High on Happiness

Archive for the ‘Happiness Facts’ Category

“It is what it is,” he said.  The phrase seems to be one of those that’s slipping into our national vocabulary.  It was the third time I’d heard someone say it today.

To the extent that it signals an acceptance of a current set of circumstances, it’s a positive way to look at things.  But I have a hunch, from the ways I heard it said today, that what could be words of wisdom are, instead, signaling a negative resignation.

Here’s the difference:  To accept things as they seem to be means you are making an honest assessment.  You’re allowing yourself to take in a situation and size it up so that you can respond to it in the most effective and creative way possible.  You see yourself as a self-directed actor, capable of choosing the best way to meet the conditions the moment presents.  You’re keeping your mind open and looking for options.

To be resigned, on the other hand, means you have concluded that the circumstances are bigger than you.  It means you have decided that nothing can be done, that you’re at the end of your road, and the best you can do is not to fight it.  Resignation means you quit.  You step out of the picture, deciding that there’s nothing you can do to make things any better.

Both positions involve releasing the desire for things to be other than they are.  Both require the choice of a new orientation to the way events have unfolded.  And it’s that moment of choice that tells the tale.

Acceptance is a self-empowering willingness to respond to circumstances that seem less than optimal with grace and openness.  It chooses to look for new paths, for open doors.  It’s the choice of resilience, of optimism and hope.

Resignation is a self-defeating willingness to take on the role of victim.  It’s the choice of defeat and helplessness.

If you find yourself saying, “It is what it is,” ask yourself how you want to respond to this signal that events are requiring a choice from you.  Will you shrink into victimhood?  Or will you look for new opportunities?

Joseph was walking down the street, absorbed in an imaginary argument he was having with his partner.  It was an extension of a clash that had happened that morning between the two of them, and Joseph was nursing his anger by carrying on the argument in his head.

At the bus stop, a few paces ahead of him, an elderly woman was trying to juggle a large sack of groceries so she could retrieve bus tokens from her purse.

Just as Joseph reached the bus stop, the old woman’s bag slid from her arms, sending bananas and cakes and canned goods to the pavement.   Her little cry of dismay woke Joseph from his dream, and seeing what was happening, he stopped to scoop the woman’s groceries back into her bag and to assure her that no damage had been done.   He could see that she felt flustered and embarrassed, and so he stood with her for a little while, holding her groceries while she found her bus tokens, listening to her story, carrying her bag up the steps of the bus for her when it arrived.

When he stepped back onto the pavement, Joseph was wearing a soft smile.  He remembered the morning’s argument, but somehow it didn’t seem to matter so much any more.  It was a little thing, really, and he could see his partner’s point, as well as his own.  They would work it out.

As Joseph discovered, when you are considerate of somebody else’s feelings or circumstances and offer to lift their load, you reap as many benefits as you bestow.  College students who were given the assignment to perform and record an act of kindness every day scored higher on positivity ratings at the end of the two-week trial than a control group who simply kept a journal.  Acts of kindness and consideration not only give you an immediate burst of good feeling, the psychologists conducting the study found, they also produce a lingering sense of calm and centeredness.

So do yourself a favor.  Go out there and be considerate today.  It’s one of those happiness practices that’s genuinely a win-win deal.

Looking for a sure path to greater happiness?  I’ve got one for you.  But before I tell you, I need to remind you again that the four most dangerous words in the English language are, “I already know that.”

The sure path is gratitude.  And even if you think you know it’s good for you, if you’re not actively practicing it in your life, you’re robbing yourself of one of life’s most golden joys.

Not only does genuine gratitude feel wonderful, but it comes with its arms full of gifts.  Consider some of the things that researchers have discovered about people who cultivate gratitude in their lives:

•    They experience less stress;
•    They’re more successful in careers and relationships;
•    They cope better with daily problems;
•    They value themselves positively;
•    They’re more spiritually aware and feel more connected to life;
•    They’re more optimistic;
•    They exercise more regularly, and achieve better physical health and vitality;
•    They worry less about status or the accumulation of possessions;
•    They describe themselves as happy and satisfied with life.

Feeling gratitude doesn’t mean you’re a Pollyanna, that you’re unaware of the suffering in the world, or that you don’t experience disappointments.  It means that even in the midst of these, you see life’s goodness as well.    It means that, despite life’s tragedies and shortfalls, you’re thankful that you were given the opportunity to live on this amazing blue marble, to walk beneath its skies, to see its beauty, to have amiable companions along the way.

Gratitude means you don’t take life’s blessings for granted.  It means you allow yourself to appreciate what you have and who you are—body, mind and soul.  Instead of seeking out faults and shortcomings, you look for the things that work, the things that succeed, the things that bring you comfort and ease and smiles.  You notice the kindnesses others do for you, the words of encouragement, friendship, and support.  You appreciate the ways you benefit from the efforts of the people who have gone before you, and of countless strangers, whose contributions enable you to travel and read and eat and wear clothing, to have water pouring from your faucets and light beaming from your lamps.

Gratitude enriches you by making you more aware of your riches, of the abundance of blessings in your life on all of its planes.  Turn it on.  Turn it up.  Let it flow.

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.

At first it seemed a matter of simple math: Every person who slides into happiness increases the world’s happiness by the power of one. One more smile. One more set of beaming eyes. One lighter, more vigorous heart.

Realizing just that much revved up my commitment to make living in happiness my life’s mission. By practicing happiness myself, I was literally making the whole world a happier place. But given that the world’s population is something like six billion, I figured if I was going to make a dent in things, I was going to have to pump my happiness to the max.

Then, a few months ago, I ran across the news that happiness is actually contagious. “Laugh and the world laughs with you” turns out to be a scientifically demonstrated fact. Cool! Now we’re talking exponents. Geometrical progressions. Two people catch my happiness, and spread it to two more, who spread it to two more . . .

My mind began to reel. Suddenly I remembered the famous penny doubling exercise: start out with a penny today and turn it into two pennies tomorrow. The next day double each of your two pennies and you have four. Double those four the following day and you end up with eight. Believe it or not, if you keep this up for 60 days and you end up with a whopping $10.7 million dollars—or one billion, 70 million pennies. Translate those pennies into smiles, and we’re really onto something priceless.

Then I came across another study from University of Barcelona in Spain that showed that our brains pick up happiness signals faster and more accurately than they read sadness signals. We’re actually hard-wired to pick up happiness!

What can I say? Get out there and smile, folks! The world needs you.