High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘happiness practice’

“Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream,
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily;
Life is but a dream.” ~English Nursery Rhyme

Here’s a happiness hint for the holidays:  Whenever you hear the word “merry,” remember the wise counsel of the children’s song, and slow yourself down to a gentle row.

The hustle and bustle of preparations can so easily turn from moments of delightful participation in the holiday’s spirit to feelings of pressure and distress.  We tend to set before ourselves so many additional tasks and such high expectations that it’s easy to feel pressured and overwhelmed.

We fall into the trap that I call “looking at the mountain.”  We see the entire heap of things that we want to get done all in one piece—do the shopping, put up the tree, hang the lights, write the cards, buy the stamps, bake the cookies, plan the dinner, pick up the dry cleaning, take Johnny to rehearsal, clean the house–and it looms before us as an enormous mountain that we have to climb.   And all this to celebrate a season of peace and joy!

The secret to climbing out of the trap is to move your focus from the mountain to the one thing that you are doing now.  Just that, the one thing.  Give yourself to it and allow it to engage your attention.

My friend Cristina over at The Benefits of Positive Thinking taught me a great little practice she calls, “This is me doing,” that works wonders for bringing you into the present.  You simply describe to yourself what you are doing:  This is me, paying attention to my driving, feeling the warmth from the car’s heater, hearing the music on the radio.  This is me, scraping off the plate and placing it in the dishwasher.  This is me, opening the refrigerator and reaching for the mayonnaise.

Once you’re in the present moment, you reconnect with your power because the present moment is the only one in which you can act.  You can’t act yesterday, or ten minutes from now.  The past and future are only ideas in your mind.  When you give your attention to your actions, you perform them easily and well, one gentle motion at a time.  You relax and your senses come alive.  You develop a rhythm, a flow.  You’re rowing gently on time’s river, savoring the scenery as it floats past.

That’s where the peace is, and the joy—it’s right in the moment, right now.  So be there, rowing gently and merrily down the stream.  And have yourself a holiday season brimming with delight, one sparkling moment at a time.

Before you even open your eyes, you feel the subtle tingling of it.  A tiny shiver of excitement sparkles through your body and as you take in a deep draft of the morning air, a huge smile spreads over your face.

You have no idea what it will look like, what shapes it will take.  All you know is that it’s going to be great, and you’re going to love it.  Today is going to be an incredibly lucky day.

Last night, as you were drifting off to sleep you fantasized that you were rubbing the genie’s golden lamp, and having been promised that your wish would come true, you said, “Tomorrow is going to be an extraordinarily lucky day.”   It was just a game you were playing with yourself, but you pretended it was real because that was one of its rules.

On the surface, it looked like a silly superstition.  But you knew what you were really doing was programming your subconscious mind to be alert for beneficial opportunities and to guide you in their direction.  The subconscious, you knew, likes images; it responds to them.  It uses them, after all, to speak to you in dreams.  It’s a right-brain kind of thing.  You decided to try it, just for fun, curious to see how it would work out.

The second rule of the game was to wake up feeling that your wish had been granted.  Then you just had to look for the ways it showed up during the day.  And even though you knew it was a game, you were delighted to find that you really did wake up filled with this delicious anticipation.  It really was going to be a fantastically lucky day!  You just knew it.

And, sure enough . . .

Another grand holiday comes to a close here in the States, our annual celebration of Thanksgiving.   In its traditional form, it’s a time when we gather together with family to share an enormous turkey dinner, complete with side dishes galore and pumpkin pie for desert, to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and football games on TV, and in keeping with the theme of the day, to give thanks for our blessings.

The variations on the meal and activities are countless, of course.  While millions travel to be with family—often crossing hundreds of miles–other millions spend the day with friends, and still others spend the day alone.  And as is the case with most big holidays, the reality often doesn’t meet the expectations.

Old family patterns ignite squabbles and irritations.  Or you were too exhausted from your travels to really enjoy the gathering.  If you end up making do with friends when you really wanted to go home, or spent the day alone, a little hollowness may be filling your heart.

Still, for most of us, regardless of where we spent the day, it was graced with at least a few moments of genuine gratitude as we turned our attention to the things for which we truly are thankful.  And the luckiest among us felt thankful all day long.

However your day unfolded, and whether you celebrated it as a holiday or not, a beautiful way to bring it to a close, to settle it in glowing peace, is to perform a loving kindness meditation at its end.

This gentle ritual allows you to wrap yourself and everyone else in thoughts of well-being, acceptance and unconditional love.  You can find a brief description of it here, and beautiful, more detailed instructions here.  Give yourself the gift of it.  It makes of every day a day of thanksgiving and peace.

“Three Good Things” is the name of a technique guaranteed to raise your happiness quotient, no matter where you are on the happiness scale when you begin to put its magic to work.

It’s simple.  And everybody can play.  All you have to do is name three good things from your day.  That’s it.  Just three.

Now if that sounds superficial to you, too easy to have any real impact, you may be interested to know that it works even for the clinically depressed.

What we focus on expands in our experience, you know.  When you tell your mind to pick out three good things during the day, it will begin to look for them.

At first, you may find it takes a little bit of effort to name three good things.  It’s a new activity after all.  But before you know it, you’ll have three good things before lunch.  And then you get bonus good things.  And they just keep on coming.

When you get really good at it, you can teach yourself to look for three good things in any moment, even the most challenging ones.

But for starters, just name three good things from your day every day.  Tell them to yourself.  Even better, write them down; keep a little log of them.  Make it a family affair if you like, where everybody shares three good things from their day with each other every evening.  Or enlist a “three good things buddy” to play it with.

It’s a delicious little technique, like joy-food for your mind.  Dish some up for yourself.  You’ll like it!

Here’s a secret about happiness:  As much as it loves us to be in motion, it also loves us to be at ease.  Now don’t get me wrong.  I’m not talking about being lazy, about sitting back and doing nothing.  (That has its benefits, too, of course.  But that’s a story for another day.)

I’m talking about taking the pressure off, about giving up the stress and strife of comparing yourself and your actions to some artificial standard of perfection.  I’m talking about being at ease with who you are and about recognizing that you’re always doing the best that you can with whatever awareness you have at any given moment, regardless of external deadlines or expectations.

If you could see a better way, after all, a way that was more joyful or efficient or effective, you would choose it.  The moment that you see that you need to be more mindful, you are.

Haste and tension are only obstacles that hinder our creativity and progress.  Forced speed creates more problems than it solves.  And anxiety blocks the very pathways through which solutions want to pour.  Flowing gently, with steadiness and ease, allows us to keep our focus, to remain open and attentive, to move with the energy of happiness, optimism and joy.  When you relax into the moment  it expands, and your awareness of available methods and resources increases.

All too often, we scold and criticize ourselves as if we weren’t our own best friends.  Carry a pocketful of imaginary gold stars around with you always to paste on your forehead when you need a reminder that you are beautiful and worthy and doing just fine.  Then, breathe.  Relax into the present, relax into the matter at hand, and harmonizing with it, flow gently on.

This past summer, I was following a discussion among a group of graduates in positive psychology about personality strengths.  So far, 24 strengths have been identified using a fixed set of criteria, and this group was brainstorming about strengths that might qualify to become number 25.

It was a beautiful, hearty discussion, and I loved the proposals and arguments the group contributed.  But one struck me especially—and not only because its name amused me, but because I saw it as a really important character strength.  Executive coach Margaret Greenberg proposed it to the group, and named it the ability to “Get-It-Out-the-Door.”

The person who possesses this particular strength, Margaret said, has learned how to overcome the tension between finishing something and keeping at it to make it better.  They know when things are “good enough” to send out into the world—even if they want to keep working on them for “another five hours (or years).”

People with this strength know how to take an idea and translate it into something tangible without taking a lifetime to do it.  They’re productive, prolific even.  They make the leap of faith that’s involved in getting started; they create their book, or business, or art work or product as best they can and they get it out the door.

They move on their ideas.  They focus and create and produce and then let the finished product go—regardless of the imperfections they may see in it.  They’re confident enough to say, “It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty doggone good,” and to send it out into the world to flop or fly as it will.  They don’t get bogged down in over-analysis, or in fearful obsession about every last detail being as perfect as possible.  Instead, they relish the act of production itself and revel in having a finished work to offer the world.

If getting it out the door is one of your strengths, congratulations!  Pat yourself on the back for it—and then get back to work!  If it’s not your strong point, polish up the strengths you do have.  And maybe, just maybe, think about borrowing a little energy from this one the next time you set out to tweak the quality of your life.  It’s a satisfaction-producer, for sure.

After her wild riot of color, autumn settled down for a breather.  She toned her golds down to ochre, her crimsons to rust, and she began to turn her thoughts inward, stilling herself for the final leg of her performance.

Beneath the deep blue of a clear October sky, she stretched herself out across the landscape and let herself savor the satisfaction of all she had accomplished over the past few weeks.

She loved the cycle of the seasons and the part in them that she got to play, pushing her strengths and talents to their limits, taking them to new levels, just for the sheer joy of it.

It was no easy task, turning summer into winter.  She took pride in the skill she brought to it, in the way she orchestrated it all with such finesse.   What an honor it was, after all, to be called on for this assignment.

She still had the final act to perform, stilling the world as the nights grew to full length, ushering in the frost and snow, making sure all the seeds and creatures were properly sheltered and that the festival spirits were prepared for their turn on the stage.

But today, she could enjoy an intermission of rest, an interlude of stillness, where she could reflect on the richness of it all.  It’s good to do that now and then when you’re performing the great part that life has assigned you, the one that you alone were born to play.  Grab a few late October moments to follow autumn’s lead.  Take stock of all you have accomplished, and rest in the happiness of it for awhile.

A hundred years ago, when I was a little kid, one of the thrills of autumn was jumping into the great piles of leaves that my dad and all the other neighborhood men raked from their yards.  Maybe kids still do that today.  I hope so.  There’s nothing like it.

You think the leaves will be cloud-like, given the way they billowed all summer high up on the trees.  But when you leap, it’s as if you dived into a huge bowl of cornflakes.  It’s like October’s version of an April Fool’s joke.  And you fall for it every year for a couple of years when you’re of the right age, and come out laughing, with leaf crumbs stuck in your hair and ears, every time.

We grown-ups don’t do much jumping, except maybe at sporting events when our home team scores, or if we’re the wise owners of trampolines.   We don’t often skip down the sidewalks, or walk on curbs to see if we can keep our balance, or take a turn on the swings or teeter-totters in the parks.  Few of us go rolling down big grassy hills just for the joy of it or splashing through mud-puddles either.  And that’s just a damned shame.

Putting your body in motion, heedless of how silly it might appear, is such a great way to generate happiness.  Oh, we adults have our versions of the childhood games.  We jog and dance and play our sports.  And that’s a wonderful thing.  If you’re not spending some of your day in motion, you’re missing out on a big helping of life’s joy.  Happiness likes to move.  It likes to take giant steps and go twirling.  It likes clapping hands and stomping feet.

I think we need an International Day of Inhibition when we can all be kids again and let happiness loose in play.  But until we get one, at least take advantage of the grown-up versions.  Have some fun.  Jump for joy—in whatever way you dare.

“Happiness,” says Denis Waitley, “is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude.”

Nobody, of course, is happy every minute.  We’re people, after all, subject to the whole range of emotions.  We tumble into pits of misery and boredom; we get sucked into anger and frustration and doubt.

But it’s the darkness that makes the light so beautiful.  It’s sorrow that makes us long for happiness and that pushes us forward in its pursuit.

Once we find it, though, it’s exactly what Waitley describes.  It’s the singing of the spirit bathed in grace, in gratitude and love.

It’s the awareness of our connection to the essence of being, the existential joy that undergirds and permeates all that is.

And just as grace and love and gratitude bubble up from the depths of happiness, they also serve as pathways to its shores.   In the grace of kindnesses freely given, joy arises. Love, in any of its colors, links us to happiness at its very core.  But it’s gratitude that offers us the simplest return to happiness when we have temporarily lost our way.

Begin naming the things for which you are thankful, the things that you appreciate in your life, and the healing of gratitude will begin to dissolve whatever barrier stands between you and your joy.  Gratitude turns your attention away from the empty places and illuminates the abundance in your life.  It guides you from a focus on what you think you have lost to an awareness of what you have left and what you have left unclaimed.  It redirects your sight away from the seeming obstacles that block your path and shows you new possibilities.

And the magic of it, the power of it, lies in the fact that once you begin to name the things for which you are grateful – the possessions, the abilities, the strengths, the relationships, the talents, the potentials, the pleasures – the more things you see to name.

The morning was cold and wearing, yet again, its heavy gray sweater of sky.  I lugged my bags of recyclables out to my car in the rain, feeling a little cheated by the weather.

As I drove to the county’s recycling center, the sight of a little clump of leafless trees along the roadside sent a stab of disappointment through my middle.  The colors are going to be gone, and we haven’t had one day of sunshine to see them in their glory, I thought, pouting.

Ordinarily I would have caught the direction my thoughts were traveling right there and gently steered them around.  But just then, I happened to be passing the very spot in the road where, 19 years ago next month, my teenage son was killed when he lost control of his car and flew over the bank and into a tree.

Because nineteen years have passed, I’m no longer grieving, but the reminder of my son’s accident anchored the disappointment I had been feeling all morning.  I relaxed into it a little, noticing how like the weather it was—heavy and gray, and accepting it as nothing more than psychic weather of my own, a little front of gloom that had floated into my morning.

But the difference between the weather outside and my own mood is that I could choose to blow my internal dreariness away.  Regardless of what’s happening in the outside world, I get to choose how I will feel.  So I asked myself my pet question:  Why am I so happy now?  And sure enough, answers starting flowing from my mind:  My car was running so well, and I was so cozy in the warmth from its heater.  It was Saturday, and I had two whole days to spend as I please.  And even though I had lost my son, he was such a joy that just remembering him made me glad for all the years we got to spend together.

By the time I got to the recycling center at the park, I was awash with gratitude for the richness of my life.  The rain was fine, the trees were breathtaking in their freshly washed beauty, and I was centered in my happiness and glad to alive.

That’s the beauty of practicing happiness.  You know how to come back to it when gloom fronts move in.  You let yourself breathe, you relax your face into a small smile, you entertain the grace of a saving question:  Why am I so happy now?  Why?  Because I can be, and I choose it and embrace it as my most authentic state.