A Simple Daily Habit to Light Up Your Bliss Matrix
Neuroscience and Darwin agree: Do this one thing every day.
In his twilight years, Charles Darwin looked back on his life with a big regret. He recognized one simple habit would have made him a whole lot happier, every day. He was right about this, as has been proven recently by neuroscience research.
What’s the habit that Darwin missed out on? It’s not meditation, nor healthy eating, nor exercise. It’s a habit that’s beyond the trend-radar of most of today’s self-improvement writers.
Charles Darwin wished he’d read more poetry.
“If I had to live my life again,” Darwin wrote, “I would have made a rule to read some poetry… at least once every week.”
Darwin felt his failure to read poetry led to a “curious and lamentable loss of [his] higher aesthetic tastes.” He believed the lack of poetry in his life had fundamentally altered his brain and numbed his emotional life. He felt sure he would have experienced a higher baseline of happiness had he spent more time with poetry. Darwin reflected:
“Perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be… enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.”
