High on Happiness

Archive for the ‘Happiness Facts’ Category

Good times linger longer when you share them with friends.  The banter, the laughter, the connectedness all take on a glow that stays in your heart long after everyone’s gone their separate ways.

It’s as if you collected a whole batch of treasures to take home with you:  This one’s laugh, that one’s gestures, the story that touched your heart, the news that informed you with a new point of view.  It all rolls together into one delicious, satisfying memory, and the warmth of it stays with you for hours and makes you feel good and richer and enlarged.

A couple weeks ago, I learned that the staying-power of connection is more powerful than I knew.  I was at a gathering of friends not long ago talking with a man whose live-in mother-in-law is in the late stages of Alzheimer ’s disease.  Her short term memory is nearly non-existent.  It was beginning to irritate him, he said, to be asked the same questions over and over within a few minutes.

But then he read an article describing a study that showed that friendly visits with loved ones uplifted the spirits of Alzheimer’s patients long after they had forgotten the visit took place.  So now he didn’t mind, he said, repeating the same stories over and over.  He could add new twists to them just to amuse himself, or make up better ones with happier themes.  Mom would be content for hours, and he felt good for contributing to her sense of well-being.  The warmth of shared good times provided lingering benefits to them both.  And now his telling of the story was adding uplift to my day as well.

Sharing good news  is a proven happiness element.  We all love happy-ending stories.  They’re one of the reasons we so enjoy being with other people.  But even when we share time with our buddies in silence, when our time together is spent in work or just strolling wordlessly together through the park, we get a lift from the connection.

Want to increase your happiness ratio?  Take some time for family and friends.  It will do your heart good.  And theirs, too.

When my friend’s husband was laid off last year, she took a part time job as a cafeteria server, spooning up food to the residents of a local care-giving institution to help make ends meet.

One day, after she had been on a job less than a week, the cafeteria manager pulled her aside.  “You’re too happy,” he told her, somewhat sternly.  “That’s not our culture here; you’ll have to tone it down.”

Judy’s not a giggler.  She’s not boisterous in any way.  If I were to describer her demeanor in one word, I’d call her “pleasant.”  She’s a people-person.  She draws people out and radiates her appreciation for who they are.  She’s observant, and a listener, and she cares.

She was shocked by the reprimand, and at first she had no idea how to process it.  She had compliantly told the manager she would do her best.  But really!  Be less happy?

As the day wore on with the manager’s command echoing inside her for awhile, she finally found it so absurd that it seemed funny.  “What are they going to do?  Fire me for being too happy?”

She decided that she would continue to be exactly who she was, and let the chips fall where they may.  She continued to befriend her fellow workers on the serving line in her gentle little way, and gradually she learned the residents’ names and little bits about each one.  “Hello, Martha.  How are you today?  Did your niece have her baby yet?” she would ask as she dished up whipped potatoes or creamed corn.  “How’s that ankle doing, Fred?”

You can imagine what happened as the spring wore on.  The whole atmosphere of the place changed.  Stress levels lowered.  Efficiency improved.  The residents complained less, ate better, and their overall health improved.  I’m sure my friend was never seen as the agent of change.  But I have no doubt that putting her in that environment was like tossing a pebble into a pond.  The ripples of her gentle, loving joy simply spread and spread.

Happiness is like that.  Research has shown that if a person is happy, the odds of someone in close contact being happy increases by 15%.   And the likelihood of the second person’s contact being happy increases 10%.  Then, amazingly enough, the effect, called “Three Degrees of Influence,” even spreads to a third person, who has a 6% likelihood of being happy—even when the third person doesn’t know the first one.

You can find several morals to this story.  But I say, just let the power of Judy’s joy increase your own happiness today.  And pass it on.  You never know how far a smile and a kind word will travel.

The mother duck looked so alert and poised as she sailed out into the pond, a bevy of little ducklings following in her wake.  I imagined she was content, following the path that nature laid out for her, performing all the tasks of motherhood by instinct.  She was made to do exactly what she was doing.

I don’t know, of course, whether ducks feel contentment or not.  But they look pretty peaceful.  It’s hard to imagine them saying, “Geeze, I hate this job.  I can’t go anywhere without all these ducklings following me.  Can’t a girl get a break?”

Not all of us find work that feels like we were born to do it.  When I drive to my office in the morning I sometimes wonder how many of the other commuters are going to jobs they dreamed someday they would do.  Very few of us, I’d wager, despite all the “do what you love, the money will follow” advice out there.  But we do end up in work that allows us to exercise our capabilities and, once we’re past the learning curve, to apply our strengths and talents in performing our duties well.   And to the extent that we apply them, giving our work our focused attention, doing it well, we find satisfaction in what we do.

That combination—engaged attention on an activity where our skills meet its challenges—is the recipe for what psychologists call “flow.”  Feeling neither bored nor anxious, you’re absorbed in the moment, performing with focused attention.  You feel in control. You have a clear sense of what you’re working to accomplish.   You lose track of time.  There’s just the activity.  And at the end of the day, you feel that you did something worthwhile.

In addition to the satisfaction that follows a stretch of being in the flow, the skilled performance of our duties yields other psychic rewards.  It provides us with a sense that we contributed our piece to the larger whole.  The earnings from our work help us feel self-reliant.  The work itself moved the company toward its goals and served its clients or customers.  We were part of society’s rhythm as we performed it, connected.  We held up our part.  We met the expectations of our position.  And those things generate a sense of belonging, pride, and self-esteem.

So it’s Monday and most of us are sailing out into the pond, ready to paddle through another work week.  And most of us grumble about it, and say we would rather be eating bon-bons at the beach, or playing golf or gardening.  But the truth is there’s happiness in duties well-performed, however subtle and overlooked its appearance may be.

“Grit,” says dictionary.com, is “firmness of character; indomitable spirit; pluck: She has a reputation for grit and common sense.”

I ran into a passel of grit this week and seeing it made me feel proud.

In a time when the dominant slogans for feeling good advise us to take it easy, go with the flow, and steer clear of those things that cause us turmoil, the characteristic of grit doesn’t get much traffic.  And yet, research in positive psychology shows that people who have a fair share of it are generally happier than those with lesser amounts and achieve more than those who lack it – even when they’re less talented.

Grit is perseverance, persistence and exceptional commitment to your aims.  It’s the sustained and focused application of your aptitudes and abilities over time.  It’s the stuff that makes the difference between winners and also-rans.

The director of the clinic where I work showed the staff what grit is this week when she came to work after a surgery that left her with two very black eyes.  She wore rhinestone-studded sunglasses — to keep from scaring us all with her appearance, she said with a laugh.  But I knew it took some courage for this always beautifully groomed woman to work a very visible job with a temporarily disfigured face, especially when she was feeling a fair amount of pain as well.  She could easily have taken the week off, especially since this week held her birthday.  But her commitment to her work and to the staff took precedence for her over her own comfort.

As if the sore and blackened eyes weren’t enough, on Tuesday night she severely injured a deteriorating knee.  But again, she mustered the determination to come to work, walking with a cane, despite the obvious pain and the further insult to her image.   Don’t get me wrong; she’s by no means a vain woman.  Her attention to her appearance is a part of her professionalism.  She maintains high standards in all that she does.

In fact, it’s her exceptional commitment to high standards that exemplifies her grit and that makes her the inspirational leader she is.   An extraordinary string of painful personal challenges have strewn her path over the past couple of years, and not one of them has kept her from carrying the mantel of leadership with fortitude, humility and good humor.

I see her resolve mirrored in the staff as well.  Her example says, “This is how you handle difficulties.”  And employees follow her lead when they face misfortunes of their own.  She shows us what backbone is all about and how to be resilient.  That’s grit.

All winners have it.  Grit carries you through the long spell of practice and preparation necessary to hone your skills and gain the knowledge you need to reach your goals.  It’s what gets you past the inevitable obstacles.  It keeps you in the game when the game gets tough.  It pushes you past setbacks and failures.  It’s the currency that lets you pay the price to win the prize.  And today, I celebrate and applaud it.

A cold, steady rain washed down the windows, turning the outside world into a smear of gray.  It would have been a fine day for hunkering on the couch with an afghan, a movie, and a hot cup of tea.  But weekends are the only time I have to tackle tasks that take unbroken hours of concentration, so the tea and I plunked down at my desk instead.

As it turned out, it was a Murphy’s Law kind of day.  The unfamiliar software I was struggling to learn had the hiccups.  Both my pen and my printer ran out of ink.  And just as I started to make headway and get into the flow, my neighbor dropped in to chat.

It was late afternoon before I realized I still needed to pick up a few groceries, and that I hadn’t yet captured my photo-of-the-day for my photo project.  What on earth could I shoot in this dim light, with all the rain pelting down!  I grabbed my grocery list and camera and set out to see what I would find.

One thing my nine months of taking daily nature photos has taught me is that beauty isn’t dependent on weather or season or time of day.  Like happiness, it’s always there, just waiting to be recognized.  You simply have to clear the lens of your own perception to see it.  And you do that by letting go of your wanting things to be different than they are.  That’s the key.

As I tucked my wet grocery bags into my car, and turned on the windshield wipers to clear away the rain, a glimmer of white caught my eye from the parking lot of the hardware store on that far edge of the shopping center.  They had put their nursery stock out, and it included some kind of tree that seemed from the distance to be in blossom.  I drove over.

It turned out that every one of the blossoms on the young trees was damaged, the edges of the flowers wilted and brown.  They must have been caught in the freezing cold the last couple days brought us. But as I turned to leave, I saw a few pallets of flowers standing in front of the store’s doors.  Their bright colors called me, and although they were windblown, and many of the blooms were closed in their own version of holing up against the rain, some tiny white ones gave off a sweet light, and some of the pansies were gaily dancing.  I snapped a dozen shots and then noticed that I was broadly grinning.

As I drove home, the wet gray sky seemed pearly and luminous.  I noticed the subtle shades of spring green that began to paint the fields, and the faint glow of pink in the woods as the maple’s buds swelled with new growth.  How alive the world was!  How vibrant!

I think it was Emerson who once observed that the quality of light is always perfect, regardless of the time of day.  When you allow yourself to see things as they truly are, their beauty always shines through.  The sweet light of happiness shines every moment, unceasingly beaming its tender, relentless joy.  And it’s all ours for the taking, would we but let go of our wanting things to be other than they are.

“He was beaming with happiness,” we say.  “She was absolutely aglow.”   The phrases are more than mere analogies.  They’re statements of perceptible reality.

Light rides on the waves of happiness that flow out from your heart.  Literally.  Actual, measurable light.

Happiness is a radiant power, a beneficent light saber you wield with your smile, shooting out photons toward all who gaze upon your face, infecting them with joy.  Like sunlight melting ice, your happiness radiates a warmth that melts the brittleness that keeps others from their own.

Doubt it?  Think about the way you yourself respond to the sight of a genuine smile flashed in your direction.  If only for a split second, you feel the light of it, the uplift of your spirit as you reach for its joy.

Think of the power that gives you!  Want to change the world?  Make it a happier place?  Follow Gandhi’s advice:  Be the change you want to see.  Get out there and beam, baby!  Go flash some happiness around.

Just as with any quality you choose to increase in your life, or any skill you want to develop, happiness requires practice.  It’s a choice you make, over and over, a decision, an act of consciousness and of will.

Now let me honest about that choice.  Sometimes when you hear people say “happiness is a choice,” it comes across sounding like everybody has a magic little switch on their left wrist that they can just flick and Bingo! Happiness!  And then you feel bummed out because you weren’t in line when they passed out the switch.

Well, the truth is that nobody’s got the switch.  There’s no magic button.  I don’t know anybody who can instantly slide into happiness even from neutral, let alone from more dismal states.  I know some people who can get there pretty quickly though once they master a few techniques.

But even those people–the people who have learned some reliable ways to manage their moods, to steer their thoughts, and to surrender their resistance to happiness—still have to remember that they want to be happy, that they are committed to experiencing more happiness in their lives.  And once they remember, once they notice that they have drifted or been dragged into a less-than-happy state of mind, they still have to choose to use what they know to return to happiness.

I’m in the process of gathering a collection of happiness techniques that I will be sharing with you in the weeks ahead.  Some of them I have already mentioned here—practicing gratitude, naming three good things you experience every day, remembering to smile, and practicing kindness, for example.  But I want to give you a huge treasure chest of them to rummage through and play with.

In the meantime, the important thing to realize is that you really, truly can experience more happiness in your life, deeper, longer-lasting, more meaningful and satisfying happiness.  And while learning how does require commitment, practice and making the choice, over and over again, the practice itself is uplifting and fun, and the reward is delight and joy.

Like a fire on a cold winter night, happiness offers warmth to all who come near.

Whether it’s leaping with spirit, or simply glowing deep within, happiness emits the essence of life in all its radiant joy.  Step into its circle and you immediately feel its welcoming warmth.  Special receptors in your brain pick it right up, and your heart knows it, too.

It melts barriers, opens the door to friendliness, prompts you to relax and invites you to roast a marshmallow or two.  It speaks to your fundamental cravings for shared humanness, for ease of being, for light in the darkness, warmth in the cold.

It’s a good idea always to carry little happiness matches in your back pocket.  Strike ‘em anywhere when you need them; they light every time.

One of the hallmarks of happy people is that they’re a sociable bunch.  On the one hand, their happiness draws others to them.  Few things, after all, are as irresistibly attractive as a genuine smile.  And the happiness vibes behind their grins are catchier than measles.  Hang around someone who’s rooted in gladness and you’ll start grinning, too.  And that’s a fact.

On the other hand, happy people seek others out, invite them in, invite them along. Happiness, they know, in all its colors, is juicier when shared.

There’s a synergy to happiness shared, you see.  The sum of your happiness plus mine is bigger than either of ours would be alone.  Me in relation to you magnifies happiness for us both, turns it up a notch, brings out its sparkle.  It may just be that the space between us is where happiness makes itself most at home.

Learning to raise your happiness thermostat is like learning to do anything else.  First, you have to entertain the notion that maybe you really could be happier, that maybe it’s true that there are things you can do to feel happier more often, more deeply, in your life.

Let’s start there.  Is happiness really something we can learn?  Or is it a matter of luck, or chance, or genetics?

Here’s the answer:  Yes.  Yes, the general cheeriness of your disposition is programmed into your genes.  Some of us are just born happier than others.  And yes, all of us can learn to live at the high end of our personal happiness range.  That’s what science says, so far.   (Some scientists, working at the outer edges of knowledge, say we may even be able to teach our genes to turn happy.  But we’ll stick with the more proven, generally accepted kind of science right now.)

So let’s say you buy the idea that you could learn to be happier.  Would you want to?  What if it’s work to get there?  Is the payoff going to be worth the effort?  You’ll have to change things, you know. You’ll have to put some time into it, give up some habits, practice some exercises.

One way to decide is to think back to a time when you felt really, really good.  Go ahead, remember a genuinely happy experience in your life.  Remember how free you felt, how at ease.  What was your energy level like?  How did you feel about other people?  Was it fun?  Satisfying?  Are you smiling, just remembering it?

Now, what if you could feel that way more often than not?  And what if even the effort that you had to put into creating that experience felt like fun?  What if the exercises you had to practice turned out to be easy—and pleasurable?  Would you be willing to invest a little effort?  A little time?

If you answered “yes,” or even if you felt yourself leaning in that direction, keep reading this blog.  It has lots of hints about things you can do and viewpoints you can adopt, that will let you start feeling happier.  It will give you glimpses into the textures of happiness, reminding you how good it feels.  And in a few weeks, I’ll be revealing a whole new website filled with resources you can use to turn up the happiness in your life.  For now, just think about it.  Ask yourself how you would like it if happiness was your normal state of being and start thinking about whether you would like to invest some time into inviting more of it into your life.