Happiness Strategies | How to be Happy

Only last Tuesday I was savoring the joy of getting jiggy with Ziggy (my black iPod Video 30) on this blog. But as of yesterday, he is no more.

l often listened to Ziggy while doing chores, tucking him into my shoulder strap if I didn’t have a pocket. You can see where this is going, can’t you?

There I was, belting out Bob Sinclar’s Rock This Party. I reached across to straighten something in the bathroom, thinking as I did, I’d better not do that - Ziggy could fall into the toilet - but before I could finish the thought he’d plopped right in. I quickly fished him out and dried him off but alas, my efforts at resuscitation were futile.

(I have no words of wisdom to mark Ziggy’s drowning. I can only post this note to commemorate him. He was a much-loved gadget, a noble gadget, and he shall be missed. *sniff*)

But life goes on - as do music, audiobooks and podcasts. So today I’d like to introduce Ziggy Jr.

He’s a Nano - 8G, black, and with that gorgeous Cover Flow that almost makes the audio redundant. I went for sleek teeniness and sacrificed space - so there’ll be a period of adjustment as I learn to have only 8G with me at a time.

ONLY 8G! I remember having a SONY Walkman (that’s a cassette player people!). It was such a pleasure to have music on the go that I never thought anything of having to rotate tapes.

Happiness life strategy

Which brings me to a very valuable happiness strategy: picking the happy brain filter - the part of any situation, person or thing we focus on. As Abe Lincoln said:

We can complain because rose bushes have thorns,
or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.

(Dang that was a smart president! Remember when presidents used to be smart?)

There are always thorns - it’s part of what makes this life and not heaven (however you conceive each to be). But don’t let thorns blind you to the magnificent blooming thing hiding there at the end of the stem.

Ziggy Jr is a tiny work of art, a truly beautiful union of function and form - and I already love him. So what if I have to limit my mobile audiobooks, podcasts and playlists to 8G at a time? So what if I have to do a little manipulation when I sync? I’ll get used to it.

And if I don’t - well, there are always gardening gloves.

Technorati Tags: happiness,happiness strategies,life strategies,iPod,Nano,quotes

Image by by saroz under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Tuesday’s SMH ran a story on a new book telling us what to do, and what to avoid, to keep our brain cells firing at optimal levels.

Top brain gainers include copious sex, dark chocolate and cold meats for breakfast.

So start your day with a daybreak dalliance, followed by cold, leftover BBQ chicken pizza and a Cherry Ripe chaser, and it’s goodbye Cletus-ville, hello Mensa. Sweet.

Also helpful, but way less fun, is cuddling babies (okay, that is fun), a business degree and reading aloud. No, I don’t think moving your lips as you read Where’s Wally counts. And no, neither does calling out the subtitles during a foreign movie.

If you want to mix it up, try narrating snippets from your business text during sex. You may need to periodically rouse your partner, but at least you’ll have super cognitive powers at the ready for a snide remark should they complain.

Brain drainers include TV soap operas, smoking cannabis and hanging with whiners.

I love TV shows, but to qualify for watching my proviso is they must make me (a) laugh (b) think or (c) feel happy - and soap operas masterfully sidestep all 3. (Ironically, the show Weeds is a triple scorer).

Drugs cause more trouble than they’re worth, so avoiding the lot is a no-brainer - oops anti-brain-drainer.

And as for whiners - I wish there was awards-speech music that welled up as a bout of whining approached 4 minutes. Or a whining download limit that shaped the whinge to an inaudible whisper as it went over 210 seconds. For chronic whiners who persevered beyond all deterrents, I’d like there to be a whiners’ island where they could be exiled to live with other whiners.

Authors Terry Horne and Simon Wootton say the ideas in their book Teach Yourself: Train Your Brain come from research by experts around the world, including findings that certain activities precipitate chemical reactions.

Their advice is excellent: “Mix with people who make you laugh, have a good sense of humour or who share the same interests as you and avoid people who whinge, whine and complain as people who are negative will make you depressed.”

Add a little sex, no drugs and some rocky road - and your brain’s golden.

Technorati Tags: happiness,brain,happiness strategies

Image by by f10n4 under a Creative Commons license.

Last week Andrew Denton interviewed Jerry Seinfeld, who’s in Australia promoting his new movie.

It was a great interview, and not just because we learned that Jerry’s kids (can I call him Jerry?) think he’s a bee, since that’s what he’s ‘been’ (hee hee) for most of their lives.

Rather, the glistening highlight for me was Jerry’s describing, in classic Seinfeld style, what has to be one of the least valued but most effective strategies for happiness - the happiness strategy of savoring.

I’ve included the relevant part of the transcript below, but it’s much more fun to see Jerry for yourself. Click on Jerry Seinfeld - Part 3 for the 2-minute video excerpt.

Here’s the transcript excerpt :

…one thing I did kind of get from [George Burns] is like if I get a really good cup of coffee I like to just go, you know what? Just hang on a second. This is a fantastic cup of coffee. Isn’t this a great - and I’ll ask everyone - isn’t this great coffee? Cos you know, it’s not always great. This one is great…

You will enjoy life more if you do that.

You know, you get a great parking spot, just go: Hold it a second, I mean look at that spot. I mean it’s - we could have been blocks away and we’re right here.

I’m not being at all facetious. I genuinely think this one strategy will change your life - it’s certainly changed mine since I began savoring a few years back. Now I happily savor simple things every day, and I don’t think a day goes by that I don’t savor:

• Ziggy, my iPod - I love to get jiggy with Ziggy
• Cliff, my coffee machine - how could the day begin without his aromatic emissions?
• Xander, my laptop - sweet, sweet child-o-mine
• my bed (unnamed - a strange oversight) - such a comfortable way to end the day

If you learn to savor your moments of delight, you’ll find yourself with a very dependable happiness strategy.

And there’s always something to savor, because, as Jerry says, ‘we could have been blocks away - and we’re right here’.

When I finally got up the nerve to leave corporate life it was like finding the off-switch on a perpetually-talkback-tuned radio. Realizing I could have silenced the maddening demagogue and his band of yokels all along was a shock - I’d become so blinded by the daily scramble of desperate deadlines, so trapped into thinking I needed the overblown paycheck and accoutrements to survive, that I’d lost sight of what made me happy and how much power I had to create it for myself.

It’s not easy to shake off a mantle you’ve worn for a long time - even if it no longer suits you. And that makes it hard to re-connect with any passion lurking below.

For me, the answer to the question What work would bring me happiness? came with time, and from reading books. Books always seem to have the answers I’m looking for.

But you might prefer a different approach - perhaps using exercises, writing and active self-exploration. If that sounds like you, I’ve found a resource you might like.

Cheryl Richardson has suggestions for locating your latent love in her Passion Path of Development. This is a four-stop journey to finding where your ‘deepest delights’ lie:

Stop 1: Make space

Stop 2: Be an explorer

Stop 3: Find the gold

Stop 4: Take action

Along the way she suggests specific exercises, activities and journal-writing tasks as tools for helping you move toward your passion.

I remember being in that post-corporate limbo, trying to recall what my likes and dislikes had been before I’d sacrificed them to the God of suck-cess. Along with clarity about work came other realizations: that the music I liked was classified as alternative; that I wasn’t, and never had been, a people person; that I much preferred fun costume pieces to real jewelry, and that I was inordinately fond of anything pink and sparkly.

So if you’re committed to uncovering rather than imposing, be warned that your natural inclinations may be less polished or sophisticated than you’ve been telling yourself all these years.

But whatever you do - please don’t discover you like talkback radio.

Related posts:
Happiness Life Strategy: How to find your passion
Happiness Life Strategy: How to find your passion #2

Image by by Lost in Scotland under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.