Strava society

You may seeing people on your instagram posting their Strava or other fitness or health apps as well of running or physical activities including pointing their achievement like pace or calories burned. In physical wellbeing element, these activity simply helps releasing a neurotransmitter called dopamine, often referred to as the "happy hormone".

Not excepting on my instagram, i post my fitness activities with my brand new Whoop 4.0 that monitored my heart rate every single second and this device processes the data into wholesome parameters like strain level, recovery or stress level, sleeping time data including the REM (Rapid eye movement sleep) and even the calories burned daily despite it may still on the debate of the preciseness.

Whoop 4.0 monitored strain (blue line) and recovery level (yellow line). I need to keep the strain below recovery level so i am not in over working out condition

Happiness and SPIRE wellbeing model

You may not realize, physically active is one from five core elements of the secret pursuing the happiness called SPIRE, modeled by Tal Ben-Shahar in his book "Happier, No Matter What". He is the world's first Master of Arts in Happiness Studies - The Science of Wellbeing.

The SPIRE consist: Spiritual, Physical, Intellectual, Relational, and finally Emotional wellbeing. These together, make up a whole-being which is looking a whole person and the well-being of each part of that person.

Movie: Pursuit of Happiness | sony pictures

The philosophers of ancient Greece believed happiness was bound up with notions of luck, fortune and living virtuously. Many centuries later, in 1776, America's founding father declared the pursuit of happiness to be one of man's unalienable rights. But the key of being happy may well not looking too hard for it

Money can't buy happiness

Tal Ben-Shahar does not include financial wellbeing as par of the SPIRE model. It is because it is not primary to our whole person, as is our rational capacity or as our emotional life. A lot of people may disagree with that or simply think that: If money can't buy you happiness, it can help you purchase less misery.

However, finances do matter a great deal when it comes to basic needs. But once we are beyond this notion of scarcity of poverty, then money contributes very little, or rather, additional money contributes very little to our overall wellbeing. There is a lot of research showing that buying experiences contributes more to our happiness overall than buying things.

The paradox of pursuing happiness

Happiness is a good thing. You may ever heard the research that people who say to themselves, "happiness is important for me, I want to pursue it", may be on their instagram or her daily shared activities. Those individuals actually end up being less happy. They're more likely to experience depression. The paradox is the other hand, happiness is clearly a good thing. On the other hand, valuing it as a good thing is problematic.

Pursuing happiness indirectly

The paradox of happiness can be resolved by approaching it indirectly. It's like the sun - if we look at it directly, it can be harmful. However, if it broken down into its elements, into its constituents, we can look at the color of the rainbow that we can appreciate its beauty.

Indirectly looking at the sunlight. Enjoying it, savoring it. In the same way, pursuing happiness directly can cause more harm than good. But breaking it down into its elements, can lead us to enjoy the indirect pursuit of happiness, and by extension, to raise our overall levels of happiness.

Picture: Elements of sunlight being dispersed from prism.

My fragile times

It was early November of 2022 when we impulsively went to Dieng. It was a rapid hike to the summit of Sikunir. I dont need to explain that fragile is, these pictures talk. I was 71 kilograms and with 27% body fat mass, made my heart working very hard to offset my cells breathing.

Exercising and antifragility

Antifragility is a terms from the opposite of fragile, explained by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book Antifragility. Basically it is resilient 2.0. Traditional resilent is about the ability to bounce back. You put pressure on certain material, if it resilient it goes back to its original state, once the stress lifted. Resilient 2.0 or antifragility is about bouncing back higher. So, it is not only goes back to its original state, it actually grows stronger, bigger, better.

Terbentur, terbentur, terbentur, terbentuk -Tan Malaka. I think Taleb just inspired from Tan Malaka.

We go to the gym, we put stress on the muscles. Over time, they do not only bounce back, they actually grow stronger, bigger, healthier, better. As a results, we are an antifragile system, not just physically, psychological as well. Potentially, if we introduce certain condition in place, such as for instance having time for arrest, then our antifragile system kicks in. Then we actually become stronger, not just more resilient, but better able to deal with things as time goes by.

Indirect happiness by exercising

In this blog post i just want to share my effort to pursue the physical wellbeing where the four other well being i cant talk more since I am still 20% happy.

With the analogy of prism that dispersed the color of the rainbow from sunlight, and enjoy it indirectly. It's the same with happiness. For instance, my 2023 resolution that i was thinking at the late of 2022. I say to myself that i am going to be more physically active, that is another way of pursuing happiness, according to Tal Ben-Shahar that mastering happiness learn about the world's first Master of Arts in Happiness Studies - The Science of Wellbeing.

It sounds weird what are the correlations of physically active with the happiness, even it indirectly. He said that regular exercise as little as 30 minutes three times a week is equivalent in its impact on our psychological wellbeing to our most powerful psychiatric medication.

My exercise results, so far

My effort to purse happiness indirectly by exercising is simple. In January, i had many trips started from Balige - South Sumatra, Medan, Penang, KL, Singapore within two weeks which lead and forced me to be physically active. In February, I subscribe gym member at Celebrity Fitness with 3 session using private trainer (PT). I tried to consistently do exercise at least 30 minutes three times a week

Attending yoga class | 8 feb 2023

Nutritions

I am aware that one of important things of healthy lifestyle beside the physically activities is the nutritions. I don't know when it started but i found some advise from instagram doctor that eating above 2 p.m has beneficial for the body or at least 17-18 hours after our last dinner. I tried to follow it and I think it works. In this year of 2023, I almost never eat food that processed using seed or palm oils and preferring butter. I also consume whey protein, two glass per day. Another secret is drinking much much water.

Conclusions

For me, being physically active makes me more productive where I have much energy than ever before. I can't measure my happiness level but I can say from empiric evidence from my life, i am more happy than 2022. It just may be 20% happier because there is more four elements that i have not been pursued.