Happiness Strategies | How to be Happy

In this 12-minute TED talk, Buddhist scholar Bob Thurman shares simple yet profound insights about happiness. If you don’t want to watch the video (don’t worry - you won’t miss any how-to-be-happy demonstrations), then here’s a summary:

Self-obsession is boring

Thinking of ourselves as alone in the world puts us into a delusion. The more we focus on how we feel, the worse we feel. Thurman quotes the Dalai Lama, who says our own pains and pleasures are too boring, too small a theatre for our intelligence.

We can move into compassion

We can move beyond this obsession with ourselves - through art, meditation, understanding, and becoming aware of our interconnectedness with others. Doing so forces us to feel what others feel, to experience compassion. When we’re no longer locked into ourselves, when we escape the prison of I-me-mine, then we start to become interested in others, and to feel our own selves differently.

Helping is more fun than being caught up in ourselves

To help the suffering we don’t have to join their pain or be miserable. Instead, we can be buoyed by a sense of hope, of what is possible through helping. Being compassionate and generous is fun. Again Thurman cites the Dalai Lama - who’s a great example of joy, despite how deeply he feels the pain of the world.

We can end our self-centered focus, thinking instead of how to help someone else - even a pet! - to be happy. And as soon as we make someone else happier, our whole perception broadens. Suddenly, we’re happier too.

My (&GBS’s) 2 cents

We don’t have to be Buddhist scholars to appreciate the value of focusing less on our own boring dramas and more on how we can contribute to our world. Indeed, the Irish-born, Nobel-Prize-winning writer George Bernard Shaw noted something similar more than a century ago:

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

This is the irony of compassion, the karmic trick of kindness. When we think about ourselves, those ailments and grievances loom large in our lives. It’s when we turn our attention to others that we somehow stumble onto the ‘true joy in life’.

During the break at a recent Web 2.0 talk I overhead people saying the talk was pitched too high and they weren’t following. They invested a lot of energy into their grumble, but it was wasted - they weren’t telling anyone who could do anything about it.

This got me thinking that venting can be therapeutic, but it rarely gets you a solution, since:

• You often vent to someone who has no power to fix the problem - your spouse about your boss, a friend about your spouse, the cable guy about your bank manager.
• If you do speak to someone who can help, you can be so busy letting off steam - I’ve been in this queue since 9.47am - that you fail to ask for what you want - I’d like you to take my forms and send the new checkbook in the mail please.
• If you’re cross, your manner can make it hard for the person who can help, to want to help - Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries; now where’s my refund?

When faced with a frustrating customer experience, snarky email from a colleague, or other button-pushing situation, I’ve found it helpful to separate the response into two parts:

1. Expressiveness 
Here’s where you rant to a friend, yourself or your therapist. You do it to get something off your chest, to dial down the frustration. This is emotion management, pure and simple. You don’t do it to fix the problem, you do it to feel better. Think of it as taking the emotion offline.

Once you’ve done the expressing that may be enough. Not every frustrating experience has to be handled - some things are just frustrating. But if you do want to fix the situation, you need to change gears.

2. Effectiveness
Being effective involves time, thought and composure. Here’s where you decide what you want to happen, and you work out who to approach and what to ask for. If it’s an email you work out what to put in your reply - and remember, you need to take the emotion offline, not sneak it in between the lines.

To have the best chance of a good solution it helps if you:

• Address the person with the power
• Be succinct and clear about what you’d like them to do
• Be pleasant.

Getting into the habit of disentangling expressiveness from attempts at effectiveness will likely bring you:

• Less morning-after email remorse following a hot-headed reply
• Better customer service
• Less frustration
• Happier relationships.

Try it! And if it doesn’t work, please vent offline before you tell me about it.

In one of those ‘gifts with purchase’ from Estee Lauder* I received a lipstick in a shade I loved. Alas, on only the second use it broke. I took it back to the department store counter but, since it was a promotional item, all I was offered in replacement was a tester. A used one.

Long story short, I contacted the company’s HO and they were happy to send me a replacement. For quality testing they asked me to drop the broken one off at the department store counter.

When I went there today with the broken lippie, the lady** I’d spoken to previously rushed to her bag and pulled out her own unused lipstick from the gift, and offered it to me. She’d brought it to the store in the hope I’d return soon. Can you believe it?

I assured her there was one on the way for me, but I felt like I got a second gift anyway.

People are so nice. 

*Not real company. Real company was Elizabeth Arden.

**Don’t know if she was a lady, but her name was Sharon.

I was cycling at the gym the other day when the guy on the next bike started chatting. (The etiquette of working out is a whole other topic on which I’d love to rant but, at least for now, won’t.) I removed an earbud, and he asked what I was listening to.

‘An audiobook’, I puffed.

‘You and your books!’ he said. ‘You’re always reading.’

How did he know I was always reading? I was stunned. I could have sworn I’d never seen the guy in my life. Suddenly I felt very visible. Could people at the gym see me, even with my head down under a cap and my mind lost in the current playlist/podcast/(audio)book? I’d always figured that since I didn’t notice them, they didn’t notice me.

It got me thinking about how we can make an impression on people, even when we don’t realise it.

Like the guy performing nasal excavation at the lights who thinks that because he’s in his car, we can’t see him.

Or the parent who laughs at some obnoxious comment by their 3-year-old, saying ‘I don’t know where she gets it from’. She gets it from you, dude; you talk like that. Just because you’re not talking to her doesn’t mean she’s not paying attention.

Or people who elbow and shove their way onto peak-hour trains as if it’s the running of the bulls and then demurely take their seats like they’re Emily Post. Do they think that avoiding eye contact renders them invisible to the naked eye?

People notice us - what we say, what we do, how we act when we think no-one’s looking. Without meaning to, we can be setting an example for kids, giving insights into who we are, even motivating others to copy us or be nothing like us.

One of my tricks for deciding what to do when I’m not too sure of myself is to imagine I’m on a reality TV show (it’s the only time I have such fantasies - honest!). How would I feel if my behaviour were public? Proud? Ashamed? Wishing I’d added a coat of lip-gloss? It’s a great way to work out who you want to be.

After the conversation with my bike-neighbour, I realised that people see us, no matter how oblivious we ourselves may be. Being on reality TV is a lot like real life. Except for the prizes.

I’m rather loose when it comes to compliments. I sprinkle those babies like chocolate on my triple-shot cappuccino. It’s almost embarrassing how often I catch myself telling a complete stranger she looks hot in her boots or mentioning to a service person that his knowledge is a huge help. I love how a sincere compliment can tip my day from puce to golden, so I’ve made a habit of sharing it when I appreciate something. (Within reason - I wouldn’t write a compliment on a well-constructed exam question paper, for instance. OK I did once. But only because all the option (E)s were witty.)

The cool thing is, although I do it to put a little happy into someone else’s day, I usually get back a whole lot of happy for me. Often it’s a big smile and a thank you. Sometimes it’s more interesting.

Take today. There’s a woman at the gym who has no idea how gorgeous she is. She’s nearly fifty but has a nice figure, a beautiful face and a lovely, warm manner. She was wearing a deep blue jumper that made her face ‘sing’, and I told her so. Suddenly the shields went up. Alarmed, she explained that she hadn’t had a shower that morning, hadn’t combed her hair and sometimes didn’t even wash her hair before coming to the gym (I never do any of these things before the gym because, you know, IT’S THE GYM! You go there to sweat! Oh, but I do wear Juicy Tubes. In Groseille. )

She must have thought I had mistaken these egregious grooming oversights for an attractive appearance, and was determined to save me from the misapprehension that she looked nice, what with her brazenly uncombed hair and all. Her tirade continued, presumably in the hope I would spot my error (Oh. It was your uncombed hair. And here I was thinking that blue suited you. What a dolt!) and retract my observation before it could penetrate. I had to interrupt and say ‘Just take the compliment!’ at which she stopped, inhaled the fact that someone thought she looked great in blue, and said ‘Thank you’. She had to make an effort, but she allowed the nice feeling in. She left smiling. And you know what? So did I.

There’ve been times when I’ve complimented a stranger on something they were wearing, or having a nice voice, or handling something smartly, and seen them absolutely glow in response. Seeing that is a lovely buzz.

Other times a compliment can get right under a person’s skin.

I was once toward the back of a long queue for the women’s restroom at a conference. I noticed a girl walk up and stand outside a separate, wheelchair-accessible restroom. When it became vacant she called up the long line so the next person on the queue could use the available cubicle. I commented to her that it was a cool thing to do, especially as no-one would have known if she’d popped in there herself. Her eyes filled with tears and she turned bright red. She whispered ‘Thanks for noticing’ and gave me the sweetest smile. I bet she’s someone who often does nice things that no one notices. This time, someone noticed and said so, and she felt pretty damn good.

As I waited on that queue, with scores of women tensing their pelvic floor muscles like it was an impromptu Pilates class, I felt pretty damn good too.