The Joy of Being, Explained

The Endorphin Effect: A Breakthrough Strategy for Holistic Health and Spiritual Wellbeing is a book by British psychologist William Bloom, published back in 2001. It is an Aristotelian approach to the Platonic (and pre-Socratic) mode of being called joy.

Take a look at this three-minute video. By way of contrast, it's a great tool for the understanding of the joy of being.

Bloom recommends five strategies to boost your body's production of endorphins: "rest"; "exercise"; "positive triggers"; "attitude of the inner smile"; and "connection with the natural world."

"Positive triggers" would be just about anything that makes you feel good--the thought of one's children, a beach in Hawaii, and ace in tennis, anything.

Exercise provides the best example as to the real essence of these strategies. Imagine the guy (or woman) who has to log sixty miles running per week. No one can care that much about running, can they? What he cares about is the endorphins that the running releases, the "runner's high," as it's called. He's become addicted to the endorphins, which are, in fact, a thousand times more powerful than morphine.