Just finished swimming a race from Alcatraz to shore, it's just the best high. I do tons of endurance sports, but swimming is the most reliable in yielding that euphoric feeling.
I think it's due to it being essentially forced mindfulness meditation. Though you could swim with music, I don't and that means it's just my thoughts for 30-60 min (watch the thoughts, can't do anything about them right now). I'm forced to focus on breathing on a set schedule (analogous to vipassana techniques). I'm moving my whole body in a way that requires balance, complex coordination and attention to what my body is feeling (analogous to body-scans, yoga). If you're not listening to music it's also a little like sensory deprivation, there's just neutral water rushing sound.
I know running and biking can get there for some (myself included occasionally), but on a pool swim there's nothing to worry about other than the occasional turnaround at the wall. No obstacles, no dodging others on the sidewalk, no traffic. You're in a controlled, safe environment.
Many sports, each has such nice exercise stratagem. Even though swimming is my most favorite since I've been swimming for decade,
cycling: the most enjoyment of scenery, 26km (how I do per day) gives you a lot of different views; mountain, river, road, smell of air along the ways. These are also good for brain.
basketball: it just nicely exercises agility, muscle memory (imagine you nail it 10/10 shooting continually, how nice the muscle is!), reactivity, quick decision making as a team.
table tennis: it is incredible how you can control the small ball in very fast interaction, in very small area (table). Little skills you gain from this is mind-blowing to me.
I play a lot of other sports, I'm very satisfied what my body can do, and breaking current limit is also fun.
Swimming is the sea
Cycling is the air
Running is the earth
You learn to appreciate and respect them all.
Swimming is birth: thrown into an unfamiliar environment, you struggle to find your way
Cycling is youth/midlife: You have your footing, now you speed through life with ease
Running is old age: slower than you were in your prime, you learn persistence as your body weakens.
Swimming is the lowest impact on your body too. Anything involving running includes frequent jolts to ankles/knees/hips/lower back.
Cycling on standard bicycles concentrates pressure on your genitals and the nerve-dense region areas around them, and puts some pressure on the lower back.
Swimming can cause unique injuries to shoulders if your form isn't right, but otherwise is very smooth and low-impact.
I must put in a word for my favorite sport: week-long solo backpacking. Meditation, frustration, overcoming, self-reliance, singing at the top of your lungs, not speaking for days, exhaustion, mental challenge, pushing yourself, scenery and more scenery, plenty hypoxia too. Bonus euphoria for some high summits, sleeping under the stars, catching your own food, not being eaten by predators, swimming in frozen lakes, etc. Use hiking poles for full-body workout, go off-trail for some mental exercise, push your boundaries and immerse yourself for days on end.
In my years I've been a keen swimmer and cyclist. When I'm pool swimming, I don't usually get that euphoric high until the cool air of outside hits me in the face as I'm leaving the building. The harder I swam, the higher the high, but it never hits me until the outside air hits my lungs. It's incomparable.
When I'm on my bike, I reach that same meditative trance. It's just the road, the pain in my legs and lungs and the focus on getting to the end of my ride, little by little, kilometre by kilometre. Everything else just falls away. My problems don't matter when I'm on my bike. The pain ensures that my focus is occupied and I'm present. Completely present. When I reach the end of my ride and fall from my bike because my legs won't carry me, the high comes as I lay trying to catch my breath.
There may be something to your observation that it could be related to hypoxia. Either way, the high is real.
Swimming is a potential deadly sport - you could drown.
With this in mind, I learned the technical aspects of swimming which forced me to focus on the here and now. If you are not focussed you make mistakes which can lead to swallowing water.
I did this in order to swim longer and faster. I finally grasped the highly meditational aspect of swimming and enjoy it.
Even though I prefer running over swimming nothing comes close to swimming in regards to meditation.
Or a kind of mild hypothermia? I've experienced your "euphoric feeling" during and after swims in cooler water. Google tells me the water temperature in San Francisco Bay is about fourteen degrees Celsius.
You should look into aquatic ape theory, it might explain why we feel so good when we swim. One of the ideas is that swimming required us to develop breath control, which was a prerequisite for developing speech.
How did you find the Alcatraz race ? Was water too cold ? I would love to do this but bit scared about shark attack lol ( i know there are no sharks in bay)
Can’t read the article, but I did want to share that the title resonates with me.
I love running and now run again, but I started learning swimming during a knee injury.
One thing it re-taught me was how rewarding it is to learn or improve a non-work related skill dramatically. I picked up juggling (poorly) and jump rope since.
Two, I knew I was getting a stroke down when I knew when to glide versus to move or exert myself. Maybe a metaphor but practically it makes 40 laps enjoyable instead of torture.
Three, having one hour of somewhat sensory deprived solitude is great therapy.
Swimming was not my thing but I had to learn so I could do other watersports.
The Down Syndrome girl and others in her special needs group that were in the pool when I went were incredible inspiration. If she could smile and put in the lengths then I could too.
We are taught and continually retaught that discipline and hard work are the keys to success in life. Why would we not bring the same level of planning, anxiety and pursuit of excellence to our attempts to be happy? When you spend 40-60 hours a week trying to optimize your output at work it is difficult to not have an anxiety ridden vacation where you try to optimize your happiness.
I am sure many people can relate to the first 2-3 days of vacation being needed just to get into 'vacation-mode' where you can actually start to forgive yourself for 'wasting' a day.
> We are taught and continually retaught that discipline and hard work are the keys to success in life.
Maybe we should work on that presupposition first. If we're talking about career and material success it's probably true, but these very rarely bring true lasting happiness. You also have to look at who's telling you to "work hard" and why it's in their interest for you to do so.
Imho once you go above a very low threshold of income (allowing you to live comfortably without excesses) you should have better things to do with your time than spending 7+ hours a day working.
Vacations are the proverbial carrot on a stick. "Be a good worker this week and you'll get to spend your money and enjoy yourself this weekend", "be a good worker this quarter and you'll get to spend your money and enjoy yourself during the next vacations", "Be a good worker all your life and you'll get to spend your money and enjoy yourself during retirement". Fast forward 45 years and you spend literally 70% of your life either working or sleeping, the rest being divided between distraction that barely keeps you going (daily Netflix or video game, weekly party, quarterly vacations) and chores. You're now physically and mentally a shadow of your past self but you have all the time you want, success!
It's extremely easy to get lost in all the little made up games we play days after days and miss the big picture.
You were taught wrong things. Most cultures value things outside of work much more and are therefore able to enjoy then more. Not to mention that discipline and hard work most often don't lead to success. There are many disciplined, hard workers working two or three minimum wage jobs. Hardly what anyone would call success, barely scraping by an existence let alone a life. People should question their culture and propaganda a lot more. Most of it is bullshit.
In March I started swimming much more due to injury. Swam 250k yards in 3mo. One session was 10k in the pool.
Getting past the boredom is a skill. In my experience it’s mostly a symptom of not focusing on your form. Don’t use a watch and count yourself to stay focused. Break it up with challenging blocks to force you to focus. For ex: 50yds on 1min will force you to move and then focus on recovery.
I snorkel a few times a week in the ocean and the experience is always surreal. When I see marine life staring back at me through the water, the experience etches itself deep into my mind. So much so that I can pull the experience back out later in the day and play it back with great detail. This connectedness to nature has given me an incredible amount of peace and happiness.
Scuba has been the only activity I've ever had a 'life-changing' experience while doing. The ocean is truly a meditative place. Can't be an astronaut? Get under the ocean. It's basically the same thing.
>Ever the philosopher of the pool, Igor smiled and said, “You are all confused! Speed is not the goal; it is the result of perfect beautiful technique.”
>What really mattered to Igor was excellence — the efficient stroke. Once you mastered that, he argued, speed would follow naturally. Speed was simply the welcome side effect of swimming well.
>I’ve been thinking lately that there’s a lesson here that goes beyond the pool. We all wanted to swim faster and the more hysterically we tried, the more speed escaped us. The same goes for happiness. Everyone wants to be happy, yet the more directly we pursue happiness, the more elusive it becomes.
Or give up on the seal and pick songs with huge bass and that are mixed loud and then audio boost them to the max. For instance Lindsay Stirling and fall out boy seem mixed loud and are actually pretty audible through water.
I really only need beat to exercise anyway.
Experience: several hundred hours of swimming with headphones through the aughts and 10s
I’ve been doing masters swimming for the last few years, through waxing and waning levels of commitment and dedication. We do around 3.5 -4.5 k per session. When I’m consistently going 3+ times a week there’s no other fitness high like it.
I have been interested in swimming for a few years but never found the place to develop the skill to the point of not drowning.
I could try to swim in my apartment's tiny shallow pool which is really better for children.
I could spend $200/mo at a nearby health club.
I could drive to the ocean and jump in.
The first just isn't big enough or deep enough to get anything done.
The second is ... well I want to go swimming but not that bad.
If I just jumped in the ocean, especially the Pacific around the bay area, I would just expect to drown. I can swim a bit but not enough to have confidence with the ocean.
I'm going to preface this by mentioning that I swam competitively starting at around age 6 through high school, was both a life guard and swim instructor at UCSF's rec center during high school, tend to be an overly cautious person, have had to pull a lifeless body from the ocean before, and have witnessed too many near drownings to count.
With that out of the way, does anyone else think its a really bad idea to advise someone who in their own words is trying to develop their swimming skill to the "point of not drowning", to simply find some seemingly calm piece of open water and have at it? I think this is terrible advice. If you aren't comfortable in the water you shouldn't be going into any natural body of water unsupervised, no matter how calm it may appear.
I no longer live in the BA but you should be able to find a YMCA, community swimming pool, or your local community college, that will have adult swim classes for beginners at a very reasonable cost. A couple weeks of classes and you should be comfortable enough to where you most likely won't drown, keep in mind even excellent swimmers drown on occasion.
Once you have the basics down you can join a local Masters club if you want to get more serious. Please don't go practice at Ocean beach.
Here's a learning process you can do on your own at your local pool, lake or ocean. The problem with learning to swim is that there are perhaps a half a dozen independent motor skills needed and it's hard to learn them all at once. This breaks it down to one skill at a time. Do all of this is shallow water, say, four feet in depth.
1) buy a mask, fins and snorkel set.
2) throw way the snorkel (not really, store it away for much later)
3) start with a kick board and fins. Do an hour of just kicking with the fins on. Now you've learned the kicking motor skill.
4) Next put on your mask (defog it with your spit, youtube will show you how, yuckky I know but necessary) and now, with fins on, start kicking, as usual, but also start stroking with your arms. Don't bother trying to breath yet, just stand up when you need to breath. Do this for an hour.
5) Repeat 4 above but now try to breath on your dominate side (right side if you're right handed, other side if you're not). It's tricky to learn how to breathe without coughing, definitely practice this for an hour.
6) Take off your fins and repeat step 5. It will feel really weird without the extra power of the fins but your arm strokes should pull you thru.
7) Perhaps the ugliest part. Take of your mask and repeat step 6. Learning to manage the discomfort of having your face in the water does take some effort, but at least you've saved the hardest for the last. Keeping water out of your nose requires a continuous but very low pressure exhaling thru your nose when it's underwater. Your eyes will sting when you open them underwater so only do that for short glances to get your bearings.
8) Repeat step 7 for 32 lengths and bingo! You're a swimmer.
There are natural (and man-made) bodies of water that are inexpensive to access and don't have the problems of the ocean, like natural and artificial lakes.
There are, for that matter, public pools that are cheaper than health club pools.
If you can find one-on-one swimming lessons where the instructor has access to a pool already, I think that would suit your aims quite well.
Most reasonably fit adults can get to the point of "not drowning" in still water in a single half hour lesson. Two tops. Learn to float, tread, then swim, then jump in and transition to swimming.
I did this once with a 60 year old woman who was initially quite scared, and I hadn't taught in years before this so I was certainly not as good as any paid teacher.
I used to live in NYC and there is an amazing network of public pools that were very inexpensive ($25/6 months I think). I’d bet most major cities have something similar. Definitely worth a search.
What about other bodies of water than the ocean? Like lakes or somerhing. Mostly still water.
Or where I live, they have put swimming lanes in the ocean. Like a dock that extends out on two places, and with lane separators in between. Free and safe.
But what I did was to just pay for a swimming course over X weeks. That included entrance to the swimming facilities on the course days. Find one for your level, and the progress will be swift.
Have you considered taking swimming lessons? You'd probably still have to pay for them, but it wouldn't be a monthly subscription and swim classes are (usually) designed to teach you how to swim without drowning.
In general, if you want to learn how to do something, there are probably people willing to teach you. You don't have to figure everything out from first principles.
After you've gotten some swimming lessons (check out the books and technique made by Terry Laughlin - swimming made easy might be a good start), then find an open water swimming club that takes on beginners (try meetup or facebook). Might not be for you, but you also might not know until you've tried it.
> “Study after study shows that good social relationships are the strongest, most consistent predictor there is of a happy life.”
I was having a similar conversation with some friends recently. In our parents' generations (boomers), folks tended to cluster in their communities, which were usually religious. As our generation has grown up we've shunned the oppressive religious thinking but ended up losing the community aspect. I believe that's where all this social anxiety and feelings of loneliness come from. I'm mostly introverted but feel happier and refreshed after spending time with friends. I've joined a group of other rock climbers and we do outings monthly. I love climbing but really love the mini-community we've created. I see the author here found the same thing. Being around other folks in a shared bond of movement (swimming, running, etc) fosters joy :)
I used to do competitive swimming but it was training that allowed you to switch off and can't beat it. Alas public swimming pool's are a chaos of noise and actions and whilst some have swim lanes, your kinda relieving gridlock and just causes more stress than I can expel.
The only thing that sucks with loving swimming is that the free market has a hard time reacting to the fluctuations in demand. If I want to open a gym I’ll buy a big garage or something, buy a lot of equipment and hire some PTs. If I want to open up a facility for swimming there’s a hell of a lot more up front costs in building a pool and recruiting life guards and swimming instructors.
In this heat wave over Europe I’ve been forced to lakes and oceans to get my laps, but it is a bit more challenging to get that to work.
I can't read the article either. I used to go swimming often and it made me feel really good. But for me, something makes it really hard to do it regularly so it always petered out. Which is annoying, because it obviously improved my life. Non-exercise things are so much easier for me to work on and to keep on doing. Playing chess one hour per day? No problem! Swimming four times a week? Eh...
I do swim, run and bike all the time. Best thing about swimming is that you are totally by yourself without any distractions. When running or biking you end up getting distracted with music in your ears or other people on road. Swimming is very meditative specifically for this reason. Most of all very little impact on the joints.
[+] [-] entee|6 years ago|reply
I think it's due to it being essentially forced mindfulness meditation. Though you could swim with music, I don't and that means it's just my thoughts for 30-60 min (watch the thoughts, can't do anything about them right now). I'm forced to focus on breathing on a set schedule (analogous to vipassana techniques). I'm moving my whole body in a way that requires balance, complex coordination and attention to what my body is feeling (analogous to body-scans, yoga). If you're not listening to music it's also a little like sensory deprivation, there's just neutral water rushing sound.
I know running and biking can get there for some (myself included occasionally), but on a pool swim there's nothing to worry about other than the occasional turnaround at the wall. No obstacles, no dodging others on the sidewalk, no traffic. You're in a controlled, safe environment.
That or maybe it's just the hypoxia ;)
[+] [-] Existenceblinks|6 years ago|reply
cycling: the most enjoyment of scenery, 26km (how I do per day) gives you a lot of different views; mountain, river, road, smell of air along the ways. These are also good for brain.
basketball: it just nicely exercises agility, muscle memory (imagine you nail it 10/10 shooting continually, how nice the muscle is!), reactivity, quick decision making as a team.
table tennis: it is incredible how you can control the small ball in very fast interaction, in very small area (table). Little skills you gain from this is mind-blowing to me.
I play a lot of other sports, I'm very satisfied what my body can do, and breaking current limit is also fun.
[+] [-] AtlasBarfed|6 years ago|reply
Swimming is the sea Cycling is the air Running is the earth
You learn to appreciate and respect them all.
Swimming is birth: thrown into an unfamiliar environment, you struggle to find your way Cycling is youth/midlife: You have your footing, now you speed through life with ease Running is old age: slower than you were in your prime, you learn persistence as your body weakens.
[+] [-] SkyMarshal|6 years ago|reply
Cycling on standard bicycles concentrates pressure on your genitals and the nerve-dense region areas around them, and puts some pressure on the lower back.
Swimming can cause unique injuries to shoulders if your form isn't right, but otherwise is very smooth and low-impact.
[+] [-] 205guy|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] balabaster|6 years ago|reply
When I'm on my bike, I reach that same meditative trance. It's just the road, the pain in my legs and lungs and the focus on getting to the end of my ride, little by little, kilometre by kilometre. Everything else just falls away. My problems don't matter when I'm on my bike. The pain ensures that my focus is occupied and I'm present. Completely present. When I reach the end of my ride and fall from my bike because my legs won't carry me, the high comes as I lay trying to catch my breath.
There may be something to your observation that it could be related to hypoxia. Either way, the high is real.
[+] [-] _the_inflator|6 years ago|reply
With this in mind, I learned the technical aspects of swimming which forced me to focus on the here and now. If you are not focussed you make mistakes which can lead to swallowing water.
I did this in order to swim longer and faster. I finally grasped the highly meditational aspect of swimming and enjoy it.
Even though I prefer running over swimming nothing comes close to swimming in regards to meditation.
[+] [-] nradov|6 years ago|reply
Have you seen the documentary "Kim Swims" about the first woman to swim from the Farallon Islands to San Francisco?
[+] [-] alimw|6 years ago|reply
Or a kind of mild hypothermia? I've experienced your "euphoric feeling" during and after swims in cooler water. Google tells me the water temperature in San Francisco Bay is about fourteen degrees Celsius.
[+] [-] Pimpus|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iamgopal|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cryptozeus|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danzig13|6 years ago|reply
I love running and now run again, but I started learning swimming during a knee injury.
One thing it re-taught me was how rewarding it is to learn or improve a non-work related skill dramatically. I picked up juggling (poorly) and jump rope since.
Two, I knew I was getting a stroke down when I knew when to glide versus to move or exert myself. Maybe a metaphor but practically it makes 40 laps enjoyable instead of torture.
Three, having one hour of somewhat sensory deprived solitude is great therapy.
[+] [-] Theodores|6 years ago|reply
Swimming was not my thing but I had to learn so I could do other watersports.
The Down Syndrome girl and others in her special needs group that were in the pool when I went were incredible inspiration. If she could smile and put in the lengths then I could too.
[+] [-] ISL|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ericmcer|6 years ago|reply
I am sure many people can relate to the first 2-3 days of vacation being needed just to get into 'vacation-mode' where you can actually start to forgive yourself for 'wasting' a day.
[+] [-] lm28469|6 years ago|reply
Maybe we should work on that presupposition first. If we're talking about career and material success it's probably true, but these very rarely bring true lasting happiness. You also have to look at who's telling you to "work hard" and why it's in their interest for you to do so.
Imho once you go above a very low threshold of income (allowing you to live comfortably without excesses) you should have better things to do with your time than spending 7+ hours a day working.
Vacations are the proverbial carrot on a stick. "Be a good worker this week and you'll get to spend your money and enjoy yourself this weekend", "be a good worker this quarter and you'll get to spend your money and enjoy yourself during the next vacations", "Be a good worker all your life and you'll get to spend your money and enjoy yourself during retirement". Fast forward 45 years and you spend literally 70% of your life either working or sleeping, the rest being divided between distraction that barely keeps you going (daily Netflix or video game, weekly party, quarterly vacations) and chores. You're now physically and mentally a shadow of your past self but you have all the time you want, success!
It's extremely easy to get lost in all the little made up games we play days after days and miss the big picture.
[+] [-] flocial|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mnm1|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eismcc|6 years ago|reply
Getting past the boredom is a skill. In my experience it’s mostly a symptom of not focusing on your form. Don’t use a watch and count yourself to stay focused. Break it up with challenging blocks to force you to focus. For ex: 50yds on 1min will force you to move and then focus on recovery.
I now really love swimming, which is a shock.
[+] [-] rnikander|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wcoenen|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] proee|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] defterGoose|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flocial|6 years ago|reply
>What really mattered to Igor was excellence — the efficient stroke. Once you mastered that, he argued, speed would follow naturally. Speed was simply the welcome side effect of swimming well.
>I’ve been thinking lately that there’s a lesson here that goes beyond the pool. We all wanted to swim faster and the more hysterically we tried, the more speed escaped us. The same goes for happiness. Everyone wants to be happy, yet the more directly we pursue happiness, the more elusive it becomes.
[+] [-] dpeck|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nickfromseattle|6 years ago|reply
I bought a waterproof Ipod shuffle + waterproof headphones from Amazon and it improved the experience 100x.
Note - use vaseline to seal the headphones into your ear, and wrap the extra wire under your goggle straps or you won't have a good time.
Highly recommend.
[+] [-] grogenaut|6 years ago|reply
I really only need beat to exercise anyway.
Experience: several hundred hours of swimming with headphones through the aughts and 10s
[+] [-] rimliu|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] te_chris|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colechristensen|6 years ago|reply
I could try to swim in my apartment's tiny shallow pool which is really better for children.
I could spend $200/mo at a nearby health club.
I could drive to the ocean and jump in.
The first just isn't big enough or deep enough to get anything done.
The second is ... well I want to go swimming but not that bad.
If I just jumped in the ocean, especially the Pacific around the bay area, I would just expect to drown. I can swim a bit but not enough to have confidence with the ocean.
What else can I do?
[+] [-] Inconel|6 years ago|reply
With that out of the way, does anyone else think its a really bad idea to advise someone who in their own words is trying to develop their swimming skill to the "point of not drowning", to simply find some seemingly calm piece of open water and have at it? I think this is terrible advice. If you aren't comfortable in the water you shouldn't be going into any natural body of water unsupervised, no matter how calm it may appear.
I no longer live in the BA but you should be able to find a YMCA, community swimming pool, or your local community college, that will have adult swim classes for beginners at a very reasonable cost. A couple weeks of classes and you should be comfortable enough to where you most likely won't drown, keep in mind even excellent swimmers drown on occasion.
Once you have the basics down you can join a local Masters club if you want to get more serious. Please don't go practice at Ocean beach.
[+] [-] sunstone|6 years ago|reply
1) buy a mask, fins and snorkel set.
2) throw way the snorkel (not really, store it away for much later)
3) start with a kick board and fins. Do an hour of just kicking with the fins on. Now you've learned the kicking motor skill.
4) Next put on your mask (defog it with your spit, youtube will show you how, yuckky I know but necessary) and now, with fins on, start kicking, as usual, but also start stroking with your arms. Don't bother trying to breath yet, just stand up when you need to breath. Do this for an hour.
5) Repeat 4 above but now try to breath on your dominate side (right side if you're right handed, other side if you're not). It's tricky to learn how to breathe without coughing, definitely practice this for an hour.
6) Take off your fins and repeat step 5. It will feel really weird without the extra power of the fins but your arm strokes should pull you thru.
7) Perhaps the ugliest part. Take of your mask and repeat step 6. Learning to manage the discomfort of having your face in the water does take some effort, but at least you've saved the hardest for the last. Keeping water out of your nose requires a continuous but very low pressure exhaling thru your nose when it's underwater. Your eyes will sting when you open them underwater so only do that for short glances to get your bearings.
8) Repeat step 7 for 32 lengths and bingo! You're a swimmer.
[+] [-] dragonwriter|6 years ago|reply
There are, for that matter, public pools that are cheaper than health club pools.
[+] [-] np_tedious|6 years ago|reply
Most reasonably fit adults can get to the point of "not drowning" in still water in a single half hour lesson. Two tops. Learn to float, tread, then swim, then jump in and transition to swimming.
I did this once with a 60 year old woman who was initially quite scared, and I hadn't taught in years before this so I was certainly not as good as any paid teacher.
[+] [-] jraby3|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maaaats|6 years ago|reply
Or where I live, they have put swimming lanes in the ocean. Like a dock that extends out on two places, and with lane separators in between. Free and safe.
But what I did was to just pay for a swimming course over X weeks. That included entrance to the swimming facilities on the course days. Find one for your level, and the progress will be swift.
[+] [-] leggomylibro|6 years ago|reply
In general, if you want to learn how to do something, there are probably people willing to teach you. You don't have to figure everything out from first principles.
[+] [-] askvictor|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sevencolors|6 years ago|reply
> “Study after study shows that good social relationships are the strongest, most consistent predictor there is of a happy life.”
I was having a similar conversation with some friends recently. In our parents' generations (boomers), folks tended to cluster in their communities, which were usually religious. As our generation has grown up we've shunned the oppressive religious thinking but ended up losing the community aspect. I believe that's where all this social anxiety and feelings of loneliness come from. I'm mostly introverted but feel happier and refreshed after spending time with friends. I've joined a group of other rock climbers and we do outings monthly. I love climbing but really love the mini-community we've created. I see the author here found the same thing. Being around other folks in a shared bond of movement (swimming, running, etc) fosters joy :)
[+] [-] Zenst|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Scarblac|6 years ago|reply
Personally I can't stand chlorified water though...
[+] [-] pimmen|6 years ago|reply
In this heat wave over Europe I’ve been forced to lakes and oceans to get my laps, but it is a bit more challenging to get that to work.
[+] [-] taozhijiang|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bjourne|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cryptozeus|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] happy-go-lucky|6 years ago|reply
> In the end, happiness is a side effect of living well
I find that I get that side effect from any physical activity including but not limited to walking, cycling, running, or swimming.
[+] [-] Spooky23|6 years ago|reply
At my Y, the swimmers are not exactly people filled with joy.
[+] [-] andreygrehov|6 years ago|reply