High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘Happiness’

It’s deeper than the colors that dance into your eyes – although it makes them more vibrant.  It’s brighter than the sweet-tart flavors exploding on your tongue – although it brings them to life.

It packs the power of a barrel full of nutrients; it feeds your heart, your mind, your soul.

It gets into your bloodstream and pushes its sunlight through your veins.  It builds your cells with its earthiness and sparkles across your synapses with glee.

It’s as silent and invisible as air, and as necessary and free.  It fills all your spaces.  It carries all your light and all your songs.

It rushed inside you when you gulped your first breath and took up residence.  And none of your howls or tears were ever enough to evict it, nor will they be.  It’s become you, its quantum particles all dancing hulas with your DNA.

It’s the pulp and the joy-juice of life.  It’s the stuff that smiles are made of, and kindness and compassion.  It’s the seeds of potential and possibilities.

It’s happiness.  And among life’s gifts, it’s the berries.

“See what I mean?” she said, as they walked past the display of sunflowers.   “There’s no way something as heart-stopping gorgeous as that was designed just to attract bees! That’s a cosmic neon sign, baby, just tellin’ you to be glad.

“Go ahead, roll those big browns of yours.  It doesn’t change things.  I’m telling you, happiness just gets it on with life, explodes all over the place.

“I mean, life’s just so chock full of joy it can’t contain itself.  It oozes out everywhere.

“Why, just look!  Even your own cantankerous face can’t help but let a grin out.  I think I’m going to start calling you ‘Sunflower.”

“Sunflower!” he laughed.  “Don’t you dare!  I’d never live it down.”

“How ‘bout just plain ‘Sunny,’ then?  Can you carry that one around?” she teased.

“I’ll carry anything you decide to lay on me.  You’re one wild woman, you know?” he said, giving her a wink.

“That’s the way,” she said.  “You just keep on shining, darlin’.  Just keep letting it shine.”

The beautiful thing about joy is that is comes in so many colors.  Sometimes it’s quiet and deep, sometimes it sings in leaping flames, sometimes it dips itself in the sunrise and paints its whole spectrum across the length of your day.

Entire days of joy are as rare as rainbows, I admit.  But almost always you can find a patch or two of joy somewhere:  A smile here, a laugh there, a moment of connection with someone you love, a song that moves you, a surprise unfurled.

The trick is to pick them up when you find them; stick them in your happiness pouch.  At the end of the day, string them all together in a little feast of savoring and delight.

The more you do that, the more joy-moments you’ll find.  And one day, when you sit down to look back through the hours and see what your happiness bag holds, a whole rainbow of joy will pour out on your floor.  And your eyes will mist over a bit at the sight of it as you realize how beautifully you’ve been blessed.

Here comes happiness again, dressed in its celebration suit, riding on the morning rays.  It dances into you with every respiration, hurling protons willy-nilly, splashing in the liquid of your cells, tumbling through your tunnels and networks all giddy and smooth.  It pushes open your eyes.

Stroking you with its neon fingers, it tickles at your notion that it’s just an ordinary day.  “If only you knew!” it breathes into your ear.  It stares at your face from the mirror, melting at the sight of you and laughing in your hair.

It’s strewn the hours with miracles, custom made.  “Look for them,” it whispers.  Everything you need.  All the answers, all the signs, every step choreographed to lead you where you need to go.  “Watch,” it murmurs; “Listen.”

Something that tastes like a promise licks against your tongue and turns up the corners of your mouth.  You feel oddly lucky for no reason you can name.  You square your shoulders and breathe, deciding it’s going to be a good day.

And quietly, somewhere deep inside you, happiness hums a love song.  Just for you.  Just for you.

Imagine a rampant happiness leaping, wild and unrestrained, from one heart to another.  Imagine a contagion of joy.

Imagine it bursting in boisterous grins, untamed giggles, wanton winks, for no reason at all.

Imagine all it took to ignite it was one exuberant spirit flashing her smile with abandon, one impetuous soul flinging his laughter into the crowd.

Imagine it grew out of control and spread everywhere until the whole world was infected with happiness, and no one could stop it or wanted to, because suddenly everyone was awake and seeing the flagrant truth.

Why, light would tumble from everyone’s eyes and flowers spring up wherever anyone stepped, and joy-cookies fall from the heavens.  And we would all be healed, and the world would dance around its star to the melody of love songs that would never, never end.

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.

They’re making us a sunshine sandwich this weekend: one slice of radiant sun, piled high with fresh greens and whipped clouds, between two freshly baked days of rain.

It’s a yummy treat, common in this part of the country as spring comes to a close.

We’re especially fond of the filling.  It tastes like summer, warm and spicy on our tongues.  And we’re careful not to let a morsel of it go to waste.  We inhale the bright fragrance of it.  We let its flavor roll around in our mouths for awhile.  We savor it long after the last bit of it is gone.

It’s kind of like the way you meet a slice of happiness, tucked between slabs of ordinary days and made all the brighter by its contrast with them.  You just surrender to it and let the taste of it flow through your whole being, filling you with its gladness and joy.  And when the last bit of it fades into ordinary again, you carry the feeling of it with you and it satisfies your mind and nourishes your soul.

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.