READS
What can be more perfect than to start off a "What's Making Me Happy" series with this book called Feeling Good by David D. Burns, MD? It's essentially cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) in book-form for depression and anxiety. To put it simply, this book has been revolutionary for me. It's made me realize how much my depression/anxiety has affected me and how pervasive they are in my everyday life. But more importantly, the book and CBT itself depart from the Freudian philosophy and all the psychotherapy that was founded on it. What does that mean? In a nutshell, it means 3 basic things - (1) depression is not a mirror to human nature's true form, so it's not something that people have to suffer with, (2) a lot of your feelings including your strongest ones are based your thoughts - hence cognitive based therapy, and (3) so the way to fight your way out of your depression/anxiety is to first change your thoughts in order to change how you feel. Simple, but amazing.
Dr. Burns, a psychiatrist himself, originally published this book in the 1980's as a companion to office-based CBT for his patients, but it got so popular outside of his own patient population that studies were done to figure out the effectiveness of "bibliotherapy" (reading this book), and (according to the book's preface), they found it to be as effective as office-based therapy! I'm not sure how validated these studies were, but if this is going to give me a placebo effect that I'll get better, then have at it.
Dr. Burns, a psychiatrist himself, originally published this book in the 1980's as a companion to office-based CBT for his patients, but it got so popular outside of his own patient population that studies were done to figure out the effectiveness of "bibliotherapy" (reading this book), and (according to the book's preface), they found it to be as effective as office-based therapy! I'm not sure how validated these studies were, but if this is going to give me a placebo effect that I'll get better, then have at it.
Anyway, the book is chock-full of exercises and thought experiments fleshed out by anecdotes for you to try out. They're really wonderful and actually effective. What I love about the book is that it's not belittling or critical, but understanding, empathetic, and encouraging. It doesn't discount that you may truly be going through some rough patches in your life, but it helps you rein in your feelings so that you can actually function and not be completely consumed by your woes and worries. Another way of putting it is - CBT doesn't tell you how you should feel, it helps you function with your feelings. Of course, what you get out of the book is dependent on what you put in, so don't go into expecting happy thoughts to just fall into your lap. It's definitely been a process for me, but I can see changes in myself already. I highly recommend this to anyone who is clinically diagnosed with a depressive/anxiety disorder or think they might have clinical depression/anxiety or just anyone who wants to lead more happy, fulfilling, productive lives.
:)
SKIN CARE
These are some of my longstanding favorites. These two are my holy grails (yes, I did just use some makeup guru speak) as an ultra-sensitive skin sufferer: Alpha hydrox foaming face wash clarifying cleanser and Neutrogena sensitive skin oil-free moisturizer (no SPF). Love, love, love these two to death. Cannot live without them. These unassuming drugstore products have carried my face through the best and worst times, returning my face back to its happy state no matter what I put it through - including high-end skincare products that ironically promise to make my skin better, pfft.
HEALTH
My latest health binge (besides cardio) is lemon honey tea. I actually got this idea from the Korean variety show, The Human Condition, specifically the episodes on conquering skin & hair problems. For this challenge, the cast and guests (A Pink's Bomi and some other chick who I forget) had to follow a few rules for about a week to improve their hair and skin. The rules included exercising for 1 hour everyday, drinking 2L of water everyday, eating lemons everyday, eating carrots everyday, and avoiding greasy food. Their hair and skin conditions were measured for hydration, acne (skin), balding spots (hair), etc. at a hospital clinic before and after the week, and everyone seemed to improve with just these simple rules after only 1 week! I couldn't make myself eat lemons everyday, and most of the cast & guests felt the same way, so they just added lemons to their 2L of water everyday. And that's what I'm doing everyday, too. I'm not sure how much it's helping, since I've also started drinking more water, sleeping more, and exercising more, but it certainly isn't hurting.
APPS:
Water Your Body - this app was also inspired by the Human Condition episodes on conquering hair & skin problems. It's a really easy-to-use app that calculates how much water you should be consuming based on your weight, and that amount can be adjusted up for exercising (up 15%) or hot days (10%) to account for insensible loss of water due to sweating. You input your amounts from a menu of preset fluid amounts that you can edit if you so desire. What makes it so great though is that you can set reminders throughout the day. I really like using this one, because I've found that I can easily make my goal pretty regularily - it was just a matter of remembering and developing the habit. The end result is that no matter how bad of a day I've had, I can at least feel accomplished about drinking enough water and thus being relatively healthy that day! As optimists would say, it's the little things in life.
Habbits: I got this app because I was looking for a better way to track my habits. Up til now, I've just been recording them in my paper journal, but I would forget to look at my journal, like everyday... so that didn't work quite well. I tried a bunch of the free habit tracking/logging apps available in the Google Play store, and this one had the most functionalities, was the easiest to use, and looked the prettiest out of all of the free ones. It also comes with a reminder to check-in your habits on a daily basis as well as a widget to look at your habit logs without going into the app itself. I'm loving this, and am trying not to overwhelm it or myself by starting with too many habits, but as you can see, the overachiever in me didn't let that work out too well...
MEDIA:
I'm loving the Serial podcast produced by the same producers of This American Life. I was a little sad last week when they skipped a week because of Thanksgiving (one new episode is released every Thursday). I was listening to another NPR podcast recently, Pop Culture Happy Hour in fact, which talked about detective stories in light of the hit series, True Detective, and how many successful TV series, movies, books, etc. are really detective stories at the basic level... And it made me think, Serial is the same way, which is part of the magic that's made this series so good and so viral. Anyway, one of the things that has troubled me is how the same storytelling technique that has popularized this series has also tended to make people forget that this isn't another TV series in podcast/radio format, but it's actually a real piece of journalism about real people, a real murder, a real possibly-falsely-accused convict, and real lives torn apart over this tragedy. I myself was starkly reminded of this in the most recent episode that answered one of my burning questions, "when is Hae's family's side of the story going to come in? That's going to give some important answers right?" But in fact, there's been nothing from that side because they don't want anything to do with this podcast revival of a dark time in their lives, understandably so. It's not going to bring back their daughter.
leeSA:
She is a K-indie artist who releases covers, remixes, and originals through the YouTube channel friendz.net, which also features another popular K-indie artist, J Rabbit. I believe both J Rabbit and leeSA are pretty successful in Korea with their original songs featured in a couple Korean dramas and regularly holding their own concerts. I personally like leeSA more for her voice and unique compositions, like this one which is a remix of Hyuna's Red, something from Seo Taiji, and a little bit of her own jam. I also like how she puts some creative effort into her recordings. Here, they've put in little splashes of red throughout in reference to one of the songs. So cute. In another recording (cover of Adam Levine's Lost Stars), leeSA is singing on a rooftop/stage overlooking traffic, and it's just beautiful. I love little creative touches like that. Also, she rocks the blonde look. I kind of have a girl-crush on her.
I love Papa YG for supporting a project like Epik High's Born Hater. This is rap at its best - talking about issues that every other music style avoids. Love it. Especially with all the drama that 2014 has seen. This is much needed for the K-pop fan's soul. I'm sure many K-poppers and idols themselves are secretly jamming/raging to the beat of this song. Also, it doesn't hurt that Winner's Mino and iKON's Bobby are featured in this. (And if you haven't already, you should watch their only live performance so far at MAMA 2014, just released.)
FOOD
Today, I caught up with some girl friends at a tea restaurant called Reynold's Tavern in Annapolis, MD. Highly highly recommend if you're a tea lover. They have a huge selection of teas, a lot of which I have never tried, including a cute series called the Jane Austen series with the Mr. Darcy tea, Longbourn wedding tea, Sweet Jane tea, etc. etc. I tried Mr. Darcy today, and he was delicious. ;) If I lived in/near Annapolis, would definitely go broke coming here everyday!
THOUGHT CATALOG
An easy way to think about relationships with boys - they're either there to protect or to pursue you. Protect as in protect you as a sister, friend, girlfriend, wife, etc. Pursue as in for a romantic relationship. If it doesn't seem to be neither or if you can't figure out why they're seeing you, then it's time to talk or make him an acquaintance. I think it's a simple way to look at relationships with boys if you're confused. I'm always awed by thinking that simplifies a complex and complicated matter, so I love this. But, I can totally see people poking holes at this, so if you disagree and/or want to modify this rule, please do comment! (No hating though.)
And that's it for this first installment of What's Making Me Happy! I hope you enjoyed reading it and /or got something from it. Crossing my fingers that I can keep up with this and more will follow.
Also, if you're wondering why a Korean dramas/variety shows section wasn't included, that's simply because I feel like we talk about Korean dramas/variety shows plenty in our other posts on this blog, so these favorites (at least for me) will only be favorites outside of Korean dramas/variety shows. I do have a life outside Korean shows, see?! Although I still managed to talk about a Korean variety show in this post, however obliquely...
Also, if you're wondering why a Korean dramas/variety shows section wasn't included, that's simply because I feel like we talk about Korean dramas/variety shows plenty in our other posts on this blog, so these favorites (at least for me) will only be favorites outside of Korean dramas/variety shows. I do have a life outside Korean shows, see?! Although I still managed to talk about a Korean variety show in this post, however obliquely...
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