WORDS FOR PEACE OF MIND
Shine Theory
Not everything is about your own successes — sometimes it’s just about people you love. That’s fargin, Yiddish for the glow of pride you feel when someone else does well in life. This is a good one to know if you’re serious about strengthening all those relationships we talked about earlier.
The Pleasure of Doing Nothing
Croatians have a word for an almost meditative state of doing nothing, fjaka. If you feel suddenly exquisitely unable to do anything, like you’ve lost your sense of time and simply must lie back and do nothing, that feeling — and the acceptance of it — is fjaka (pronounced “fi-AH-kah”). Sure, you might be late. But that’s the beauty of it: You won’t care. You need this.
Post-Meal Chats
In Spain, meals are renowned for going on basically forever, and you can probably blame that at least partially on sobremesa. That’s the name for the post-meal period where you’re still sitting at the table, chatting with your friends, contemplating the universe or even just digesting. The sobremesa is when all the best discussions start.
Are You Happy at Work?
Denmark was ranked as the second happiest country in the world this year, and we know their happiness concepts, like hygge, have caught on around the world. So maybe we should try another Danish happiness term: arbejdsglæde, which means happiness in your work. Wake up every morning happy about the projects ahead of you? You’re already there.
Snuggle Up
We don’t always think of German as a warm fuzzy language. But gemütlichkeit is definitely a warm and fuzzy word: It’s a condition of warm friendliness, an atmosphere of welcome that’s made it a popular word among restaurants trying to lure in customers. As winter arrives, you may want to concentrate on cultivating the gemütlichkeit at home
