High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘Happy’

As if she knew we needed it, Spring opened up her yellow.  “Have some cheer!” she sang, splashing it on the forsythias, painting whole hillsides with daffodils.  No corner escaped her play.  Everywhere your eyes fell, happy flags were dancing in the breeze.

We had forgotten that anything could be that bright, that happiness could be so pure.  It spilled into our eyes and flew across our neurons, electrifying every fiber.

We were awake again in the land of Yes and miracles, where everything was possible and joy sailed the skies.

What if you could let go of wanting it to be otherwise?   What if you just breathed all your disappointment, fear, sadness, anxiety, anger, frustration, envy, self-loathing, and bitterness (all of it) into a big purple balloon, tied a tight knot, and let it go.

Suppose right after you did that, a huge white wind blew out of nowhere and swept that balloon far, far into the sky.  Suppose you watched it (even though the wind was still blowing so hard it made you squint your eyes) until it turned into a tiny dot and then just, well, completely disappeared.

How would you feel then?

Washed? Natural? Happy? Free?

What if you could?

The morning dawned bright and glorious after last night’s big snow, with blankets of shimmering white covering the earth and decorating the trees’ branches.

“How pretty!” I said aloud, as I pulled back my bedroom curtain to greet the day.  There’s nothing like a sun-washed morning to start a day in style.

I walked to the kitchen with a smile on my face, and when I spotted the little pine tree outside the window, I laughed right out loud.

I have been watching her grow from the time she was a small seedling, so I have a special place in my heart for her.

Today she looked for all the world as if she had just traipsed down from the attic in grandma’s wedding gown.  It was a little large for her; the sleeves were much too long.  But she looked so happy and proud that I couldn’t help but fall in love with her all over again.

There’s something about seeing a girl who’s feeling pretty that just fills your heart with joy.  If you spot one today, make sure you let her know.  And if you are one, revel in it; you’re lifting more spirits than you know.

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.

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.

Two weeks ago I drove to Cleveland in a blizzard.  Imagine my surprise when I pulled in the parking lot of my motel and discovered I had come to a rest directly in front of a cherry tree packed with over two dozen robins.  The little fellah in the photo must have thought he had arrived in a heaven made of cherry vanilla ice cream.

Robins are the harbingers of hope in these parts, one of the first songbirds to return after the long, silent winter.   They’re symbols of happiness with their call, “Cherrily-cheerily! Cheer up!”   The joy they bring is celebrated in an old song that’s been a traditional part of my springtime ever since I was a little kid listening to my parents sing it.  It’s called, “When the Red, Red Robin Goes Bob, Bob, Bobbin’ Along.”

You can catch a heartfelt version of it here on you tube, backed up by some excellent guitar playing.  Give it a listen, and tuck the lyrics in your pocket to sing to yourself in the morning.

“Wake up, wake up, you sleepy head;
Get up, get up, get out of bed.
Cheer up, cheer up – the sun is red.
Live, love, laugh and be happy.”

More and more every day I fall in love with my happiness question:  “Why am I so happy now?”  And I must say I think my question loves me back because it keeps bringing me new giggles and revelations.

I was reading tonight about how the intentions we set for ourselves determine our direction.  When I get out of bed intending for the day to be filled with meaning and gladness, that tends to be exactly what I get.  And my happiness question is the perfect container to hold that intention.

In case you missed it earlier, my happiness question is what started this whole blog.  Formally, it’s called a “Positive Affirmative Question.”  It starts with a “Why?” that won’t let your brain rest until it starts producing answers.   I take my happiness question with me wherever I go, and ask it of myself whenever I think of it.

In addition to the power of its structure, it’s magical because it captures so perfectly my intention to discover ever greater, deeper, more meaningful and satisfying happiness in my life.  It reminds me that happiness is what I choose for myself, that it’s my will to live in happiness, to taste and savor all its dimensions and flavors.

Sometimes I use a Positive Affirmative Question to focus on other qualities or traits that I want to increase in my life.  As I look out over the landscape of my day in the morning, I think about the positive outcomes I want to create and ask myself what strengths I can use to generate them.  If I have a huge stack of pressing tasks waiting for me at the office, for example, I may decide that being focused and productive would work in my favor.  So I wrap my intention in a Positive Affirmative Question and take it with me to work.  I write it on a sticky note and fasten it to my computer screen:  “Why am I so focused and productive now?”   If I’m heading out on a photo excursion, I ask myself  “Why am I taking such beautiful pictures now?”

Whatever direction you want your day to go, wrapping your intention in a Positive Affirmative Question is a powerful way to keep it in mind.  Try it, and watch how it shapes your choices and calls your attention to opportunities to move in harmony with your goal.

No, not that kind.  I mean the “absorbed” kind, where something interests you so much that you forget everything except what you’re doing.  You forget about yourself, you forget about time.  All that exists is the activity you’re involved with, because you’re fully involved.

“Engagement” is a word I run across a lot as I dig into the academic research about happiness.  It turns out that it’s one of the biggies for producing satisfaction in a person’s life.  I looked the word up in the dictionary the other day and was amused to find that it means both “pledged to be married,” and  “entered into conflict with”—as in engaging the enemy.

But the more I thought about it, the more fitting the word seemed for the process that the happiness researchers are talking about.   When they use the term “engaged,” they’re not talking about a passive activity, like watching TV, or daydreaming—however pleasant those activities may sometimes be.  They’re talking about someone tackling an activity that’s both attractive and challenging, about something that requires your focused attention because doing it well requires exercising your skills.  In other words, you marry yourself to it and sometimes fight with it all at the same time. It could be anything from creating a scrapbook to running a race, or solving a math problem, or baking the perfect chocolate cake.

Usually, we become engaged in an activity when it’s in service of a goal that’s meaningful for us.  We want to do the activity well because it matters to us.  For instance, I happen to be a photography enthusiast.  I’ve looked at the world through a camera’s lens since I was a little kid.  And I take pictures for the joy it gives me.  But recently, I added a challenge to the activity.  I decided I would post one picture online every day.   Now, every day when  I’m out shooting, finding and creating a really good photo is all that matters to me. I’m wholly oblivious to anything else, and time simply seems not to exist.  Two hours can fly past without my noticing.

The key outcome of engagement is a wonderful sense of satisfaction when you complete whatever it is you were doing.  You don’t notice that you’re happy while you’re doing it, because you’re completely lost in the doing.  But afterwards, you know the doing felt grand.

Knowing about engagement has let me notice when I exercise it, and to savor more fully its joy.  And now you know about it, too.  So go out there and get engaged.

Every now and then, synchronicities happen that tell you you’re on the right path.  Since I began my search for daily answers to the question, “Why am I so happy now?” they seem to pop up with increasing frequency.  But few are as blatant or wonderful as the one that happened yesterday.

After work, I was driving down a country road looking for the photo-of-the-day for my Flickr project.  I was in a wonderful frame of mind – relaxed, happy, glad to be alive.

All day I had been enjoying the panorama of playful clouds outside my window and I was looking forward to finding a good cloud shot for my photo for the day.  I opted to drive down a country road and got a couple decent photos, but an insistent feeling kept telling me that I needed just one more.

I kept my eyes opened for possibilities as I drove toward home.  Finally I spotted a place I where I could pull off the road a bit.  I parked and saw the roadside trees were hiding a cornfield lined with woods.  It would make a fine foreground for the heaps of clouds I wanted to capture.  I walked through the brush back to the corn and started shooting, loving the fragrance of the ripening corn, the beautiful blue of the sky.

I had just finished a couple shots when I noticed the sound of a propeller plane directly overhead.  And when I looked up, I could hardly believe what I was seeing.  Right, there, directly above my head, the pilot was making a drawing in the sky. Why, I hadn’t seen sky writing since I was a kid!

The little airplane was just finishing off a giant oval when I looked up.  And then, to my complete delight and amazement, he painted a smile and lines for eyes.  “Oh my gosh!  It’s a smiley face!” I gasped out loud, struck with wonder that this symbol of happiness was floating right above me.

As soon as I recovered from astonishment, I grabbed the shot—and less than a minute later, the winds had blown the drawing away and the plane was gone.

Had I not been in exactly that spot, at exactly that moment, I would have missed it.  But obviously, I was meant to be there.   This one was a present just for me.  And I embraced it with wonder and joy.

Did you know that by adjusting how you breathe you can increase your level of happiness?  Take a slow, deep breath right now, and let it out in a long, even sigh.  Right away, your whole body relaxes, your mind opens, and you sense a moment in which you’re free to choose—to relax further, or to return to whatever level you were at before the sigh.

It’s really pretty amazing, when you think about it, that something as simple as a sigh can alter your whole state of mind.  But awareness of your breathing can do much more than provide a momentary sense of release.  It can teach you about the intimate ways your body and your feelings interrelate and provide you with keys to guiding yourself toward enhanced well-being.

This one process of ours, our breathing, connects mind, body and emotions as nothing else does.  Its quality—its depth and ease and rhythm—is a wondrous mirror of how we’re feeling.  And by paying attention to how we’re breathing while we’re in different moods, we can gain great insight into where and how we hold different feelings in our body and learn how to consciously manage our breathing to ease the stresses and blocks that keep us from feeling at ease and free.

Make a little mental note right now to see how you’re breathing the next time you feel really happy.  See how fully you’re using your lungs, allowing air to flow into their depths.  Then try that breathing for several minutes when your mood is a little low.

For most of us, gentle inhalations to a slow count of ten with exhalations a little longer for several cycles will bring a wonderful sense of relaxed happiness.  It relaxes muscular tension and provides fresh oxygen to open your mind to new options and possibilities that you couldn’t see while you were locked into a tighter perception.

Add conscious breathing to your happiness practice.  Play with it and discover for yourself that increased happiness is only a few breaths away.