By Jess Huckins — 2018
A Q&A with Nataly Kogan, where we discuss grit, emotional well-being, and the role leaders play in building happier organizations.
Read on www.workhuman.com
CLEAR ALL
Pleasure can be a boon or a burden, depending on our relationship to it. It can leaven laborious days, or lead us to waste them. The pleasures of a mild stimulant such as caffeine can be harmless or even beneficial, but the pleasures of amphetamines can be deadly.
One way to find balance is to separate work from your outside life entirely, and leave science in the lab. But I see it differently: I have found joy and balance by joining my research and hobbies.
Elizabeth appears to be a naturally positive person. However, she’ll be the first to admit that getting to this place took real work. A cancer diagnosis over twenty years ago led her to reevaluate her life and shift her perspective to one of gratitude.
Many of us treat joy like the good china, only warranted on special occasions. Even if we know it is within our reach, we may not see it is within our control.
An act of gratitude is a living whole. To superimpose on its organic flow a mental grid like a series of “steps” will always be somewhat arbitrary. And yet, for the sake of practice, such a delineation can be helpful.
A Benedictine monk for over 60 years, Steindl-Rast was formed by 20th-century catastrophes. He calls joy “the happiness that doesn’t depend on what happens.” And his gratefulness is not an easy gratitude or thanksgiving — but a full-blooded, reality-based practice and choice.
As Buddhist teaching says, suffering has the potential to deepen our compassion and understanding of the human condition. And in so doing, it can lead us to even greater faith, joy and well-being.