High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘Happiness Hows’

Questions to Ask Yourself to Turn a Negative State Around

A Handy Little Primer

If I’m not experiencing happiness and well-being, what am I clinging to instead?
Why am I choosing to fill my mind with pain?
What’s keeping me from letting it go?
What if I didn’t believe that?
What’s another way I could interpret this situation?
What do I want instead?
What would that feel like?
Can I tiptoe into that feeling?
What is good about this moment?
What is good right now that I’m taking for granted?
What is good about my life?
What parts of my body are working just fine?
What messages are my senses bringing me?
(How many colors do I see?  Which ones do I prefer?
What sounds am I hearing?  What other sounds lie beneath them?
What is my skin telling me?
What parts of my body would like to move right now?)
What am I learning about myself from this interesting experience?
What am I going to enjoy doing when my sense of well-being returns?
Can I begin doing some of that now?

When the situations of the day beat you up, dash your hopes, and stomp all over your finest expectations, here comes your friend, grin in hand, to dust you off and set you on your feet again.  Don’t you just love it?

One of the most beautiful things that best friends do for us is to encourage us when we’re down.  They meet us with their bag of tricks and keep pulling them out until they find the one that does the magic.

They sit and commiserate; they empathize and sympathize and cajole and rail.  They get right down there in the emotional stew with us and let us know we’re not alone and that yeah, we’re right to feel exactly what we feel.  They say, “Hey, we’re just humans, you know?  We’re the ones with the whole shebang inside us—the glory and the crap, remember?  And sometimes the crap plays top dog.”

And then, when we’re all comforted by being seen and heard and knowing we’re not alone, they start sneaking in their little pieces of uplift, building on our glimmers that we’re still okay, regardless.  They start pumping up our resilience.  They blow in some fresh wind, clear the skies.  They point at the stars and get us dreaming about reaching for them again and remind us that, yeah, we’re big enough to stretch that far.  They talk about keepin’ on keepin’ on.

They distract us and then, if we start sliding back into the muck, they haul out their dispute tools and get us to question our doubts.  Gosh, they’re good.

If you have a friend who lifts you when you’re down, next time, watch him or her at work.  Copy the technique.  If you don’t have one, make one up.  Keep him in your pocket.  Pull him out and set him on the chair beside you when you need him.  There’s nothing like it.

When I say that a best friend truly understands you, what do you suppose I really mean?  Does understanding mean that your friend will sympathize with your hurts?  Comfort and console you when you are disappointed?  Stand on your side when you have been unjustly judged?  Absolutely.

But it goes farther than that.  It also means your friend understands that you don’t need to wallow in your hurt and disappointment or to carry a grudge. A true friend will remind you of your healing capacity, of the temporary nature of a wound, of your essential dignity and your ability to transcend misfortune, to reestablish your boundaries, to champion own your rights.

Do you need a meal?  Some exercise?  A change of scenery?  A nap?  A true friend sees your real needs and shows them to you.

A true friend helps you rediscover your perspective when you lose your balance.  Maybe you need a reminder that you’re not a loser just because you make mistakes, that errors are for learning, not for self-blame.  Maybe you need to see that the good in your life is far more abundant than today’s misfortune.  Maybe you didn’t see that someone’s remark or action wasn’t intended as an attack but was no more an indication of his or her mood.

Best friends can do this because they pay attention to you.  They notice what’s going on with you, and when you need it they address your needs with respect, belief in you, and positive regard.  And that’s exactly the vantage point that helps the most, and the one from which we can most benefit as we practice being our own best friends.

So, if you look at yesterday’s list of ten things our best friends can teach us about how to treat ourselves, how good are you at being a friend to yourself?  Just take the first point: Our truest friends see the best in us.  How much of the best in yourself do you see?

Do you know what your best strengths are?  Your best traits, talents, skills and abilities?

Martin Seligman, founder of the positive psychology movement, and author of Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment, says, “The good life consists in deriving happiness by using our signature strengths every day in the main realms of living.”   In other words, we find joy by doing the kinds of things we’re best at doing in as many parts of our lives as we can.   How cool is that!

And that’s why you’re being a good friend to yourself when you let yourself see the best in you.  One clue about how to identify your basic strengths is simply to ask yourself what kinds of things give you feelings of satisfaction and pleasure.  Or you can buzz on over to the Authentic Happiness site (see the blogroll over to the right for a link) and take their free strengths survey.

Once you get some clarity about your best strengths, take a look at your life and see how often you’re giving yourself a chance to exercise them.  How are you using them in your home life?  On the job?  In your relationships?  In your social life and in recreation?  Play with noticing them when you’re allowing them to surface in your everyday experience.  Notice the way they make you feel and appreciate them for the joy and satisfaction they bring you.

That’s one way to be your own best friend.  It will contribute to your awareness of the happiness in your life and give you a deeper sense of living well.

When you boil them all down, all the components of happiness, it comes to this:  Happiness is loving life and the Source from which life springs.  When you’re in love with life, you see, happiness becomes your natural state of being.  You don’t need to understand it, although it often fills you with boundless curiosity.  You don’t have to wrap it in dogmas or beliefs; it’s enough to feel it coursing through your veins.

Happiness isn’t something you have to find, or build, or discover, or create, even though we talk about it that way.  It’s like air.  It’s everywhere, inside you and out.  And all you have to do to experience more of it, to feel it more deeply, more fully and more often, is to allow yourself to be in love with your life.  Start there.

You don’t have to love all of your life right now.  Finding just one good piece of it to celebrate is plenty.  And if there’s just one good piece right now, celebrate it for all you’re worth.  Tell it how glad you are about it, and how it’s the best part of your life.

After awhile, it will ask you if you haven’t noticed this other part, over here, and how it’s pretty wonderful, too.  And now you’ll have two things, and then four, and sixteen, and thirty-two, and pretty soon you’ll start loving parts of the person next to you and the cat and the bus driver and the grocery store clerk and the way the sun shines and how children laugh.  And one morning, you’ll wake up and realize that, doggone it, you’re happy.

Now maybe you’re in such sad shape that you can’t even find one part of you to love right now.  That’s okay.  Happiness doesn’t care.  It’s going to hang around anyway.  You can start by picking out someone in the world who’s not so bad, someone you see maybe every day, and just make it a point to say, “Hi,” and give them a little smile.

If you can’t find a person to smile at, find an animal or a plant.  The point is to let your love out, because love is what happiness sails on.  And every time you let a little love out, happiness goes whistling through.

So breathe love in: celebrate yourself.  Breathe it out: celebrate something outside you.  And if you’re very, very still, you’ll hear the whisper of happiness riding on its flow.

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“It only takes one spark to set the whole forest ablaze.” ~Deepak Chopra

A single smile can light a room.  Today, be a light in the midst of the world’s darkness.

A single act of kindness can melt a frozen heart.  Today, break through someone’s isolation.  Let him know he is seen.  Let her know she is heard.

One drop of gratitude can set off ripples of love.  Today, shower your thanks liberally on all who contribute to your joy and well-being.

One little laugh can turn everything to play.  Go lightly through the world today and let delight be your song.

Mere hours from now, 2009 will slip into the past, taking its place in memory.  As you tuck it away, take some time to reflect on the days of joy it brought you; wrap it in happiness as you bid it farewell.

How we remember things depends to a surprising extent on how they end.  So drink a cup of kindness as you put the passing year to rest; send it off with a blessing of gratitude and joy.

Take time to think back on the laughter and good times that you shared with family and friends, on the way you were warmed by good company.  Think of the celebrations the year held, the successes you achieved, the things you learned, the things you were able to teach others, the fun you had.  Feel how enriched you are because of all you have been through in the passing year.  Appreciate how you have grown in your understanding of life because of all the textures of emotion you experienced.

Let your mind drift through all the seasons of the passing year and recall the beauty each one freely offered.

Think of all the entertainment the world brought you with its rich array of arts and sports, the comedy and drama, the gracefulness and skill, the inspiration, the thrills, the beauty.  Think of the leisure hours that renewed and uplifted you.

Appreciate the strength and depth you gained by meeting adversity, and the courage you found to get through the challenging times of pain and loss.  Appreciate your resilience and your willingness to hope.

Remember with love those to whom you bid farewell this past year and think of all the beautiful times you shared that made them so dear.  Celebrate the new lives that have entered your world.

As the year slips away into memory, put a mark of happiness on all its golden hours, and may they be a springboard for even greater joys in the year ahead.

From the depths of my heart, I wish each of you a truly happy New Year.

One day, curious to see what I would find, I bought a ticket to the land of childhood memories.  I cozied into a big, soft chair, closed my eyes, and sent my mind back into time.  I asked myself, “What was I doing when I was six?”  And before I knew it, I was remembering my family’s living room.

There was Dad’s favorite chair, with the pipe stand next to it, and I remembered the fragrance of his Cherry Blend tobacco.  There was the big floor radio, where my mother and I listened to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth.  It must have been a big event at the time.  I remembered having View Master slides of it afterwards and coloring books.

Then I saw feathers filling the room’s air and remembered the pillow fight Carol and I got into, and how aghast my poor mother was at the sight of feathers everywhere.

I don’t know how long my trip back to childhood lasted, but it brought back memories I never knew were there:  Details of the neighborhood, and of the neighbors, toys I loved, Aunt Katherine’s parakeets and the doll outfits she crocheted, the big fur hat that I wore in winter, my dad cooking blueberry pancakes, my mother decorating my Valentine’s box with red crepe paper and hearts cut from paper doilies, the treadle sewing machine, my grandmother singing as she ironed clothes, the blisters I got on my hands from playing on the jungle gym at school.  It was a glorious adventure.

A friend of mine who spent September writing lists every evening of things she appreciated during the day says she’s going to spend October recalling good memories.  What a grand happiness practice!  If her excursion into the past is as enriching as mine was, she will be thrilled that she took the time for it.

And if you take the time, you’ll be thrilled, too, and amazed at how much you can recall.  All it takes is a little slice of quiet time and a comfortable chair.  Then pick a trigger:  remember where you lived, or think about your first pet or your favorite teacher, of your first bus ride or the family car.  The rest will unfold from there.

Your mind is a vast country of unexplored memories.  Buy yourself a ticket to it some Saturday afternoon and see the sights.  See if you don’t come back high on happiness, feeling richer and bigger and whole.