Julia Baird

A beautiful, intimate and inspiring investigation into how we can find and nurture within ourselves that essential quality of internal happiness - the 'light within' that Julia Baird calls 'phosphorescence' - which will sustain us even through the darkest times. Over the last decade, we have become better at knowing what brings us contentment, well-being and joy. We know, for example, that there are a few core truths to science of happiness. We know that being kind and altruistic makes us happy, that turning off devices, talking to people, forging relationships, living with meaning and delving into the concerns of others offer our best chance at achieving happiness. But how do we retain happiness? It often slips out of our hands as quickly as we find it. So, when we are exposed to, or learn, good things, how do we continue to burn with them? And more than that, when our world goes dark, when we're overwhelmed by illness or heartbreak, loss or pain, how do we survive, stay alive or even bloom? In the muck and grit of a daily existence full of disappointments and a disturbing lack of control over many of the things that matter most - finite relationships, fragile health, fraying economies, a planet in peril - how do we find, nurture and carry our own inner, living light - a light to ward off the darkness? Absorbing, achingly beautiful, inspiring and deeply moving, Julia Baird has written exactly the book we need for these times.

On awe, wonder and things that sustain you when the world goes dark

Phosphorescence

Paige Arnold

One of the world's longest studies of adult life, the Harvard Study of Adult Development, followed subjects for eighty years beginning in 1938 and found that social connection and relationships are the single greatest predictor of health and happiness throughout your life.

In greeting each morning, remind yourself of dadirri by blessing yourself with the following: Let tiny drops of stillness fall gently through my day.

She told me to learn to rely friends more. ‘You look like you're always the strong one’, she said, 'but you have to know it's okay if sometimes you are not’. I nodded.

Phosphorescence quotes

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