So Much Happier Blog
Buckle Down or Sound Off?
“The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.”
One of the hardest balances to get right is the one between self-control/discipline and self-expression/creation. Both are powerful and necessary components of a happy, healthy life, but the balance for each person, as well as each moment, will be unique. Finding it requires constant observation, sensitivity, and adjustment as well as trial and error. Much can go wrong here, but harness both forces to your advantage, and everything you want will be within easier reach.
Self-control, the masculine energy-aligned side of this dichotomy, requires us to rein in impulse, breathe, and think twice before taking action. It also requires experiencing self-imposed discomfort in order to create long-term results, even when paying into a goal is the last thing we would prefer to do.
True self-expression, discipline’s opposite, requires the clarity of knowing who we are and what we have to give, and the courage to bring our unique message out into the world through word and action.
A successful, joyful life requires both the ability to build and apply our skills patiently over time, excluding distractions, AND the ability to exemplify our truth without distortion. Yet, how do we know when it’s time to express and create versus when it’s time to be patient, practice, and wait? This is something only you can answer, based on your goals and abilities, frustrating as that may seem. There are guidelines you can follow to assist you in making these decisions, though. Here are some considerations that may help you along the way as you constantly surf this balance:
Have you been procrastinating on something you know needs doing for you to reach your goals? It’s probably time for some discipline. Mark some time out on your calendar at your most productive time of day, get buy-in from anyone whose support you need, and then look for little ways to make your task fun. You don’t have to be all serious about your productive time. Can you play some fun music, take dance breaks, or plan a little celebration when your task is done?
Are you finding yourself bored and demoralized? It’s probably time for some self-expression. Ask yourself what you’d do if you had no time or money limitations, and see what does appeal to you. Maybe that’s just a day off for mental health, a leisurely meetup with friends, or maybe some time for a creative hobby, time outdoors, or a physical activity you enjoy that will get your blood and endorphins pumping. Whatever says “playtime” to you is where you’re headed
If your goals involve making something out of a fun or creative pursuit, you’ll need to make space for your work, and add the discipline to keep doing so, aa well as using that space and time well
If your effort will involve the discipline of long bouts of concentration, you’ll be better able to sustain them over time if you add in moments of self-expression time, like writing in a journal or talking to friends about your successes and challenges, even if these moments are not strictly necessary to your project
These are just a few quick thoughts about diagnosing what’s needed at any given moment, but once you start thinking about this balance, it will be easier to notice when it’s off kilter. As humans, we’re both social and growth oriented. If you ignore either dynamic, you’ll start to feel out of balance, frustrated, or listless. Hopefully this has given you a few ideas about how to break out of any ruts you’ve been finding yourself in so you can analyze your needs and move forward with more clarity and enthusiasm.
Life's Too Short for Beige
“The word ‘courage,’ one of my favorite words, the root or the etymology of that word is ‘cour,’ which means heart. I think true courage is actually following your heart and not getting or succumbing to what other people’s definition of what your life should be. Live your life.”
We all have choices to make in the items we surround ourselves with—furniture, decor, clothing, tools, etc., and these impact us on a daily basis. When you’re in a moment of choice, what if you took an extra moment, an extra breath, and asked yourself whether there’s an equivalent item that would please you more because it has a feature you’d enjoy, such as color, texture, or additional functionality? What if you only chose to bring things into your daily experience if you felt great about doing so? What if you knew that everything you touched during the course of your day was the result of the best, most supportive choice you could have made at the time, and you could enjoy interacting with it as a gift from your earlier self?
Time and technology march on, and your things may wear out and need to be replaced. Nothing, no matter how great, is ever the ultimate anything. Not to mention that looking to things to supply happiness is not an effective strategy, as happiness comes mostly from within. Too much emphasis on the potential of things to solve all our problems is unrealistic. However, human beings embody an evolutionary dynamic, meaning that we seem to always be driven collectively toward learning, growth, and progress. We also tend to enjoy expressing our evolving preferences, both personally and collectively, in our life choices. There is definitely joy to be found in choosing what is beautiful, supportive, and in alignment with your truth. Why not incorporate conscious thought about this so that you’re getting the best return on your effort wherever possible?
Note that I’m not suggesting that it needs to take a lot of money to do this. Personally, I’m a practiced denizen of thrift stores and buy/sell/trade Web sites, because they help make my resources go farther. And for example, something small that has recently improved my daily experience quite noticeably is the installation of dimmer switches in the bathroom and bedroom so that we can wake up to gentler light rather than blinding a morning stupor right out of the gate! This was not expensive, but it’s a really lovely change that makes our early mornings a gentler, more enjoyable experience.
Another example is that I personally have a conscientious objection to beige. I just hate it; for me, it’s the embodiment of drabness and depressing lack of creativity. “But I love it,” you might be thinking! “It’s a restful, serene neutral color!” To which I say, good for you. Whatever floats your boat. I just won’t ever be painting it on my walls, because I’m into bright, rich colors that delight my particular eyeballs. It’s about making choices that look, feel, taste, smell, and sound inspiring to you. Usually, choosing your favorite color won’t cost you any more. I encourage you to insist on it.
Making small choices that will bring you a focus for your gratitude is an excellent policy. If you find that you’ve got items you’re not enjoying, see if you can donate, sell or trade them in favor of things that are a better fit for you. When you make future choices, take that extra moment to ask yourself whether this item is the best you can do right now (and apply just a little patience if not). This alone can help your creativity rise and supply other options. Be you, and honor what you truly enjoy. After all, life is too short and precious to waste on blah!
The Emotional Gym
“Just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and farther when the wheels are in perfect alignment, you perform better when your thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals, and values are in balance.”
In discussions on happiness, much is made of caring for and balancing the triumvirate of body, mind, and spirit, and rightly so. But I find it astonishing that comparatively little is said of dealing with the emotions, which are such a huge part of the experience of being human. They are the landscape of our inner world. What happens in our lives is colored by and interpreted through the lens of our emotional states; these states are dominant in determining how we feel about the overall quality of our lives, far more so than the list of happenings in our personal history.
There’s a massive amount of information available on caring for the health of the body; it will come as a surprise to no one reading this, I suspect, that generally accepted wisdom on this topic suggests that a healthy diet and exercise are important (though what these look like specifically is a matter of great contention). A tremendous amount of energy is spent the world over on educating the mind, challenging it to remember acquired knowledge and synthesize new thought, as well as on teaching it to calm and quiet through a wide variety of meditation techniques in order to unleash some of its more mysterious abilities. Every world religion has a mountain of lore behind it on fulfilling the spiritual side of human nature, and non-religious spiritual guidance also fills libraries. But where do emotions even fit into this picture?
Are they merely chemical reactions produced by the physical body? Some would say so. This school of thought tends to brush them off as meaningless byproducts of the mash-up of air breathed, food eaten, and the normal functioning of the body’s systems. In the opposite camp, Esther Hicks pioneered a concept of emotions as spiritual guidance system; according to her writings, they indicate whether you’re on track to simultaneously enjoy your life and move toward all of your deeply held desires. Others would say that emotion is a byproduct of thought, so if we want to achieve our goals, we need to learn how to manufacture supportive thoughts through discipline so that we can be efficient in life. I think that there is utility to be found in all of these viewpoints, but I suspect that this is a conversation that is far less familiar to you than the conversations around the big three of mind, body, spirit. Having done a lot of work, in recent years, that includes a strong focus on dealing with emotions constructively, I hold a conviction that this conversation needs to come out into the open. I think the rising tide of news stories depicting violent acts perpetrated by seemingly functional, but obviously massively unhappy people demonstrates the degree to which we have been ignoring this essential element in our overall health and balance.
Let’s take a look at the three viewpoints mentioned above and what they have to offer us.
- Emotions as meaningless chemical byproducts. What if they are, to quote Shakespeare out of context, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”? Well, if this is true, and they have nothing of value to offer us, what should we do? This viewpoint doesn’t attempt to argue that they have no effect on us. However, it also doesn’t offer guidance in dealing with this very loud aspect of daily life. I think it’s the root of the habit of denial of our emotions that has become so trendy since the dawn of organized scientific inquiry. And the denial of something so basic to our experience of and interpretation of life seems to me to present a glaring lack of utility, and even a long-term danger to our mental health. To put the merit of this viewpoint to work, I think we need to pay attention to the chemical reactions that have been studied, such as the production of endorphins through physical activity. This is powerful, and something that almost every person can use to manufacture euphoria, not to mention physical fitness, which is a joy of its own, and a feeling of increased enthusiasm for life. For example, according to www.health.harvard.edu, a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine in 1999 showed that when three groups of people with depression either took Zoloft or took part in an aerobic exercise program, or did both, the results of all groups were roughly the same—60–70% percent of all three groups could no longer be classified as having major depression. Regarding diet, we also have choices to make that impact our body’s ability to function mentally and emotionally as well as physically. According to an article by Drew Ramsey, MD, “One study found that adolescents with low-quality junk food diets are 79 percent more likely to suffer from depression. Another found that diets high in trans fats found in processed foods raised the risk of depression by 42 percent among adults over the course of approximately six years. And a huge study of women’s diets by the Harvard School of Public health concluded that those whose diets contained the greatest number of healthy omega-3 fats (and the lowest levels of unhealthy omega-6s) were significantly less likely to suffer from depression.” The information available about diet can be confusing, but I think it’s obvious that it has an impact on the body’s chemical state.
- Emotions as byproducts of our thoughts. If emotions are a direct result of the thoughts we think, how can we go about improving this feedback loop? Some say that when we have an uncomfortable emotion, we should learn to become aware of the thought train we’ve been on and give ourselves a chance to arrest a thought pattern that is causing us to spiral downward. There are many flavors of meditation through which we can gain insight into calming an overactive, hyper mind and practice a state that brings relaxation to the body and emotions. We can learn, through practice, to substitute a neutral mental state at this point, and even to then direct our thoughts toward more positive patterns.
- Emotions as spiritual guidance system. Esther Hicks, as previously mentioned, sees the above and raises it by suggesting that 1. it is helpful to reach for a slightly better thought over and over throughout one’s day in order to keep moving back into alignment and happiness; 2. noticing when we’re feeling bad and learning to coach ourselves into better states allows us to accept the spiritual and physical gifts that are always available to us; 3. when we’re spending time in negative emotion, we’re resisting the best that life has to offer, and the emotions we feel are there to point us in the right direction. This viewpoint suggests that emotions are best interpreted as a signpost that can lead to progress if we take the time to stop and read it.
Again, I think all of these viewpoints have something excellent to offer us in our understanding of emotions and their place in balanced functioning. And yet, they generally address ways to improve emotional states without much thought as to how understanding the very personal meaning emotions have added to our lives can be instructive. This is yet another element that I now consider to be absolutely crucial in my understanding on this topic, and that is only beginning to be granted the attention I think it deserves. Psychological professionals have been working on this for over a hundred years, but in many ways this pursuit has been branded as the realm of people with serious mental and emotional health issues, people who aren’t able to function normally. Others who exhibit interest in emotional introspection are sometimes made fun of as far-out hippies who want to spend a ridiculous amount of time navel gazing. Yet in my experience, it’s helpful and healthy to take time every day to contemplate and address one’s emotional states—what’s been your dominant state, when have you felt out of control or stressed emotionally, and what can be done about that? Your mind can help you trace what’s bothering you and give you ideas about how to create solutions. It can also help you to imagine better ways of functioning, and rehearse those mentally so it’s easier to remember a new option next time the same kind of situation arises.
Even more important than the mental consideration of one’s emotions, however, is the act of honestly expressing what feels true and valid. Most of us are so conditioned not to do this with any regularity that it feels frightening and often seems overly negative and whiney. Even so, I have found that in expression are the seeds of all manner of healing, inspiration, and peace. I generally find that each form of expression will be more effective or less so for each person, but the act of expression itself is key to creating harmony and happiness. It’s just as essential to overall balance as physical activity, which is why I titled this blog post the way I did. The challenge is in finding a mode of expression that is both honest and fun for you without being destructive to others so that you can use it on a daily basis. Unexpressed emotion builds up over time and becomes long-term stress, and can even contribute directly to physical pain and discomfort.
Music, writing, visual art, storytelling, and other art forms can be enjoyable and constructive avenues for this emotional expression. While I absolutely love the arts, currently my favorite way to get this need for expression satisfied is through EFT/Tapping, because it’s so flexible and highly personalized and offers many efficient techniques for working through uncomfortable emotions. It can seem like a pretty odd thing to do at first, but for many people it quickly becomes a very welcome way to express constructively and lighten an emotional load that was standing in the way of forward motion and a positive outlook. As EFT proliferates, I think we’re going to see an increased awareness about the usefulness of venting emotion and stimulating positive emotional change for everyone, not just the people with serious concerns and traumas who end up working with psychological professionals.
Finally, I find that there’s a layer of meaning that can be extracted from getting clear on what we really feel. Emotions can be a powerful indicator of where you are out of alignment with your own values, whatever those may be. As just one example, if you act in a way that is out of keeping with what you consider to be right and appropriate behavior, you will likely end up feeling embarrassment or shame. Allowing yourself to admit how you feel and trace it back to your behavior allows you to become aware of how you wish you had acted, and work toward doing so next time. Going through this process is empowering if you are willing to take the time and deal with a bit of discomfort as you find your way to clarity. I think everyone deserves to feel empowered in this way, so I encourage you to try out some modes of emotional expression and see what helps you to feel greater clarity and freedom, and what you can enjoy so that you’ll be able to create this experience often. I have come to feel that the importance of having tools that work in this area cannot be overstated. There is so much joy to be had when you’re not using so much of your energy to deny how you really feel, or that you have emotions at all for that matter! And there is such a better life to be lived when we feel that something so influential as our emotions can empower as a rule rather than overwhelm and hinder. So find some emotional gym equipment and start trying it out. I think you’ll find that it really does improve your everyday experience in being you.
The Safe, Happy Place
“The principle of self defense, even involving weapons and bloodshed, has never been condemned, even by Gandhi.”
Two more of Maslowe’s noted preconditions for the effective satisfaction of all our basic needs, which seem to be the most clearly associated with safety, are “the freedom to defend oneself” and “orderliness in the group.” Both of these particular preconditions are of such immediate importance to our ability to meet our safety needs that they are very difficult to ignore. If they are not in a favorable state in a culture, we will likely find it difficult to attend to anything else but our concerns about safety. And a life lived around safety concerns will not be a satisfying one for the vast majority of people. Hopefully you don’t live in a place where you lack the ability to defend yourself and experience basic societal orderliness, but even so it’s worth understanding the ways in which people will react when these preconditions are not in place.
Many countries have laws that allow the use of force for purposes of self-defense. Since the drive for self-preservation is so basic, we aren’t expected to override it even though violence in other situations is generally not condoned; we often automatically consider that the aggressor was likely at fault, as he most likely had other options for addressing the situation, but chose to attack. If for some reason the use of force in self-defense is not considered allowable by a culture, citizens will tend to live in fear and either disempowerment (which denies both the person himself and the culture access to the best he can be and produce) or rebellion (which turns all the power the individual can muster against the culture itself). Neither is very conducive to the happiness of the individual or of the whole in the long run. As an acknowledgment of the individual’s right to defend themselves, in the United States, for instance, there is a constitutional right to bear arms. The founding fathers of this nation were adamant that citizens must be able to protect themselves from both each other and any other threatening force, including their own government’s forces, and the forces of other nations. In today’s far more populous world, and with advances in technology, we now have problems with violence that they could not have foreseen, but the fact remains that the freedom to defend ourselves is very important to both our physical and psychological well-being.
Because our needs for safety are intense, some of the most impassioned debates in any culture will center on the methodologies that are used, allowed, and disallowed in creating and maintaining safety. Even when it’s not immediately clear how, the loudest arguments usually point back to participants’ fears about safety issues. It can be helpful to remember this when you run across strangers acting out. It can help you in taking others’ actions less personally and remaining centered in the face of others’ drama, which allows you full access to all of your resources to keep yourself safe. Similarly, when you notice someone in your life arguing adamantly or disproportionately about something that seems less important to you, chances are that he is connecting the discussion to an immediate or future loss of safety. If you’re interested in aiding in resolutions, and you care about this person, it can be helpful to focus on finding out what he’s really afraid of and addressing it more directly. This may not be an easy task, which is often part of why we don’t take the time to do it. In today’s world, where many of us are almost constantly dealing with an overactive fight-or-flight response for a variety of reasons, finding the root causes of fears and stress can be a complicated process. This is where professional help may be in order, as well as the use of tools that can help dial down stress, such as Emotional Freedom Techniques. Another reason we may not be willing to invest the time and energy necessary to this kind of process is that it may be uncomfortable to be in the presence of this person’s heightened emotions, and those that may be triggered in us as a result.
Unfortunately, most cultures are profoundly uncomfortable with emotional expression and inquiry. So often, we are given the message from the time we’re children that it’s unacceptable to display or even feel emotions. We learn to ignore and repress our feelings, and as a result, we learn little to no facility with handling our own and others’ emotions. We fear anything that looks like emotions or emotional expression as potentially overwhelming. And we remain stunted and confused about a huge, and totally valid and useful, component of human life. This is not serving us.
Moving on to orderliness in a group: This precondition is created through agreement on the ground rules that members of a society will follow, whether formal or unwritten. These rules may be created all at once, or evolve over time, but they must be upheld through stable structures like judicial systems in order to govern. They also need to be able to be updated in response to cultural changes, which are inevitable. If there is no mechanism for changing them, they are doomed, as humans naturally evolve over time. When a sufficient number of members does not agree and follow those rules, and they cannot be changed effectively, chaos in some degree is in store. And when chaos rules, again, the highest potential of members and of the whole group will go out the window. All will feel unsafe. Some members of the group will most likely react to the lack of order by hiding and others by resorting to violence. Smaller groups will band together and may fight each other. Safety will need to be an individual focus until some semblance of order is re-established. No matter how creative and adaptable someone is, when a no-rules culture is in play, that person will likely long for some societal structure and agreement, particularly if he has experienced it before. Humans are inherently social, and most of us desire some semblance of peaceful, constuctive interaction.
Since all of the preconditions are created or challenged in the culture in which an individual finds herself, she cannot likely single-handedly change them; she must therefore find ways to work with them as they are, become part of a movement to shift the current conditions, or physically move to another place with different conditions. If you find yourself in conditions where these preconditions are not stable, you have a difficult choice to make. Will you do your best to pursue happiness from within these challenges? Will you commit yourself to the difficulties of trying to change them from within the system? Or will you make an effort to transplant yourself into entirely new place? If you’re lucky, and you live in a place where the governing rules are clear, universally applied, and mostly reasonable, you may find that you take this for granted, as well as the right to defend yourself physically from threats. It’s easy to forget just how much such conditions support us in moving up the hierarchy of needs into areas more satisfying than safety needs. You may also forget that even when these preconditions around you are mostly favorable, it’s still possible to run up against a circumstance, whether real or imagined, that will snap you back to fear—and that experience can pack a wallop when you’ve become accustomed to safety.
The next time you do find yourself reacting fearfully, try asking yourself what you’re really afraid of, and do your best to address what you find. After all, the quality of your life depends on your ability to handle your safety needs and move on to more fulfilling subjects. Your emotions often have important messages for you about changes you need to consider making. Keep an eye out for the ways in which you may overreact when you feel (not always consciously or correctly) that your safety is on the line, look for root issues, and look for ways to change your tendency in the direction of calmer responses. Be open to noticing the ways in which those close to you may overreact similarly, and consider how you can help them to feel more safe and attended to, as well as to understand their own fears. Get help with all of this if and when you need it. Of course there are times when you’ll need to take real action on real safety issues, but much of the time you may find that focusing on getting specific about what’s bothering you and working on being a better communicator can help to calm your fears. Becoming more comfortable with admitting that you have emotions, and owning up to what they are, is also well worth the effort, as it can release a lot of internal pressure and conflict.
It’s natural for us all to crave physical safety and feel that there’s order to our world. Becoming aware of what’s lacking in these areas and addressing those things can make a huge difference in our enjoyment of life and our ability to spend time in fulfilling ways.
Welcome to So Much Happier!
“To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.”
If you've been alive for more than a few years, you've probably noticed that this world is a messy place in which nothing ever goes quietly and obediently according to plan. If you want to do anything but trudge through life in a groove of endless repetition, you will be contending with the chaos of factors too numerous to count in an intimate, challenging, often frustrating tango. It's unavoidable. But how we dance is what makes us the people we are and determines our potential, who we can be. Do we practice our repertoire of steps with dedicated determination and call our creativity up from the depths to give birth to crafty new steps? Do we throw ourselves into the dance with our whole selves despite adversity and inevitable heartbreak? Do we remain committed to partnering the ephemeral when we've been dropped on the hard floor from a high, fast-spinning lift? Or do we let the pain ground us, turn off the spirit of fire within in order to live a life of greater comfort in which we feel vaguely lost and conflicted?
We retain the choice to attempt to live fully, zestfully, expressively, attempting to be the most ourselves we can in every moment; even if there are serious impediments holding us back, such as illness, limited resources, etc., we can still make this our intent. Or we can abdicate our effort, put our passion on the back burner, batten down the hatches, and let life just spin us as it will and try to endure. A lot of us end up in this survival mode a lot more often than we’d prefer. After all, life on planet Earth is challenging, and we all get overwhelmed at times. Most of us have been ill prepared for life as an adult in important ways, whether in important practical skills such as how to budget, pay bills in an organized fashion, cook, or clean, or in social skills like comfortably meeting new people, making small talk, communicating effectively, negotiating, and resolving disputes. There can be so much in the way of our smooth functioning in these everyday necessities that it feels like we can never be free to live a life that feels like it’s truly ours. But the case is never hopeless unless we decide that it is.
Your time on this planet is limited. Are you really living it? Are you making progress toward things that matter to you on a deep personal level? Even if it’s very slow progress, you still get credit here! If you’re not, are you willing to stay out on the floor and keep trying new steps until you find ways through or around impediments? Are you willing to exert effort to make your life into a better expression of your unique talents and potential?
If so, I’ll be offering you ideas, resources, and thoughts on your process here in this blog. But we’re in this together. I’ve been working for years on projects that have given me insights to share, but no one has all the answers. When we support each other with the best we have to offer, we can make leaps forward that we would never be able to achieve alone. To me, that’s the most exciting thing in the world. I want to help empower you to have more of what you want and be more of your best self so that you can go out and delight and empower others. When we all do that, that’s when life really becomes fun.
In his novel Still Life with Woodpecker, Tom Robbins writes that there are really only two mantras, “Yum” and “Yuck.” Will you affirm the “Yum” in life and in yourself enough to commit to harnessing your passion constructively? Will you live with death-defying courage even in the face of difficulty and confusion, knowing that this is the only way to stay open to the unfolding of a better life? Choose wisely today, and every day. You deserve to live a life of joy and gratitude. I look forward to sharing your journey, and supporting it in whatever way I can so that you can continue to discover more, be more, become more. Let’s do this.