will want to get up. Since I know it but I don’t feel it, it is hard to believe it, and thereby I become depressed because it seems that I will lay there indefinitely. That scares me.
I suppose this is the same sort of feeling I’ve been trying to outwit by keeping a log of the general “feeling” of each day. This general day-feeling isn’t quite an emotion log (which I previously tried a year or two ago), but more like a “general mood log” where I try to capture the essence of a day within descriptive terms I call “vibes.” By doing this, I actually have proven to myself that I feel “inspired” as often as one in six days. It is actually my most common mood thus far in eighty-seven days of tracking!
“Inspired,” interestingly, is currently followed in second place by a vibe I’ve titled “labyrinth.” I’ve given the vibe this title because it is like wandering around inside an internal maze of thoughts and emotions. There is a sense of being stuck in dark, winding tunnels of thought. This is the “mood” which I am often in when I’m in a process, but being in that mood is by no means synonymous with actually doing some sort of consciousness alchemy.
I began tracking my vibes as a way of attempting to prove to myself that I do come back around no matter how dark things feel for some period of time. It’s actually working. For example, I can now verify that experiencing the “labyrinth” state is actually directly correlated with experiencing the “inspired” state in the day (or days) that follow.
Also, speaking of productivity . . . My third most experienced state is “industrious” – appearing once in eight days with my current data. This means that two of my three most common vibes are actually highly “productive” states. And here, you see, I am trying to use productivity itself as a way of justifying all the time I spend laying about thinking. As I said, actually changing one’s values – programming – is a much more challenging path than finding a way to work in harmony with it.
Escaping the programming we’re given by our parents and society at large seems nearly impossible – even when engaging in regular sessions of hypnosis, parts work, and other forms of consciousness alchemy. It seems more fruitful to find ways to exalt (or exploit) our programming. The fact that I can justify more restorative relaxation because it will lead me to more productivity is actually quite encouraging.
My parents gave me some tough programming to live up to; they wanted me to be a prodigy, to be impressive, to lead a highly fruitful life that stood out. I have ways of working with this: I can remind myself of all the things I have accomplished thus far – and all the ways in which I am impressive. I can find space for introspection, body care, and everything else I need without having to rewrite the core tenets of my programming. Instead, I can craft addendums from my accumulated wisdom.
Morning Rituals? I Prefer Emotion Rituals
October 9th 2020 (One year later)
Many people laud morning rituals. I’ve never found them to work for me. Today I realized why.
A few weeks ago I became depressed and overwhelmed. I didn’t understand why at first. It seemed like everything was even better than usual. My days were filled with interesting, fulfilling conversations, and I was learning a lot of new things. What was missing? I thought it was being creative that was missing, so I started trying to do creative things, except I was having trouble “getting into it.” My next idea was that my life was too scheduled, so I cleared my calendar. This worked for a little while, but soon I became lethargic again.
Then I realized the key: every morning I was getting out of bed with something in mind that I “had to” do. This past week I’ve made a policy of beginning the day with something creative, inspired, playful, or exciting. The one day where I didn’t do that – yesterday – was the day where I felt listless, confused, and miserable for much of the day.
It doesn’t seem to matter how long I do something inspired in the morning, so long as it is the first thing. From there, the entire day flows more smoothly, and creativity bubbles to the surface of my consciousness as I come into contact with even the most mundane activities.
I can say with confidence that starting my day with that positive energy makes me at least twice as likely to feel that my day was “productive” at the end of it, even if the inspired activity at the beginning of the day was playing a video game. I can also say that starting my day with something I “have to” do makes me at least twice as likely to find myself crying about my life, confused about what’s gone wrong, feeling lost and listless, at some point later in the day.
This morning I realized that this is why morning rituals help so many people. The self-care rituals of exercise, grooming, reading, and so on, help ground people in themselves in a way that makes them feel good. The key isn’t whether they are exercising, drinking a smoothie, or meditating. The key is that you begin the day on a positive note. For some people, ritual soon becomes automatic, and that automation becomes a comfortable backdrop for pleasant sensations and thoughts such as, “I’m taking great care of myself.”
The morning ritual doesn’t work for me because after the first couple days I’ve already turned it into the morning “have to” and resent myself for it. Unless, of course, you count “doing something inspired” as a ritual itself. If so, I do enjoy a ritual of emotion. That is, I like to feel inspired and creative in the morning. In the afternoon, I like to feel productive. In the evening, I like to feel accomplished. As I get ready for bed, I like to feel nurtured, cherished, heard, understood, and generally loved.
Yet, somewhat ironically, to accomplish these patterns of emotion, I have to maintain a pattern of not being too patterned. Too much repetition and my emotional pattern switches from the above description to feeling lethargic in the morning, guilty in the afternoon, depressed in the evening, and nearly hysterical at night.
Act on Your Tiny Inspirations
October 14th 2020 (Five days later)
You may think that you can’t afford to act on your inspirations, but the truth is that you can’t afford not to. The price for ignoring your inspirations is depression and disease. Cancer is the epitome of this, but lesser conditions (such as constipation) are other clear signs.
A trap that I fall into several times a year goes like this: I have a small idea or inspiration but I ignore it because it is “pointless,” or “unimportant.” Then, later, I have a bigger idea that really is important. Unfortunately, this bigger idea feels like “too much” and I don’t feel up to it. Can you see what happened there?
When you ignore little inspirations, three things happen:
You lose momentum (or the potential for momentum),
You miss an opportunity to build your sense of empowerment.
You reinforce the idea that there is “no point” in doing or having what you want.
These three things are a disaster for your mental, emotional, and physical health.
It doesn’t matter how small the inspiration is: act on it. In a way, it is more important to act on those small inspirations because of how large a message you are sending to yourself by saying you can’t make space in your life for such a small act.
If you feel inspired to dust your monitor, do it.
If you feel inspired to pick a flower from your garden for a vase, do it.
If you feel inspired to buy some fresh, organic blueberries, do it.
If you feel inspired to put a ribbon in your hair, do it.
The more small inspirations you pile up, the more empowered and energetic you will feel, and when the big inspiration comes along, you’ll be ready for it.
Happiness: Raederle’s Personal Formula
2020-2025
With five years of refinement this is where my Formula for Happiness currently stands.
Morning Keys | Inspiration
Note: Inspiration is deeply tied with feeling energized.
✩ Feeling inspired.
✔ Waking up and having someone there in the room. Ideally in a separate bed, but within close reach.
✔ Having space, time, and resources to act on everyday inspirations.
✔ Actually acting on inspirations.
⌦ Ideally I would have the space, time, and resources to act on all my salient inspirations – which would include: building my dream house, founding a community which operates a retreat center, and conducting neuropsychology studies.
⌦ It is important to remember to act on tiny inspirations such as wiping the dust from something. Small acts foster empowerment and improvement which generate the needed energy required to act on larger inspirations.
⌦ Focusing on inspirations that feel achievable for my given level of energy and emotional fortitude.
⌦ Having a sense of optimism about my success.
✔ Having inspiration that is exciting enough to want to act on it more than I want to stay asleep (which is dramatically more likely if the above are in place).
Afternoon Keys | Productivity, Learning, Exploration
✩ Feeling productive.
✔ Access to fueling, healthy, tasty, pretty, colorful food.
✔ A beautiful, attractive, spacious environment.
✔ Learning something new, or working on an inspired project, or exploring a new possibility.
✔ Having something to look forward to in the evening.
✔ Having something to look forward to within the next eight days (that isn’t too stressful to prepare for).
❀ Having something to look forward to later in the year (such as a holiday, vacation, or trip).
❀ Having a good novel (story) to read when I need a break.
Early Evening Keys | Satisfaction
✩ Feeling accomplished.
✩ Feel satiated physically and satisfied emotionally.
Late Evening Keys | Connection
✩ Feeling nurtured, cherished, heard, understood, and generally loved.
✔ Having a minimum of two hours of connection time each day.
⌦ This was calculated based on my daily log spreadsheets from 2012 to 2015. I consistently became depressed and disconnected from my husband when we spent less than two hours of quality time together each day.
⌦ This doesn’t have to happen in the late evening, but often it doesn’t help as much when it happens earlier in the day because it disrupts a sense of inspiration in the morning, or it disrupts productivity during the day, leading to a lack of satisfaction later. Also, early-day connection often doesn’t actually substitute for late-evening connection.
✔ Feeling deeply connected with someone.
⌦ This would, ideally, mean feeling completely safe to be any aspect of myself with them.
❀ Talking through anything that is bothering me with someone who listens, understands, validates, and offers insightful thoughts in response. Each of these four parts of the response is critical to my feeling safe, seen, heard, felt, and connected.
Night Keys | Sound Sleep
✩ Feeling complete.
✔ Having someone in the room who will wake me, listen to me, and comfort me if I’m having a nightmare.
✔ Having someone in the room who will occasionally stay up with me doing something that feels definitively more important than sleep such as following an inspiration, having sex, or doing shadow work.
✔ Sleeping at least nine hours and twenty minutes twice a week. (And only staying up when I’m inspired by something that genuinely feels more important than sleep.)
❀ Being the right temperature with skin that is comfortably dry yet moisturized.
⌦ Being physically comfortable in general is particularly important to sleep, which means spine support, neck support, comfortable temperature, relaxed muscles, no gas, no itchy skin, no shooting pains, no sweating, etc.
Daily Keys (Any Time)
✔ Self-trust. I must be confident in my own ability to be the supreme arbiter of my thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
✔ Feeling contained, which is created through knowing someone will be deeply there for me if I need them.
✔ Fresh air. Specifically air that has been enriched and filtered by plants.
✔ Some kind of body care that feels restorative.
⌦ This can include any number of the following: epsom salt bath, hair brushing, teeth brushing, dental flossing, water picking, neti pot, ear oiling, drinking hot tea, receiving lymphatic or muscular massage, body oiling, and dry brushing.
⌦ If I’m feeling particularly down it can help a lot to receive these from someone I feel close to as this type of care is something that all of my fragments can actually feel, hear, and see. (My babyself can’t hear comforting words – so when I’m not feeling better despite someone saying “all the right things” it is a clue that I’m emotionally stuck in an infant fragment.)
✩ Feeling satisfied with my overall life trajectory.
Weekly Keys
✔ Significant exercise two to five days out of the week.
✔ Oxytocin production: four to six days out of the week I need significant cuddling, particularly heart-to-heart contact with minimal clothing – with someone I feel completely safe with.
✔ Having fulfilling time spent in a wide variety of my fragments (identities/parts/vibes) – vulnerable, creative, guru, student, sexual, driven, spiritually identified, playful, etc.
Feeling Energized: A Key to Feeling Inspired
I noted above that feeling energized is highly related to feeling inspired. This is what my Pocketbook of Self-Directed Wisdom says (thus far) about what personally makes me feel energized. Like everything on this page, I make these lists for myself, so this isn’t meant to be a prescriptive formula for you. I invite you to write your own formulas for yourself, utilizing mine only as a potential template or source of inspiration.
My Energizers
✔ Bare feet! Or sock-foot. I need to feel the floor, the earth. This helps improve my posture and remember to raise my arches, which in turn impacts my whole body posture.
✔ Hydration, a clear gut and colon.
✔ Micro-movements or “exercise snacks.” Bouncing on my toes, stretching while cooking, running in place, kicks while brushing my teeth, shoulder rolls at my desk, “neck lifts” in bed, twists, crunches, knee-dips, jaw movement, ankle rotations; do it!
✔ Good air quality, fresh air, the smell of flowers.
✔ Empowerment, especially when combined with desire.
✔ Desire, which is caring about something. Wanting a change, and feeling capable together create empowerment, which is what makes energized action feel natural.
✔ Inspiration, which is strongly linked to energy levels.
✔ Understanding and then resolving a source of emotional distress, which is a prerequisite for caring about things and desiring things.
My Energy Sappers
✖ Shoes and slippers, which make me feel less nimble, cut-off from the earth, unbalanced, slow, cumbersome, awkward, and heavy.
✖ Constipation, or a general “gut burden.”
✖ Overly tight pants, which press into my gut creating a constipated-like experience.
✖ A dismissive attitude. This is tied in with detachment and dissociation. It is the opposite of caring – an important key in motivation.
New Formulas?
March 9th 2025
Now I think it may be time for me to start over and reconstruct my formula for “happiness” into multiple formulas. Largely due to my Vibe Log Project, I’ve realized that my notion of being a happy, fulfilled person has two different subjective “states of being.” These states can be described by the following collections of vibes:
Happy, Playful, Adventurous, Flirtatious, Ecstatic, Excited
Inspired, Insightful, Intuitive, Introspective, Yogic
The first of these is relational. This state has to do with interacting with other people and my environment in ways that make me feel energized and abundant.
The second of these is internal. This state has to do with being gainfully immersed in my own curiosity, concepts, and emotions.
The relational state of happiness is characterized by a “soaring high” feeling – bouncing on the tips of my toes, going out and doing “fun” things, and playfully interacting with others.
The internal state of happiness is not necessarily something I would actually call “happy” in the specific sense (although it applies in the general sense). This internal, self-relating state isn’t as energetic (perhaps because it isn’t bouncing off the energies of others or my environment as much), but it is as satisfying.
The relational state is, quite obviously, about connecting with others.
The internal state is about connecting with myself.
And yet – both states require connection with “self” and “other” to actually feel satisfying. The relational state requires bringing my authentic self (my boundaries and truths) to the proverbial table. And the internal state requires inputs (such as books) and outputs (such as essays) which allow me to feel like my internal state is breathing – inhaling concepts and exhaling my own creations. Thus, the more extroverted slant of the happy-playful state is perhaps not the biggest difference between it and the more introverted inspired-insightful state.
Before trying to uncover what’s different about them, perhaps I should underscore the one remarkable thing about each state which is the same: I can rotate around the vibes listed for each state for months without feeling like my life is particularly “lacking.”
The vibes rotation between Happy, Playful, Adventurous, Flirtatious, Ecstatic, and Excited is quite satisfying even if I’m not taking the time to introspect or uncover new insights.
Likewise, the vibes rotation between Inspired, Insightful, Intuitive, Introspective, and Yogic is deeply satisfying even if I’m not having any experiences of excitement, flirtation or playfulness.
This is extremely interesting to me because of how much I seem to rely on a certain level of variety of internal states in order to feel generally “okay.” I can slip into an eerie sense of everything being “not quite right” when I spend too much time in one aspect of myself. (This most commonly happens when I’m stuck in a productivity-centric aspect of myself.) I wrote about this a couple days ago in my break-through entry I titled, Choosing Guideposts for Living.
Having realized that I have two different “pinnacle” states to aim for, I now wonder if I might benefit from attempting to rewrite my happiness formula as two different formulas – one for each state.
