High on Happiness

Archive for the ‘Happiness Hows’ Category

Suppose the Good Fairy showed up with an offer to build you your very own retreat—a place all your own, beautifully designed, equipped with every luxury—and a magical means to access it instantly, any time you wanted.

She says she can create it in any environment you want – woods, seashore, mountain top, desert—you name it.

Where would you ask her to have it built?  And what do you imagine it would look like?

A few years ago, my friend Faith told me, she began building an imaginary retreat, and now it has grown to a fabulous estate that she wanders at will, using as she chooses its spa, its music room, its theatre, its conference center, its meditation chapel, its library.

It has a coordinator, two personal guides, various instructors and facilitators, and sometimes other guests.  She can visit with any of them, or be entirely alone, depending on her purpose and desire.

She walks its winding paths to various gardens, some formal and ornate, some like meadows filled with wild flowers, some with fountains, some with pools.    She paddles across the retreat’s vast lake to visit a Teacher whose academy is sequestered in the base of a mountain, accessible only through a secret door.  She has a transparent crystalline transporter that carries her to other dimensions and times.

“It provides me with a place to explore solutions, to envision possibilities, to tap new levels of knowledge, and to rest and heal,” she told me.  “And it has become as tangible for me as my every day life.”

She suggested I begin building one, too.  “Start with something simple.  Some structure in your favorite kind of environment.  Go there when you meditate or when you simply need a few minutes away from the stress of your normal world.  It’s wonderfully relaxing and peaceful.”

I remembered her story today as I walked beside an emerald river, deep in a secluded wood, listening to the babbling waters, the gentle rustle of leaves, the birdsong.  This would be an ideal place for a retreat, I told myself, and I began imagining a beautiful glass-walled lodge . . .

If you were going to build a place of your own, where would you put it?  What would it look like?  You just may want to give it some thought.

“We live only to discover beauty.  All else is a form of waiting.” ~Kahlil Gibran

When beauty spreads itself before you, pause and breathe it in.  Pause, setting aside your thoughts and your doings, and let it shower you with its radiant and animating light.  Let it sing to you its song of exaltation.  Let it flow molten into the depths of you, quickening your soul with its sparks of wonder, its flame of truth.

This is a mystical training.  For beauty’s purpose is to reflect to you the essence of the light within your own heart.  It is life, dancing naked before you, taking the form of a bird, a face, a leaf, a river, a sky.  And the more deeply you see it, the more you come to understand that you, too, are its child and its expression.

Immerse yourself in it.  Ride its tender waves to the edges of the cosmos, to the pure, still point within.  Let it guide and teach you.  “When you reach the heart of life,” the poet Gibran declared, “you shall find beauty in all things, even in the eyes that are blind to beauty.”  This is its ultimate lesson.  May it be your destiny and goal.

Somewhere in a back corner of your mind it’s good to keep a little bag of favorite distractions you can draw from when life pulls you down.  Toss into it random scraps of things you enjoy.

Think of places that soothe you and draw your interest —a library you like to visit, a street lined with shops whose windows hold treasures and delights, or where the architecture fascinates you.  A park, a garden, a meadow, a beach.

Think of activities that engage you—hobbies and pastimes, games, sports, arts.

Think of people who make you laugh or who tell amazing stories.  A kid maybe, a neighbor, a pal.

Toss ‘em all in your bag.  Then, when you find some dark train of thought has gained traction in your mind, you’ll have ways to dis-tract it right at hand.

Happy distractions are like mini-vacations for the mind.  They bring you little pleasures and healing.  They offer you nibbles of light and joy.  They take you away for awhile so you can remember a bigger you.  You’re refreshed and renewed when you come back to tackling your problem.  And sometimes when you come back, you find the problem has simply gone away.

It’s not that I ever had some grand vision of the life I wanted to live.  To tell you the truth, I had no clear picture of it at all.

I never could figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up, even after I’d long since grown.

I used to read all these self-help books that tell you to write a description of where you want to be five years from now and my mind would go blank.  I’d make up something, but most of it was stuff I thought I should want, or could want, or would probably enjoy if it came my way; but none of ever really turned me on.

So this weekend, when it occurred to me how deeply happy I am and that I’m living the life of my dreams, I was taken by surprise.  I didn’t realize I had a dream.  I just kept doing less of the things I didn’t enjoy and more of the things that I did, and now what I’m doing pleases me immensely.

Oh sure, there’s plenty of room for improvement.  We can always make the best in us even better.  But now, at long last, I know what brings me satisfaction and joy.  And those are the things I invest my time in—the things that matter to me.

That’s the key:  “Follow your bliss,” as Joseph Campbell said.  Do less of the things that hold no pleasure and more of the things that delight you.  Generally, that means admitting what you’re good at, what’s easy for you, the things that let you use your natural interests, talents and strengths.  Anything less is cheating yourself of your central asset: the minutes and hours of your life.

At first, when I focused closely on the fuzzy little globes that decorated the bushes along the woodland path, I was surprised to see that they were, in fact, a cluster of tiny flowers.  “How pretty!” I thought.  They reminded me of the sequined Christmas bulbs my mother had crafted one year when I was a child.

But I wasn’t the only one who found them attractive.  As I looked more closely, I saw that they had drawn a whole battalion of tiny black bugs who were feasting on their nectar.

“Nothing’s perfect!” I laughed, and took their photo anyway.

The bug-laden flowers reminded me of a story I once heard about a certain band of eastern monks who always left one flaw in their otherwise meticulous works of art to reflect the imperfections that dot everything in the natural world.

“How wise of them!” I thought, “And how accepting!”  Standing as we do, just outside of Eden, one world removed from the gardens where perfection shows its face, we tend to rail against the flaws we perceive in our reality.  Something in us longs for perfection.  Our sense of it is so clear.  We war against ourselves for not meeting its standards. We punish others whose flaws seem even larger and darker than our own.  And so we create a downward spiral of darkness, feeding it with our anguish and blame.

The wise monks, on the other hand, simply look on the imperfections as a natural phenomenon, accepting them as an inevitable part of life’s expression in a material world.

Any true artist will tell you that their works always fall short of expressing their ideals.  What’s flawless in the realm of thought picks up debris in its translation to the physical plane.  The best we can do is to do the best we can, and then to celebrate how much we create that is good.

When we focus on what’s wrong or lacking or incomplete, our vision narrows, and our spirits contract.  We get locked into an imprisoning darkness of criticism, derision, helplessness and pain.  But when we focus on the goodness in things, we’re free to ask how we can make it even better.  Our creativity is unleashed, we reach for higher possibilities.  And thus we grow, and Eden seems not so very far away.

The showers began in the wee hours and continued throughout the day.  Coming as they did on a Saturday, no doubt they caused some consternation.  It’s the season, after all, for weddings and picnics in the park.  But for me, it was a day of raining joy.

With the perfect excuse to postpone my errands, I brewed a pot of tea and parked myself at my computer to write.  I’m working hard on my imminent launch of Positive-Living-Now, a sister website for High on Happiness, where you’ll find a growing wealth of resources for building more meaning, joy and satisfaction into your own life.   (You can sign up right now to be in on the launch.  Check it out!)

As much as I appreciate and enjoy my day job, it does gobble up my energy and time.  To have an entire day to spend on my key projects is bliss.  So today I reveled in my writing and my graphic arts.

To have meaningful personal goals makes of your life a joyous journey.  They provide such a sense of direction and purpose.  They illuminate your path. They call you forward and stretch you to learn in their service.

When you have meaningful goals, they pull you to tap your best strengths, to hone your abilities, to risk leaps you wouldn’t otherwise have dared.  They keep you going when you’re weary and discouraged.  They tantalize and torment you with problems to solve, and so you’re never bored.

You find yourself getting lost in them, losing all sense of time because you’re so engaged.  And when at last you set them aside for the day, the satisfaction washes over you as if it’s been raining joy.

Down the road, we’ll talk about how to find a genuinely meaningful goal at Positive-Living Now.   For now, ask yourself what you really love doing, what you would most want to create in your life—even if you have no idea how you would find the time or the means for doing it.  Then just lightly play with your dream from time to time.  See where it leads you.  See what possibilities float into your awareness, what options appear that could move you toward a clearer vision of the shape it could take, the steps you might make in its direction.  It all begins, after all, with a dream.

Grab one.  Nurture it a little.  Watch how it grows, and how it grows you.  See if you don’t wake up one morning watching joy clouds moving your way.

Okay.  I’ve had it with Murphy.  Tomorrow I’m giving out a Best Laugh Award.  It’s the surest cure after ol’ Murph comes dragging his accursed “everything that can go wrong will go wrong” law across your day.

Nothing horrid happened, mind you.  Just a thousand small annoyances:  Misplaced keys, misplaced cat, misplaced papers, spilled coffee, clogged plumbing, slow traffic, a forgotten lunch, computer glitches, an incessantly ringing phone  while deadlines leered from the sidelines.

I have to admit it.  Old Murphy got my goat.  By late afternoon I was one frazzled grump.  (Even happy people have their off days.)

“How on earth am I going to break this mood?” I thought as I walked through cold rain toward the grocery store.  And just then, my eyes fell on the flats of petunias.  As if to answer my question, a voice in my head recited an e e cummings line:  “The earth,” it said, “laughs in flowers.”

“Aha!  That’s it!” I said to myself.  “I’ll show old Murphy a thing or two.  Tomorrow I’m giving out a Best Laugh Award.”  I set my intention right then and there, and immediately my gloom vanished.  I thanked the petunias by taking their picture and bought a hot supper to take home.

I started to wonder who would set the best laugh loose.  Diane?  Michael?  Bob?  A stranger?  Would I hear it in person, or on the radio?  At work, or at home?  Would it roll down the hall?  Sneak through the phone lines?  Come wafting through my open window?   Would it be a throaty chuckle, a silly tee-hee, a hearty guffaw?

The Best Laugh Award is one of my favorite variations of the Best-of-the-Day game.  You can look for anything you want—most beautiful thing, best idea, best smile, best overheard comment, best billboard, best display of the color red.  You just look for the best of your chosen category all day, and then, at day’s end, pick the winner.  It’s an exercise in keeping your attention focused.  And it yields some surprising results.

So move aside Murphy.  Your law’s got nothing on me.  One display of petunias wiped out your entire bag of tricks.  The best laugh today is the one I got on you!

I used to work in an office with a man who brightened the whole place every time he walked in the door.  When anybody asked, “Jim, how are you today?”  He would reply with a big, booming, “Beautiful!”  And no matter what was going on, if you were within earshot of him, you couldn’t help but smile.

Happiness, you know, is contagious.  Hang out with happy people and your joy meter rises.  Your brain just laps the stuff up.

So as you head out the door, or into the next room, put your happy walk on.  Get your groove goin’.  Smile at folks as if you and they are sharing some really cool secret.  Whistle.  Hum.  Make the day a party.  Pass out pats on the back.  Say “Gosh, you look great today!”  And when anybody asks you how you are, say “Beautiful!” Say “Fantastic!” Say “Outstanding!  Say “Phenomenal!”  (Because, of course, you are.)

You are one amazing human being, a one-of-a-kind treasure, a star, living in a sea of stars.  So go rock it!  Spread some joy.  See what happens.

You’re gonna love it.

Our brains are wired, science shows, to pay more attention to the bad than to the good, even though our good times far outweigh the lesser ones.  Take a sheet of white paper, place a dot on it, and it’s the dot that you see and remember.  “We’re like Teflon for the good experiences,” one researcher put it, “and Velcro for the bad.”

You can easily see that in your own life.  Looking back over the day, you can name the things that went wrong much more readily than the things that went right—even when your feelings tell you that, overall, you had a pleasant day.

One way to build your happiness quotient is by taking time to anchor the positive moments in your mind.  When a phone call brings good news, take a few seconds to think about why it made you feel happy.  When you read something that inspires or excites you, note the feeling and what was good about it.

Positive feelings last longer when you don’t over-analyze them, though.  So a quick nod of your attention in their direction is all you need.  A simple label will do:  “That was really thoughtful.  I’m touched,” or “How exciting, or beautiful, or encouraging.”

When you consciously recognize the gifts of the day, they become more memorable.  They transform into little jewels of light that you can savor at day’s end, or fodder for pleasant stories to share over dinner.  Noticing the good dots your day with highlights and keeps it from becoming merely a mildly pleasant blur.

Think of it as collecting sparkles.  Give it a try.

The whole purpose of dandelions, you know, is to help your best wishes come true.  You pluck one, hold it up to your face, make a wish and blow – really hard! And off fly the seeds on gossamer wings, to plant your dreams where they can flower and grow.  Who can resist it!

The same holds true, of course, for the first star you see in the nighttime sky, for shooting stars, and for birthday candles on a cake.

Wishes are big magic.  Even when you’ve long since abandoned childhood foolishness, given the chance to make a wish, you still close your eyes and conjure up the best one you can, fill it with hope and let it fly (just in case).  Don’t you?  C’mon.  I know you do.  If a genie came by with lamp . . . well, enough said.

Wishes have power.  They’re tokens of our unfulfilled desires, our dreams of what could be.  They’re openings to our secret self, pathways to our possibilities.  “If you can conceive it and believe it, you can achieve it,” said Napoleon Hill.  And it all starts with the conception, the wish, the dream.  Our wishes are pointers, whispers from ourselves about potential life directions.

What wishes are waiting inside you for recognition?  Do you pay attention when the words “I wish” sail out of your mouth?  Try noticing.  Collect your wishes; jot them down on the back page of your journal.  See what they tell you.  You just might be surprised.