Day 81: Early April Fools

What went well? 

1. Experienced elevation during my intro Buddhism class. Haidt (2003) coined this term, which describes "a positive emotion experienced upon witnessing another person perform a virtuous act, principally one that improves the welfare of other people" (Schnall, Roper, & Fessler, 2010, p. 315). Typically, people experiencing elevation will report that they feel inspired and uplifted, and motivated to perform a similarly prosocial act themselves. The "virtuous act" I witnessed in this case, was simply hearing an inspirational story about a couple in some South-East Asian who run a restaurant and get up every morning at 4am and finish around 8pm, working Monday-Saturday. They close shop on Sunday because there's not enough business - BUT - they then lug all their equipment to the monastery and repeat their routine there on Sundays, donating all the food for free to the monastery, to all the monks and anyone who comes and needs food. So awesome.
2. Someone was handing out copies of the Daily Pennsylvanian (the student paper) on Locust Walk today. I thought it was a particularly hilarious issue, but laughed even more when I realised that it was actually their annual joke issue (by going to their website). Like, I totally believed stuff like this was actually real. It would have been awesome if it was!! I was completely caught off-guard because April Fools is meant to be tomorrow!! Still, a great dose of humour.
3. Sketched out another mind map to get some clarity about my Buddhism/Mindfulness paper. These things help a lot, even while illustrating the complexity of things. I forgot to use this technique (jotting down key themes) as I was reading along, and it would have helped a lot because you do forget things you read earlier.



Messssssy.....

What did I learn? 

• Some cool ornaments for a piece I'm singing!
• People with more social support are overall less likely to enter treatment for mental illness, but if they have a serious mental illness, then more social support means that they are more likely to enter treatment.