High on Happiness

Archive for August, 2009

Happiness is sharing laughter and good news with friends.  It’s celebrating with others the moments and milestones of success and good fortune and accomplishment, both humble and grand, yours and theirs.

Happiness is feeling gratitude so real it melts your heart, the kind that somehow washes everything in light and lets you say, “Life is good,” even when you could find reasons to complain.

Happiness is serenity.  It’s the letting go of all anxiety and concern.  It’s basking in calm and ease.  It’s hearing the stillness between the notes, and breathing in its peace.

Happiness is getting lost in the flow of an interesting project or pastime and losing all sense of time.  It’s rooting your focus so fully in whatever you’re doing that the doing of it is all there is.

Happiness is looking toward the future with hope and suspecting that even if you don’t know how, somehow everything is going to turn out just fine.  It’s believing in the magic of unseen possibilities and inviting them to appear.

Happiness is taking time to savor jobs well done.  It’s the warmth of pride in the fruits of your labors, talents, strengths and skills and in the accomplishments of others.

Happiness is seeing the funny side of things, the free peal of laughter.  It’s play and silliness and being a kid again.

Happiness is the surging of your spirit when inspiration strikes you, when something large and full reaches into your depths, plucks the strings of your heart and sets them resonating with the sense that you are a piece of something wondrous and mysterious and holy.

Happiness is being touched by beauty that takes your breath away.

And most of all, happiness is love in all its shapes and colors.  It’s the feeling of barriers dissolving, the recognition of the precious and priceless in every moment, every experience, every being everywhere.  It’s the feeling of the grand yes rippling through time, rippling through you, and carrying you on its endless, infinite wave.

I was using the copier in the medical records department today when one of our therapists walked in to pick up some charts.  I don’t know her well, but she has about her an air of kindness and I have an intuitive sense that she must make her clients feel safe, and truly heard.

“Hi, Jade,” I said, smiling.  “How are you today?”  To tell the truth, she looked a little worn.

“I’m kind of grumpy,” she said.

“Grumpy!  On such a beautiful day?”

“Maybe that’s why I’m grumpy,” she said glumly.  “It’s just too nice out to be here today.”

“But just think,” I said softly, looking into her eyes, “about what a beautiful job you do, and how much stronger you’re going to make people feel today!  They’re so lucky that you’re here.”

“Why, thank you!” she said, a bit surprised.  She straightened her posture a little, and the tension in her face softened into a smile.  “Really . . . thank you!”

It seemed so little to do—to acknowledge someone’s talents, to nudge her to remember her purpose.  You know, we do that for each other far too little.  And yet how much it means to have someone acknowledge that we matter, that what we contribute makes a difference, that someone sees and appreciates us.

When’s the last time you said to someone—your spouse, your child, a coworker or friend—“You’re amazing!”  And then told them one true thing about them that you notice and admire.  If it’s been awhile, give it a try.  You will be amazed at how good their response makes you feel.

When I took a vacation day from work to give myself a three-day weekend, I conjured up a delicious story about how I would cultivate happiness by spending slow, leisurely hours reading and writing on my front porch, brushed by the balmy late-Spring breezes, enveloped in a symphony of birdsong.  But by the time the weekend arrived, the Fates wrote a story of their own.

I ended up needing to get new brakes put on my car, baking and delivering a cake to help out a pal who was in a real jam, hauling laundry to the Laundromat when a valve in my washer gave out, and having repairs done to some recent storm damage to my house.

On Sunday morning, when I woke to realize my three-day weekend had shrunk to less than 24 hours, I spun into a deep blue funk.  I felt cheated of my dream, and kind of mad, and sorry for myself all at the same time.  Definitely not where a happiness-enthusiast wants to be.

And then, as if I didn’t know any better, I spent a good long while nursing my snit, telling myself how much I had wanted my slice of quiet time, how rare my mini-vacations were, how many precious hours were gone.

Finally, I did a very wise thing.  I got out the lawn mower and started to cut the grass.  It didn’t really need it, but I figured pushing and pulling the heavy machine over my hilly landscape would let me pump out some of my mad.  And sure enough, it did.  Suddenly I was anchored in the present with an emerald carpet beneath my feet and billowing clouds floating overhead.  Instead of being lost in the make-believe world of the story I had wanted to live, I was living in a moment shimmering with color and light.  I put the mower away, grabbed my camera and spent the rest of the afternoon playing in the splendor of the day.

Stories, plans, hopes, dreams.  They’re all good things in their places.  They can move us forward toward our purposes.  But when life serves up a different reality than the one we had imagined, clinging vainly to our stories and plans only brings us pain.  Most unhappiness comes from comparing what we have to something we imagine to be better.  Yet when we look at what we have now—right this very minute—with unfettered vision and an open mind, what we have can be exquisitely beautiful, a moment brimming with possibilities.  And all it takes to see it is a willingness to let go of our phantom need to have it be something else.

On a summer afternoon, when time had stilled, its moments blossoming wide and deep as sky, he reached for a peach from the picnic basket.   He felt the texture of its fuzzy skin against his lips as his teeth pressed into its fragrant flesh.  The burst of its tangy sweetness drenched his mouth.

From the lake’s edge, the laughter of the children floated up around him and willow boughs waltzed in the warm breeze casting shadows on the lush grass.  Finishing the peach, he stretched out on the blanket on the grass and gazed at the whipped cream clouds floating overhead beyond the willow’s branches.

He remembered how, when he was a child, the clouds took on the shapes of animals and soon he saw a lion and an elephant floating past.  He watched their shapes morph for awhile, and then he closed his eyes and bathed in the serenity of it all.

He wondered what stroke of fortune brought him to this unexpected moment, this island of tranquility.  He wondered how he had lost sight of how good it was to let himself feel this peace.  What a remarkable taste of happiness this was, he thought.  No urgency, no rush, no deadlines.

He knew all those things awaited him and that he would get lost again in their whirl.  But what if he could take this moment with him and relive it in the midst of the mad crush?

He pictured himself in the conference room with everybody huddled around the big walnut table, typing into their notebooks, texting on their phones, fighting to get their opinions heard.  And he saw himself leaning back in his chair, seeing elephant clouds floating over Jane’s head and smiling. Everyone would wonder what he was up to, he thought.  He laughed out loud.

On Wednesday, he gave it a whirl.  The elephant clouds turned into an idea for solving the problem at hand.  When he spoke it, he sounded so calm and sure that everyone listened.

At lunchtime, he walked to the deli and bought himself a peach.

Want to know one of the secrets of high achievers?  They have  clear pictures inside themselves of how it will feel when they’re performing at their best, when they’re playing at the top of their games.

Whether you’re a butcher or baker or candlestick maker, there’s a feeling you get when you’re doing everything right.   You guide the knife perfectly along the lines of muscle, you coax just the right resiliency from the dough beneath your hands, you blend the waxes so they flow with a beautiful consistency.  And in that moment, you experience such clarity and ease that you want to do it again and again, every time you set about your work.

The feeling is a special kind of happiness, one of engagement and flow.  And those who experience it say it’s so fine that it’s worth all the work that goes into creating it.  The hours of learning, the days of practice are nothing compared to the feelings of satisfaction and joy that comes from exercising mastery.

High achievers in all walks of life—athletes, artists, business leaders, surgeons—all describe the sense of wholeness and energetic harmony they feel, the sense of smooth effortlessness, when they were in full resonance with their work.  And what’s more, they say it’s the memory of this feeling that motivates them to keep refining their skills, to pull themselves up again when they hit a dry spell.   They want to feel it every day, to have it be the pivot around which their days revolve.

The key is to keep at what you’re learning until you reach the moment when you’re lost in the utter and complete harmony of doing it well, of being the best you can be at it.  Whatever you’re working toward, take time to sink into your expectation of how it will feel once you have attained prowess, mastery of your skill.  Allow yourself to feel it in your body, to experience the richness of it fully in your imagination, to save the depth of happiness and freedom that it offers your spirit.

The day will come, if you keep on keeping on, if you persevere through the hours of preparation and practice, when the feeling is more than a dream.  And knowing inside yourself how it will feel when you get there is one of the surest ways to keep yourself keeping on.

Did you know that by adjusting how you breathe you can increase your level of happiness?  Take a slow, deep breath right now, and let it out in a long, even sigh.  Right away, your whole body relaxes, your mind opens, and you sense a moment in which you’re free to choose—to relax further, or to return to whatever level you were at before the sigh.

It’s really pretty amazing, when you think about it, that something as simple as a sigh can alter your whole state of mind.  But awareness of your breathing can do much more than provide a momentary sense of release.  It can teach you about the intimate ways your body and your feelings interrelate and provide you with keys to guiding yourself toward enhanced well-being.

This one process of ours, our breathing, connects mind, body and emotions as nothing else does.  Its quality—its depth and ease and rhythm—is a wondrous mirror of how we’re feeling.  And by paying attention to how we’re breathing while we’re in different moods, we can gain great insight into where and how we hold different feelings in our body and learn how to consciously manage our breathing to ease the stresses and blocks that keep us from feeling at ease and free.

Make a little mental note right now to see how you’re breathing the next time you feel really happy.  See how fully you’re using your lungs, allowing air to flow into their depths.  Then try that breathing for several minutes when your mood is a little low.

For most of us, gentle inhalations to a slow count of ten with exhalations a little longer for several cycles will bring a wonderful sense of relaxed happiness.  It relaxes muscular tension and provides fresh oxygen to open your mind to new options and possibilities that you couldn’t see while you were locked into a tighter perception.

Add conscious breathing to your happiness practice.  Play with it and discover for yourself that increased happiness is only a few breaths away.

It was one of those Murphy’s Law days.  You know, the kind where you keep exclaiming, “What on earth can go wrong next!” and are instantly rewarded with an answer.  It was as if someone let loose a box of gremlins during the night and they busily crossed wires and hid things and demagnetized all the electrons.   Late start.  Rain. Traffic.  Crying children.  Orney adults.  Ringing phones.  Paralyzed software.  Spilled coffee.  Leaking pens.  Out-of-order machines.

About noon, my glazed-over eyes spotted a little sticky note on the bulletin board next to my desk.  “Why are you so happy now?” it asked.   What an absolutely ridiculous question!  I broke out in laughter at its sheer absurdity just as a coworker walked past.

“What’s so funny?” she demanded, sticking her head in my door.

“Everything!” I gasped.  “You.  Me.  Diane.  The whole damned day.  I mean, could it be more outlandish than this?”

“You have a point,” she said, rolling her eyes.  The gesture was so exaggerated that it made me laugh again, and seeing herself through my eyes for a second, she started chuckling, too.

“What’s so funny?”  Leslie said, pulled in by our laughter.  I pointed at her and Kathy and I laughed harder.

“Everything!” Kathy choked out.  “Everything!”

“You’ll have to excuse us,” I said, “We’ve gone over the edge.  Just slid right on over into hysteria.”

Kathy and I pulled ourselves together.  Kathy was wiping a tear from her eye.  “What a zoo!” I said.  “Aren’t we amazing, to function at all in the midst of so much chaos?”

“Yeah,” Leslie said.  “I guess we really are.”

They left, smiling and relaxed, and I sat for a moment and thought about the magic my little sticky note had triggered.  Instantly, it brought us a round of comic relief, and in its wake, renewal and perspective.   “Why am I so happy now?”  Because, I answered silently, we are all so willing to be.

Fire Lily

A couple weeks ago I took my love of making photos to a new level.  I decided to post a photo that I took during the day on my Flickr page every day for a year.  To set a goal to do any behavior every day for a year is a pretty big challenge.  But I expect to raise my happiness level exponentially as I pursue it.

For one thing, it lets me exercise some of my key strengths, such as my love for beauty.  And exercising your strengths is a great way to increase your happiness.  We like doing what comes naturally to us, using our talents, following the bent of our particular personality.  Doing what comes easily, and doing it well, is just plain fun.

I like challenges, too, and another of my strengths is perseverance.  I can keep on as stubbornly as the Energizer bunny once I set a task for myself.  Still, 365 days is a lot of days.  Who knows what twists they will hold?  Can I keep at it though thick and thin?  Not knowing is part of the adventure.

If I fail, will I be crushed?  Nah.  It’s only a game I’m playing with myself.  And lots of things could come along that would be more important to me than taking a picture.  But, I tell myself, if I succeed, imagine the incredible sense of accomplishment I’ll feel!  And that—the dream of how I’ll feel if I succeed—is what will keep me going.

I expect to learn a lot from the experiment, too.  And because of love of learning is another of my strengths, that’s another aspect of the challenge that will bring me joy.  I expect to learn more about photography, how to look for the beautiful and interesting in new ways, and how to stretch myself to meet a goal I’ve set for myself even when I’m in a spell where I’m wholly unmotivated.  I expect to see my view of the world’s beauty reflected in a whole new say, and to have, a year from now, a very interesting log of how I look at things.

Juicy goals do so much for increasing our happiness.  They give us something meaningful to work toward.  They challenge us to rise to new levels of performance.  They let us learn to trust that we can overcome obstacles.  They let us feel the flow of our strengths in action.

And there’s a subtle something more, a kind of magic that happens when you’re doing the things that bring you joy.  Mythologist Joseph Campbell put it this way:  “When you’re following your bliss,” he said, “doors will open where you would not have thought there would be doors; and where there wouldn’t be a door for anyone else.”   I’m excited about that.  I want to see the opening of those doors.

For the past several weeks I have been playing with the question, “Why am I so happy now?”  I ask it of myself in the morning when I wake up and throughout the day, whenever it occurs to me.  And it brings me back some very wonderful answers.Today the answer came from a pair of old shoes.

As I laced up a pair of worn sneakers that I pulled from the back of a closet to wear on my photo-walk, I suddenly realized how much I love these old shoes.  They’re creased and scuffed and grassed-stained, but they support me where I need support.  They’re soft and pliable in all the right ways, and they keep me from slipping when I’m on questionable terrain.   Most of all, I suppose, I like how they are associated with so many wonderful memories.  They’re like old friends.  It made me happy, I realized, just to put them on.

As the evening unfolded, it brought with it old friends of the human persuasion, engaging in the kind of good, intimate conversation that happens between friends who know each other well.

I’m happy, I thought later, for the old friendships that grace my life, for the people who fit me like comfortable shoes.  We’ve walked many roads together, in all kinds of weather.  And like my shoes, they offer me support where I need it, the softness of their affection, and they keep me from slipping when I venture onto untried ground.

In today’s throw-away, mile-a-minute culture, what a treasure, what a comfort, enduring friendships provide.  Despite the scuffs and wrinkles, they fit so beautifully well—even when you’ve left them in the back of the closet far too long.

If that’s where a couple of your old friends are, pull them out.  Give them a little brushing—a phone call maybe, a catch-up email.  Tell them you love them because they’re as wonderful as comfortable shoes.

“The purpose of life is the celebration of it.”

I don’t remember when I first came across that line or know its source.  But I remember that it blazed across my consciousness as one of those great, shining truths that you know at once will stay with you forever.   And indeed it has, taking on increasing significance as the years roll by.

When the word “celebration” first came into use, it meant to solemnize or to honor.  In short, it meant to hold something in reverence.  Then, along its travels through time, it picked up connotations of happiness and revelry.  The events to which it first referred, after all, were those that provided life with some of its greatest joys—marriage, communion with the Divine, the anniversary of the days a culture considered holy.

How apt a word, then, to answer the great Why of our existence!  It doesn’t solve the mystery, but it tells us how to meet it.  We are here, it says, to honor life, to hold the fact of it in joyous reverence.  We’re here to dance and sing, to drink the wine of life’s moments and enjoy the feast of days.

Even when the wine is bitter, and the feast but dry crumbs, we can bring to it our reverence, our understanding that these things, too, are life and a part of the great mystery which we are privileged to experience.

Regardless of the stories of our lives, however humble or great our aspirations or achievements or abilities, we’re all part of life’s magnificent stream.  That our little individualized sparks of consciousness, embodied in such fleeting forms, can envision whole universes, can experience whole symphonies of emotion, can conceptualize infinity and eternity and dream that we somehow compose them, is so astounding that what but celebration can be our response!

If you have been searching for a purpose, may I offer you this one?  Embrace it, and I guarantee, it will lead you to happiness and satisfaction and joy.