Happiness Strategies | How to be Happy

It seems Thursday July 10 has been claimed as International Happiness Day.

I figured it was worth coming out of happiness hiatus to tell you about that!

The purpose:
"To create a focus on individuals and communities choosing Happiness in every moment. It’s a scientific fact: People who experience a preponderance of positive emotions tend to be successful and accomplished across multiple life domains."
[http://www.internationalhappinessday.com/]

You can check out the site and participate - they have a bunch of suggestions for how to do that.

Or you can have a DIY happiness day and simply choose happier thoughts throughout the day. There are plenty of tips for that right here at Happiness Strategies.

Or - and this might be my favorite - you can choose NOT to be happy. Buck the trend. Stay miserable. You’ll find everything you need for unwavering woe in the series How *NOT* To Be Happy.

You don’t even have to wait till July 10th.

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.

‘What the angst-ridden, consumption-fatigued and world-weary 21st century soul is after is an instantaneous existential pill.’

So says AFR BOSS in its list of ‘50 Big ideas to navigate tomorrow’ (June 2007). Under Big Idea #36: ‘Happy’, we’re told that although ‘happiness hunters are everywhere’, their quest is hopeless because ‘logic dictates that the hunt for a recipe to deliver an elusive state of mind is doomed to failure’.

I suspect it may be less logic’s dictation than BOSS’s stenographic skills in question here. But let’s look at the happiness pill question - is this really what people want? Clive Hamilton, Executive Director of The Australia Institute, has gone and found out.

‘…For a survey that the Australia Institute commissioned…we asked…a random sample of Australian adults this question: If there were a happiness pill that was freely available, had no side effects, and that made you feel good, would you on occasion take it? And astonishingly 80% said no. Isn’t that extraordinary. They understand that life is about death, they understand that life is about the dark parts of it, that we grow from that. I think it was Jung Woo said, that emotions are the royal road to the soul. And you won’t find that in Westfield Bondi Junction. It’s the richness of life that’s worthwhile.’

[Source of quote: http://www.abc.net.au/compass/s2009754.htm]

My 2 cents

If you look at they way psychologists define happiness, there are two elements: having positive feelings more than negative ones, and judging life to be good compared to expectations. Neither requires an absence of problems or dulling of existential pain, and I think this is recognized in the fact that 4 out of 5 Australians are prepared to take a more complex path to happiness.

Even if you’re an ‘angst-ridden, consumption-fatigued and world-weary 21st century soul’, the research shows that you can be happier by changing your mindset - for instance by choosing and focusing on things that make you feel good more than bad, and revising your judgements and expectations so you see your life as pretty good.

It may not be as expedient as a pill, but it certainly isn’t doomed to failure.

Image by Bharat [O*] raM under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

If you weren’t convinced by the brain distortions in the earlier post The truth may be out there, but it sure ain’t in here, then I challenge you to check out The Same Color Illusion by Edward H. Adelson, Wikipedia and remain convinced that your picture of reality (?!) is accurate.

A and B are exactly the same colour. Yep, it’s true. Don’t believe me? Here’s the proof. (Or scroll to the bottom of this post for another proof.) Essentially, we guage many visual features, like size and colour, by comparing them to other aspects of the immediate environment.

Still not sure what it has to do with happiness?

We think we ‘know’ what’s going on - what people think of us, what we’re capable of, how smart we are or aren’t - and we let ourselves be defined by these beliefs. Illusions like this one bring home the fact that the movie playing 24-7 in our heads is an approximation - and sometimes a downright fabrication - based on whatever is out there.

If our perception and beliefs aren’t always accurate, then why should we make ourselves their prisoner? Why not experiment with the idea that we are smart, capable and happy, despite what we’ve been telling ourselves all these years.

And if we usually tend to focus on worries and fears, we can choose to see this as no more accurate a picture of reality than an optimistic one, and adjust our mentals controls accordingly.

I’m not saying it’s easy to go from grey- to rose-coloured glasses overnight. But realizing you have tinted glasses on is a great start.

In yesterday’s Guardian, Rebecca Hardy looked at a topic very close to this happiness strategist’s heart: although people are ‘popping happy pills like Smarties’, the accumulating mass of scientific research suggests that ’happiness is, quite literally, a state of mind’.

Hardy extensively quotes Sonja Lyubomirsky, a favorite researcher of mine and a co-author of the meta-analysis we’ve been drawing on for our three most recent happiness strategies (4: Be happy now, 5: Spread it around and 6: Make happiness a goal).

Although evidence supports the idea that some people are naturally happier than others, there’s also evidence we can all develop a happy person’s habits - that is, we can learn to behave in more happy-producing ways.

Things to avoid include:

• instant gratification via pleasure-seeking and incessant buying, which ‘leaves people ultimately dissatisfied and hankering for more’
• comparing ourselves to others
• unproductive rumination.

Better choices are:

• having goals, like learning new things, improving ourselves, and nurturing spiritual or philosophical ideas
• writing about our goals.

The article wraps up with 5 ways to lift your mood:

1. Note 3 things that went well today and why
2. Identify strengths and use them in new ways
3. Write about an imagined, future, best-possible self
4. Write a thank-you letter
5. Do five kind acts a week.

(We’ll explore each of these in later happiness strategies.)

My 2 cents

I have a friend who falls squarely into the ‘born happy’ category. She sees the upside of everything without trying to ‘look on the bright side’, thinks the best of everyone, is supremely confident, outgoing and talented, takes risks, and manages rejection and disappointment with poise.

Another friend (OK, it’s me) scores pretty high on neuroticism and introversion - the two personality traits most consistently associated with unhappiness. I have to perform mental contortions in order to keep my mood on an even keel and manage the quirks of worry and overwhelm that can loom large at times.

But since I’ve learned happiness skills and actively adopted a happiness mindset, the two of us are pretty much on par, being-happy-wise.

We all know people who are lucky enough to think positively on automatic pilot.

The rest of us are just as lucky. We simply need to grab the controls and do the steering a little more consciously.

Image by rodrigo senna under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.