Lost Moments

 Since it’s invention, photography, like any other form of art, sculpture, even architecture, express, explore and question ideas about relationships to a place or time that has significance to us.

There are many ways of depicting such relationships in a photography- from a single shot that can stand on its own yet suggesting a narrative that extends beyond the frame to a sequence of photographs that suggests a deeper psychological narrative.

Inspired by the topic “Constructing Narratives and Challenging Histories”, I would like to show an example of a narrative that I am working on currently, based on pictures, taken by myself back in 2015.

Having been living abroad for 20 years, I still cope with the feeling of guilt because of leaving my country, the feeling of missing my family and the feeling of detachment from my background and the feeling of lost moments. To overcome these feelings and accept them, I started to photograph all what was around me, when visiting Ukraine.

One of the photographs is a self portrait and suggests my inner state, a feeling, where I am facing the origin of my identity and reflecting upon the importance of the connection to own community and roots.

The second one is a representation of the community, a place and time to which I am seeking to connect. It’s an amusement park, to which I often came with my family. as a kid. That image is a representation of my childhood, my past, yet, it’s a timeless moment, to which we always want to come back.

By putting together these two images, I seek to construct a narrative, through which I explore and come closer to the distant surroundings and distant time, which sometimes, I feel lost for me because I am not there any longer physically.

I have taken the photographs back in 2015, but I back then I didn't have a clear understanding of meaning of these images. Not until I have taken the course in Seeing Through Photographs.

Only after learning how we understand the depth of our lives through the lens of photography, I know, these images are not only about the final pictures. I use the camera to create a connection to a place, which has significance to me.

Happiness: The Science behind Your Smile or HOW TO AVOID MAKING YOURSELF MISERABLE

“Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.”

                                                                                                                          ― Nathaniel Hawthorne

By Olena Denysyuk

INTRODUCTION

THE TITLE OF THIS BOOK IS “HAPPINESS: the science beyond your smile”.  IT SHOULD BE “HOW TO AVOID MAKING YOURSELF MISERABLE”. Happiness is a word that sells, but not the real topic of this book. It contents no concrete indication of what to do. Rather, it points where the main obstacles to a satisfactory life are. Actually this book is about what mistakes many people often make without realizing that their behavior will have almost inevitably lead to self-deception, disappointment and chronic frustration. And it shows that there can be many roadblocks on our ways to achieve our aims.

 

For instance:

-          our frame of reference, or how we compare ourselves to others with considerable myopia

-          the endowment effect, or how we come to attach more value than reasonable to our possessions

-          the peak-end effect or how we give preference to short-term intense enjoyment/entertainment over long-term pleasure

-          the exaggeration of the importance of life-events, i.e. the over-estimation of their effects on us personally

-          and, ultimately, the power of many foolish human desires, as it prevents us from enjoying our present possibilities for well-being, as Buddha demonstrated 26 centuries ago.

So, have you ever considered that actually we are not predisposed to be happy because we live on considerable state of uncertainty? For example, the knowledge of our own death, society’s suppression of our drives, or the cruel and illusory psychology of desire and “wrong” preferences, as well as other demands from society to be concerned with our self-presentation, put us in a state of eternal worry. 

Alas, we live in an economic system geared to constantly remaining us of our desires. So here we are leaving the personal sphere to the analysis of HOW our social organization based on market economics is inherently a source of profound frustration and the deep foundation of the lack of meaning in most people lives.

Therefore, we have to work hard to construct our own happiness.

 

Why is it So Difficult to Change a Habit?

Changing a habit is more about habitual behavior that requires a cognitive understanding of your activities. This means clear perception of causes and consequences of your own responses, reflecting on own behavior, and correct interpretation of a situation and a context according to what it means for you and how it fits into your reality. Changing a habit is more about knowing the psychology of habits.  

By Olena Denysyuk

OUR  bodies TENDS TO BE ENERGY-SAVING  and our brains give mostly a priority to what is perceived as usual, Therefore, very often,  we are not totally aware of our actions, as many of them are almost automatic. So, I will describe our CONSCIOUSNESS as “lazy”.

And there is a good reason for it: by performing complex behaviors without any consciousness, we save our brain energy for something more important. That is one of the reasons why our brain likes what is already familiar to us. Then, by knowing the patterns, our brains would know on which inputs to pay attention to and which to ignore. In music, for example, our brains crave familiarity, because familiarity is how we manage to hear without becoming distracted by sounds or noises. In turn, the system of liking makes us wanting it. Therefore, we are coming back again to something familiar to us, instead of wanting/accepting something new. And we come back- and we create habits. Again and again, because behavioral habits prevent us from becoming overwhelmed by the endless decisions we would otherwise have to make each day. That’s the rationale behind our lazy mind.

But at some point, for some individual reason, you might want to change a habit, as the brain’s dependence on automatic routines at some point can be dangerous. However, simply declaring your reasons for changing a habit (I am too fat, I am too lazy, I am too unhealthy, etc.) is not enough a predisposition for any work with a habit. The supremacy of the power of habits is thus in the understanding of the psychology of habits. So if you want to change a habit, you would need to comprehend the conditions (stimuli and clues) that lead you towards your habit. Also, you would need to understand what reward you achieve when executing your habit. Knowing exactly the powers of your habits, the dark as they are, is essential for forming and changing your habit behavior. Also, this way you can come to the source of “good” habits”. And, if you are lucky, you can adjust the dark power of a “bad” habit into something more enjoyable, powerful, and challenging.

Happy New Year!!!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! First of all, thank you all – especially to those nice people, who read my posts and a thank you in advance to those wonderful people, who are going to read them! And a very warm thank you to those, who rewarded me with a compliment, a comment, or constructive criticism, or a simple “like” on Facebook. And thank you to those, who showed support and understanding.

And now, I shall sum up!

One time my husband told me, it's better to be a pathetic blogger, than just be pathetic.

He should be ashamed of calling me a pathetic blogger!

But rather than feeling angry I felt quite honored, as he now calls me a BLOGGER! It’s always a pleasure to get a new stamp on your forehead.

So I kept on being a pathetic blogger for a little longer, rather than to be pathetic :)  (Apparently I am pathetic, if I am not blogging.) 

How To Be More Creative?

Creativity is part of our mind, our meaning, and our personal dynamics. Creativity is what we need, if we are to flourish in our well- being, including physical, environmental, mental, emotional, spiritual and social health. It’s a way to find meaning in all what we do, how we live and where we go.         

By Olena Denysyuk

  I think it is a well-known statement that creativity combined with rationalization and reasoning, adds more value to everything. It is a way for a product to stand out in a crowded market. Be it design, a story, a play. Be it something that provokes feelings. Be it something unique and beautiful, but meaningful. And for creativity to give meaning, it should be enhanced by rationalization and reasoning. Does it give meaning? If not- it doesn’t matter- creativity doesn’t always make sense. But actually, how do you find logic in creativity?

For many years I crafted my logical and analytical abilities, the left side of the brain, but not the right one. But actually, as long as I progress these analytical (L-sided abilities), I am becoming better and better in my creative (R-sided) abilities as well. What are the reasons?

Can creativity be synthesized? Or explained logically, and can it be learned at all? Where do creative ideas come from? What I have noticed, is that my good ideas to my creative hobbies (design, photography) come when I am relaxed; when I am very much motivated; when I notice details and its “new connections”; when I push myself into creative thinking; and when I have a dream. But I am sure there is more to the story.

How to Deal with the Emotional Crisis in a Calm and Cool Way?

If people were to choose a planet, where they prefer to live on, they will have two choices. The one planet will be orbiting around facts, details, systems, and laws – “real things”. The second one will be orbiting around abstract dimenions, feelings, and creative ideas- the “intangible things”. If the planets were to exist- there would be never ending devastating crises. Not because one planet is better, than another one, but because people from different planets will display and absorb the emotional response to situations differently. The name for the crisis would be The Emotional Crisis.

So how to deal with the crisis in a calm and cool way?

By Olena Denysyuk

The failure to understand the dimensions of feelings has its own price: loss of friends, husbands, good deals, goodwill – frankly speaking almost everything that involves human interaction. The consequent outcome of this failure might eventually further accelerate the misperception or misjudgment of human behavior/nature/incentives on the longer run. The effect is even worse, when we choose to stay hooked on being right (a topic for separate post) or see things from a limited/subjective standpoint  to the point that it actually turns into emotional stupidity – you would form your own delusional perception of reality.

In general, I think, feelings and emotions are a challenging subject to discuss, as it is more subjective, than anything. Sometimes ourselves and not only surrounding people fail to understand our emotional states. 

Our brain catches the “tangible and intangible information”, selects only the necessary information, process and analyses it, and consequently send signals to react. Due to different personalities, experiences, genes, brain anatomy, status quo, as well as social and family status, the same information will result in different outcomes at different times, as well as the same information will result different actions in different people. So there is no black or white, right or wrong, bad or good in people’s behavior- there are millions of dimensions on how our brain will catch, select, process and analyze this information. Besides, we are all different in our emotional intelligence and experiences; therefore we have different capacities to grasp the emotional side of the game. So her it comes: conflicts, stress, anxiety and emotional distress.

Do We Really Need Self-Confidence Boosting Advices?

Often we are given Self-Confidence Boosting Advices from lecturing books, and the self-help sections in weekly magazines. Confidence, usually positively associated with character strength  is rarely examinedfrom its backside. But where does confidence come from? Take a look with me, and tell me whether you agree with me upon it.  This will be my advice on confidence.

On Poul Krugman’s blog, I have recently read his own reflections upon his own career choices. Being a columnist at New York Time, a leading economist among academics, a professor, an author and editor of bestselling books, and not least, a Nobel Prize Laureate, he is nominated for a Secretary of Treasury position.