So Much Happier Blog
Elevating the Quality of Your Leisure Time
“The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.”
Photo by Orlova Maria
To be honest, lately I’ve been focused on several activities that have required discipline, and I’ve been feeling less creative personally, and times like this are not my favorite. As a way to add compensatory interest and inspiration during this time, I’ve found myself thinking about bringing some highly concentrated creative beauty into my life courtesy of some wonderful artists whose works I’ve admired over time, or who have been more recently highly recommended.
I have to say that I have thoroughly enjoyed diving into these works of stunning beauty when the day is done and it’s time to stop thinking and acting. I’ve been reminded how much different it is to have contact with something sublime and masterful rather than just mildly interesting and easily accessible. Some works are merely light and fun (which of course is fine, and these have their place, particularly when we’re exhausted and need some mindless time). But some works are more satisfying to each of us, depending on our tastes. Finding and reveling in these can make a huge difference in how inspired we feel, and how much energy and enthusiasm we have at the ready to pursue our own lives on the other side. Don’t you find that when you take in an especially great book, movie, painting, song, etc., you think about it for weeks, months, sometimes years afterward and still feel the joy of the experience? Doesn’t that add to your life in ways that are hard to quantify?
Making a habit of this corresponds to the “Do Something Awe-Inspiring” section of this article on secrets to happiness that I thought I’d share. I actually found this after I’d been working on locating these compressed missives of joy for myself, and it was a good reminder about why this and other key strategies work to improve our moods. Feeling awe, inspiration, and connection to others is essential to creating great happiness. And we’re all living through times when we’re more challenged in these areas, and it’s hard to know when we’ll catch a collective break. That means we need to work harder right now to wring more satisfaction out of things that can sustain us through challenge.
In the week ahead, take just a few extra moments here and there to consider the kinds of creative works you have found most fulfilling. If you don’t have a library card, it’s usually not hard to get one, and that will open up a world of books and other media to your enjoyment. Maybe you have access to services that offer home entertainment that you can mine for experiences that fall within your favorite genres. Lots of museums are offering online tours and other content right now. There’s a lot of content online, some free of charge right now. What have been some of your most beloved works? Where can you find more of those? Friends with similar tastes can be a great source of ideas, so don’t forget to ask around for items you might not have found on your own. Maybe with just a little extra consideration you’ll find some new personal favorites as I have recently done—books you’ll read again and again because they really are that good. Movies you’ll replay in your mind and giggle about every time you think of that favorite scene. Music that will become part of your most passionate shower karaoke sessions. Visual art you might hang on your walls or just revisit when you can.
I wish you an inspiring week. Feel free to share any of your favorites you’d like to pass along in the Comments section!
A Simple Way Toward All the Good Stuff
“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”
If you’re reading this, it’s at least partly because you like finding ways to make your life better, happier, and more inspiring through methods that only require a reasonable, doable amount of effort. Am I right? In this spirit, this week, I wanted to pass on a link to an article about something that is simple, yet so powerful in helping you to feel better about your life almost instantly.
There’s a lot more research happening these days on the powers of our behavior, including the internal behaviors of our thoughts and emotions. In this article, we get a short summary on some of the scientific findings about the power of making compassion an intentional part of our lives. Sometimes a simple outlook shift can change everything for the better, and prioritizing compassion is one of the most lauded shifts we can make. Compassion is referred to throughout human history across time, place, and culture as one of the most important components of a life well lived. If you want to increase your satisfaction, your relationships, your overall happiness, not to mention your contribution to making the world a better place, this is a shortcut that you can implement anytime for free just by how you think, and it opens the door to the creation of supportive action and habits.
A few thoughts from me:
Practicing compassion requires us to become aware of and care about another’s experience. This takes us out of ourselves and gives us a break from worrying about our own issues.
Humans are naturally social, and wired to help others. Problems arise when we over-give, so keeping an eye on balance is important, but when we’re in balance, sharing and giving feel great.
When we give in a way that answers what another truly needs, everyone’s happiness is amplified. Keying into what someone else needs may require putting aside our own opinions and preferences. If this is hard for you, Tapping can help you find your calm, centered place. From there, you will be more easily able to hear clearly and let the other person express themselves without jumping in with your own preconceptions. As mentioned above, prioritizing someone else’s needs may be a challenge, but it can also be a relief.
Listening is highly educational. You just might find that when you put a bit more attention on listening, you’ll learn a whole lot about how others think and experience the world, not to mention other random topics they’re concerned about, which may be interesting as well.
True leadership starts with listening, and if you both listen and act on what you hear with compassion (without losing yourself, because you’re an essential part of any interaction), you’ll be able to build a better life for yourself and begin to lead others to better things as well. How can you listen compassionately to someone else this week?
Remember Reading for Fun?
“You can’t get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.”
I recently read about a study that was done in 2009 at the University of Sussex in the U.K. on some basic stress relief techniques and how effective they could be in short periods of time. It held some happy surprises, and I wanted to pass them along to you this week. While you know that Tapping/EFT is definitely my favorite stress relief technique, I like to make sure you know about lots of others you can weave into the fabric of your daily life. Nothing is the right tool for everyone all the time, and what I like about this study is that it points out the utility and surprising rapidity of results you can get from enjoying everyday things you already know how to do! Fast, easy, effective, and no learning required? Yes, please!
In this study, subjects’ heart rates and muscle tension were monitored while they engaged in various activities. Here are the results they recorded for each:
Playing video games: 21% improvement in stress levels. So maybe that silly game you downloaded onto your phone is not just fun, but more helpful to you than you knew!
Taking a walk: 42% improvement. Sometimes age-old low-tech wisdom is the best!
Enjoying a cup of coffee or tea: 54% improvement. Whoa. Does this surprise you as much as it did me? Next time you feel tense, maybe grab your favorite hot beverage and just savor the flavor for a highly effective relaxation break. Amazing!
Listening to music: 61% improvement. I don’t think it’s too much of a surprise that music we like takes most of us to our safe, happy place, but with this kind of proof, we really have a case for working it into our days more consistently. Turn the volume to your preferred level and enjoy. Extra points if you twirl and jump around while listening, because plenty of other studies have shown that moving around and getting the blood pumping produces endorphins, our “happy” chemicals.
The grand prize winner, reading: 68% improvement in as little as six minutes! What?! (Take note that this is based on reading fiction for fun—NOT news or business articles and the like.) Enjoyable reading distracts us from our own thoughts and problems (and distraction techniques have been shown to be quite helpful for anxiety, for instance), as well as firing up our creativity, which adds another supportive element. I find this to be pretty exciting, because it’s so simple. Plus, I’ve always been a big-time bookworm. As long as you’re not multi-tasking, but allowing yourself to be absorbed in the story, I’m guessing you’d get the same results from listening to an audio book.
Isn’t it nice to hear about a few things that are fun and not at all bad for your health (as long as you don’t sprain your thumb playing video games)? In the week ahead, how about digging out your library card (or getting one) and reading a chapter a day of something fun? Even better, walk to the library to get that book, listen to music and gyrate as you make a cup of tea, then curl up with said tea to read that chapter. It’s all good for you! Simple yet powerful pleasures. Who says stress relief has to be hard work?
How about Some Good News?
This world we’re living in can be so busy and difficult and distracting, and filled with the constant blaring of bad news, that sometimes it’s hard to remember that there are good things happening all over the planet all the time as well. I thought this week I’d just send a few sources for updates of this kind. Feel free to bookmark them and return whenever you need a reminder about all the great work being done. You may even be inspired to join in here or there! Even if not, it can be inspiring and heartening to read about uplifting news. I hope you enjoy and get a lift from these sources. Please feel free to share and help others around you remember the good as well!
And just for fun, here’s a nice compilation of a bunch of good stories from 2019. See you next week!
The Way, Way Back
“We will be more successful in all our endeavors if we can let go of the habit of running all the time, and take little pauses to relax and re-center ourselves. And we’ll also have a lot more joy in living.”
Last week we looked at how much we tend to avoid how we actually feel at any point in time, how this tends to create a life of stress and panic, and what we can start doing to turn that around. It’s true that learning to notice the signals from our bodies and emotions, and building nuanced language skills to describe them specifically, are building blocks in creating a happier, more peaceful experience. And these skills will serve us well for a lifetime in dealing with what’s happening in our internal worlds. This week, I want to add a dimension to the discussion that makes things more complicated, but also increases our chances of success in getting to that happier place.
Being able to tune into how you feel and work with it is tremendously helpful in empowering you to live a better day-to-day experience. On the other hand, Gary Craig, the founder of EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques), used to say, “The problem is never the problem.” In other words, the reason we react the way we do to current events in our lives usually goes back much farther than the event we’re dealing with now, usually to old patterns and traumas, sometimes from the very distant past. Being able to do something about those, then, is like finding the map to where all the treasure is buried!
Lucky for us, Tapping has been shown through both extensive use and scientific studies to be effective in dealing with old traumas as well as beliefs that result from patterns of experience. These are two areas in which it is generally most difficult for people to create lasting change. Before I mention some ideas on how to work at this deeper level, please note that big traumas are not generally something you should tackle on your own. Though Tapping can be used as a self-help tool in many cases, if something feels too big or scary for you to confront on your own, then don’t! Get help, and you’ll get faster, more comfortable results, feel supported, and deepen your skills with Tapping as you go.
If you find that you’re Tapping on something that isn’t reducing past a certain point, or that you seem to be working on very similar things over and over, chances are that you need to look to previous events for the foundation of your current problem. Here are some approaches that may help:
When you’re clear on your current issue, and you’ve gotten specific about the associated emotions you’re experiencing and how your body feels in response to those, ask yourself one of these questions:
What does this remind me of?
Who does this remind me of?
When have I felt this specific mix of emotions and sensations before? (If it’s all very familiar, when was the first time you can remember feeling like this, or the worst time?)
What does this seem like a metaphor for (as in, if your neck hurts, what in your life is a pain in the neck?)
In asking these questions, you may find more layers of your issue becoming clear to you. If you do realize new connections, your next step will be to Tap on the original event/cause and all the little pieces of your memory that bother you. These might be sounds, images, smells, words that were said, decisions you made about life as a result, or beliefs you took away from the event, as well as many other aspects. Try working on each aspect of what comes up for you one at a time until how you feel about it plummets in intensity, and when it doesn’t bother you much anymore, move on to the next. By targeting the root causes of your current issues this way with patience and attention to detail, you have a much better chance of feeling better about where you are in the present.
As you go about this kind of work, remember that we all have many, many distressing memories of varying intensity left over from past experiences, so you’re not going to clean them all up in a day! Even if what you’re working on feels thoroughly manageable, don’t go overboard and push yourself to take on too much all at once. We all have at least hundreds of unpleasant recollections that would probably benefit from Tapping. With the time you have, work with whatever seems most appropriate in the moment, celebrate whatever gains you’ve made in how you feel about the past, including any helpful realizations you’ve had, and come back to the rest at a later date. Any progress you can get to is valuable. If you get a sense that you’ve done enough for the day, or that today is not the right time to work on something specific, honor that intuition and make a note to come back to it later. It’s also helpful to keep notes on what you’ve worked on, since it’s easy to forget, and having a record is a way to be able to look back and appreciate yourself for all the good work you’ve done.
The more you address older patterns and root causes of why you feel and react the way you do, the more you’ll find that you can maintain a sense of calm as you go through your life, which will always include daily ups and downs. It’s hard to communicate just how much of a difference doing this kind of work can make over time, but if you give it a try, you’ll quickly start to see what I mean. Having the courage to get real about how you really feel and do something about it can be a challenge at first, but you will also find that as you practice, it becomes a tremendous relief to know that you have the opportunity to bring improvement to your emotional world, and to feel that happening every time you spend a few minutes Tapping.
Showing Your Body Some Love
“To keep the body in good health is a duty... otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear.”
If you’re reading this, it’s probably because you’re on the lookout for ways to improve your daily experience of life. If you could be happier, healthier, more energetic, more successful in your personal projects, that would be worth the effort, right? This week, I want to remind you of just how much leverage you can create by taking good care of your physical body.
I think I just heard some groans, because doing the daily work of paying attention to and cultivating health in the body tend not to be people’s favorite things to do. This is not a glamorous job. It’s also not inherently social, because your body is unique, and decoding its signals takes inward focus and trial and error; others can help and offer you companionship throughout this process, but you’re the only one who can know for sure whether your efforts are succeeding. Moving constantly toward more healthy habits takes dedication, and a willingness to stay observant and flexible, because our bodies’ needs change over time. No matter what your goals are in life, care and feeding for a human body that you’d like to last for a good long time is a lifelong side project that takes up energy you could be putting toward other things—many of which will often seem like a lot more fun!
You’ve probably had the experience of recovering from illness and being a amazed at just how great you feel now that you’re no longer feverish, blowing your nose, coughing, etc. On the other hand, when it’s been a while since you’ve been sick, it’s easy to forget how good your normal feels. There’s so much joy that is open to you if you just take a few moments to notice what feels good about your body in any given moment. There’s actually no need for high contrast in order for you to appreciate what your body does well, and why not allow yourself that pleasure? It feels great to take the time to feel good, even if that’s only a minute or so. In addition, getting a tune-up by doing whatever kind of exercise you enjoy, eating healthier food, or utilizing the services of any of a wide variety of practitioners whose job it is to optimize physical functioning can add enormously to your well being.
I was recently reminded of this when I sought out an accupuncturist to help me with healing from a foot injury, and managing pain while I got through the process. Not only did I get help with my specific issue, but because of the wholistic nature of acupuncture and the skill of this practitioner, I immediately noticed a difference in my overall energy and outlook. When I was feeling better overall, it was SO much easier to feel calm and resourceful, as well as resilient in the face of challenge and disappointment.
Now, you all know that I’m a huge proponent of techniques and habits that each of us can learn and master in order to empower ourselves across a wide range of situations that life can throw at us—that’s why I love Tapping so much. It’s simple, and provides quick, reliable, and noticeable results once you learn to use it. And yet, there is so much help available to us in areas where we can’t just do it all ourselves. Sometimes what you need is a surgeon, and let’s face it, there’s no substitute for that! Or you need someone with specific skills, talents, and an outside perspective to light the way forward for you, and assist with the process of change you’re looking to effect. As with your own efforts, it may take trial and error to find modalities and practitioners who are the right fit for you, but when you do, the gains you make can be truly life changing.
Ignoring your physical health and needs may be easy to do when you’re busy (and most of us are!) but it’s also so much easier to be happy when your body is feeling good and running at high capacity. There will always be tension between conflicting demands on your time and focus. You must decide on where to take your ease and where to invest your time and energy in order to create more. Keep an eye out for ways that you can fine tune your body this week, and you’ll have a greater chance of enjoying your life in every moment.
Your Grateful Presence
“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.”
In the U.S., last week we celebrated Thanksgiving, a holiday entwined with the seasonal return of nature’s harvest and plenty. Generally, we congregate with family and friends and eat way too much. We have leftovers for days. It’s a lot of fun if you like that sort of thing! The underlying meaning of the thing may be getting a bit lost in the holiday trappings, though, so this week I decided to slow down the view to make sure we don’t just blow right past it.
Nowadays most of us don’t farm our own produce, so we’re not focused, out of self-preservation, on minute natural rhythms the way humans have been throughout recent history. It’s easy to work oneself into a pace at which such things seem to fade into an irrelevant background blur, and the time of year barely enters the picture. Yet, leaving behind our ability to notice and relish the delights of each season removes a powerful tool for grounding, presence in the moment, and pure enjoyment. When we pretend that it doesn’t matter that this planet and its cycles are the backdrop for our experiences, we’re not fully here, and time can pass with a monotony that flattens out what can be most zestful about being alive. The enticing, mysterious, unique fragrances you encounter when hiking a trail at various times of year, for instance. A bright, clear blue sky, or one filled with clouds that sunshine occasionally streaks through in a burst of rays. The singing of birds and insects only present for a time. The arresting invigoration of a cold snap versus the soothing warmth of a summer breeze. Life is not only about technology! It’s also about being a physical, sensual being.
Our relationships with others can often pull us down to earth as well, reminding us to feel grateful for what’s good. Others surprise, delight, and challenge us in ways that will always keep life interesting. These interactions stir things up and keep us reaching for greater joys and better solutions. No one alone can produce a harvest as spectacular as one created in cooperation with worthy partners. Even poor interactions with others remind us of who we do and don’t want to be, which can spur us onward if we keep moving.
As long as you’re not in a life-and-death situation, it’s never a bad time to look around and notice what is unique to this moment. What’s going on in the outdoors today? What weather will you be dressing for, and what can you notice about it rather than completely avoiding its features? What kinds of fun have you had, or could you have, in it? What fruits and vegetables are in season, and how can you enjoy them right now? Who are you most grateful for and how can you express your feelings to them? Who is it that you can’t stand, and what does this have to teach you of tolerance or the courage to act?
By endeavoring to find gratitude throughout the year, even in the bleaker times, we fan the flames of inspiration. We practice awareness of our environment, which helps us to unlock opportunities we otherwise wouldn’t notice. We practice happiness, which can be a result of a diverse skill set and good old-fashioned effort and focus, not just of things going our way. We help others around us to enjoy the fruits of harvesting the moment and what it can offer us rather than only lamenting what is absent. When we do this, we can feel richer without much in our circumstances changing, and this is a kind of power that, in turn, can change everything.
Finding the Fun in Giving
“Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.”
In recent weeks, I’ve been writing about the importance of boundaries in maintaining your balance and ability to sustain progress. Now that we have a grounding in creating those, this week I want to talk about the opposite! We’re entering a season when giving is often at the forefront of people’s minds, and this can be a beautiful and fulfilling time for all of us, regardless of what set of traditions may belong to our family and loved ones. Since giving traditions are playing out all around us, it’s a great time to consider the place giving has in our lives, and whether this dynamic is in balance with the rest of what we have going on.
Appropriate boundaries allow us to greet each day as the healthy, energized people we want to be. I’m a huge fan, in this world of overwhelm, of taking regular steps to ascertain that we haven’t been slowly tempted into overextending ourselves so that we’re living run-down, miserable, barely conscious lives. On the other side of this coin, though, is the question of whether we’ve become so self-protective that we’re not taking our rightful place in the flow of life around us—not contributing our unique gifts, which our communities need, and not experiencing the deep joy of connection and reciprocity with our neighbors that is part of what’s most worthwhile about being human. Both sides of this coin are essential to sustaining our inspiration on a daily basis.
It is often through openness to giving that we find the most life-changing opportunities to expand our viewpoints and our capacity for compassion. In giving, we may find that we are called in an exciting way to become more, greater versions of ourselves, as we reach to improve the lives of others. We may find that we have more to give than we thought, that we’re capable of more than we guessed. Because human beings love to push boundaries and grow, such realizations can feed a positive cycle of giving and invigorating personal achievement that elevates everyone involved.
Receiving with a grateful heart feels amazing, but often the one on the receiving end is surprised. The one doing the giving gets to savor the anticipation of giving the gift, in addition to the moment of the reveal and the memory the exchange creates. That anticipation can bring a great deal of warmth to this period of lead-up if you allow it to. You don’t have to be giving profusely every day in order to experience the heart-opening glow of making giving an important part of your daily happiness practice; you can just spend a few minutes planning how you will give, enjoying memories of giving or receiving, or complimenting others on the fly when you recognize something you can appreciate about them. The more you start to associate giving with joy and fun, and the opportunity to bring brightness to others’ lives, the more its power will compound to bring more richness to your experience. In many traditions there are teachings about obligational giving, and guidelines reminding us about how the virtues of generosity can be helpful, but if you leave out the delight factor, everyone’s experience around giving and receiving will be dampened. Isn’t it more fun to receive a gift from someone who is obviously enjoying the gift-giving process than from someone who seems to be giving out of obligation, or with strings attached? Doesn’t it make you want to reciprocate more when a gift seems like an expression of love and appreciation? Do you see how when everyone gives with joy, the result is a force, a wave that travels outward carrying greater potential to everyone it touches?
If you are looking to live a happy, inspired life, you need to balance your self-care and your habits around giving. Both are necessary in order to keep your physical, mental, and emotional states at optimal levels. Each of us may find that a different mix of giving and receiving is appropriate at any given time, as what we need and what we can give will fluctuate based on the innumerable factors that make up a life, and that’s ok. As long as you’re remembering to consider these two sides of the coin when you have choices to make, chances are good that you’ll choose well and continue to learn and grow in joy and potential and balance, doing your part in creating a better world for everyone.
Practice Makes Progress
“Pessimism leads to weakness, optimism to power.”
This week, I came across an interesting article that speaks to our growing understanding of neural plasticity, or the brain’s ability to change and grow all throughout the course of a human life. So much for the difficulties of teaching old “dogs” new tricks! If you’re using the old standard line, “This is just how I am,” to justify a lack of effort to become who you wish to be, take heart—with some attention and effort, you can actually change habits and outcomes. In fact, there are a lot of interesting nuggets in this article, each one of which is worthy of note, but I wanted to call your attention specifically to the greater efficacy of happy people, and to your ability to move in the direction of greater happiness through simple practice.
Take a romp through this resource when you have a moment, and feel free to leave a comment about what you find most interesting, or what you’re going to do to start changing negative mental habits that drag down your efficacy. You don’t have to be perfect right away, just pick something to work on and start!
Keeping Hold of Your Heart
“The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness.”
Despite the fact that this world gives us access to greater technological advances and opportunities for cooperation and success than ever before in known history, it's also true that it can be an incredibly hard place to live. We all have to keep so many plates spinning at all times, and we're often stretched very thin; so is everyone else. This plus an exploding world population, increased levels of pollution, lower-quality food than what was generally available a few generations ago, etc. etc., can make for a pressure cooker of an experience. Without a steady, committed daily practice of some sort of calming modality such as meditation, mindful breathing, prayer, gratitude journaling, or Tapping, you're likely to be building layers upon layers of stress into your mind and body that will add up to lots of unhappy, unhealthy days.
I'll just take this opportunity to remind you that physical exercise is also a key element in the construction of a life that works. It helps you naturally bust stress and feel happier, it helps your body's overall health in so many ways that you probably already know about, and it keeps you strong and limber so you can enjoy using your body all throughout your days. Sleep is also incredibly important. You know I'm going to keep reminding you about all these things! If you're not minding your body, mind, and spirit each day, you're not living your best life, and I want the absolute best for you. But more than all these, and less possible by far without them, we long for creativity—the creation of new ideas, solutions, and artistic expressions. We might want to create them or just observe and appreciate them, but either way they bring a great deal of zest to life that creates enthusiasm and energy. Therefore, whether you consider yourself a creative person or not, I urge you to find ways to bring more creativity into your routines.
If you're not currently in creation mode, get out there (or stay in!) and consume some creativity that others are offering for your enjoyment. Keep in mind, though, that when you do this, you go on a ride of sorts that someone else has designed. You have a great deal of choice in the kinds of experiences you can elect in this realm, so you should think and choose wisely. Decide what kind of ride would be most helpful to you at this moment. Do you want something thrilling and death-defying to wake you up and add some excitement to your day? Something sweet that will restore your faith in humanity? Something about people who have risen to challenge to become the best in themselves? Something that just makes you laugh until your belly hurts? I personally don't go after experiences based on horror, as I find these to be the opposite of energizing for me, but we're all different. Experiment to find the kinds of experiences you really enjoy riding along for, and then allow yourself to enjoy them regularly. These journeys can be musical, they can involve films or stand-up comedy, visual art, culinary adventures, documentaries, Ted talks or other educational lectures, books, whatever you'd like to try this week. But keeping new experiences rolling in helps keep you from becoming stale or retreating into a smaller life experience than you could be having. Why not avail yourself of everything you have access to?
I came across this list of films that might foster empathy, according to the author, which I found interesting. If there's a quality you're trying to build into a strength, consuming supportive creative products can be a part of your practice toward that end. You can also poll people around you with different tastes to find a list of potential ideas. Even just a few minutes per day spent appreciating the product of someone's creativity can give you a tremendous life and remind you of what's good when there's a whole lot of chaos and madness around you. Find something to sample this week, and feel free to comment with some of your favorites below!
Happiness According to Yale
“Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.”
In the last century, much of psychological study was centered on plumbing the depths of neuroses. There's now a corresponding inquiry into what helps us to build and maintain happiness. Currently, one of the most popular courses Yale has ever offered is a course on how to build and maintain happiness, which seems to evidence two things—that today's Ivy League students are pretty stressed out, and that they want to learn another way of operating. Good for them.
Since you're reading this, I suspect you are interested in such things as well! Therefore, I thought I'd share an article in which someone who audited this class gives us a book report on what he learned. It's a tour of the teacher's research on this worthy topic, and while I found myself disagreeing with a few of the points presented here and there, I thought you'd find it valuable and enjoyable to explore. You can even take the full course for free here if you want to. I think that's pretty cool.
Getting Sane about Emotions
“If you don’t think your anxiety, depression, sadness and stress impact your physical health, think again. All of these emotions trigger chemical reactions in your body, which can lead to inflammation and a weakened immune system.”
While I posted something else somewhat like this not long ago, I think it bears repeating that we've been a bit culturally mesmerized by the idea of quick, easy solutions to life problems that deserve our full respect and attention. When we're in any kind of pain, it's so tempting to just silence that discomfort with a pill, a quick fix, a distraction, or by compartmentalizing around the pain. The sensations can be so frightening, and our mental habits so reactive, that we can't handle considering our options long enough to find a possible long-term solution. (I'm not saying that finding short-term relief is a bad thing at all, but using it as a way to numb out warning signals is maybe not the smartest thing to do over the long term.)
And after all, in the absence of good alternatives, this habit makes complete sense. Pain is no fun at all! It feels bad, it drains our energy and will and enthusiasm, it drops a roadblock in front of everything we want to be doing with our time, and we are certainly not taught any practical tools for dealing with it. Instead, we're often fed the line that pain and discomfort are just what it is to be human. Once you've got them, you better get used to them because you're not getting any younger, and you should just stop being such a whiney little baby about it! This attitude is a product of millennia of generations who had extremely limited life expectancy and little access to information about health and healing. The body/mind/spirit can often be astonishingly resilient, but solving any problem takes energy. We have to be willing to invest it. We also have to be willing to stubbornly hold to the belief that there may be solutions out there, even if they don't immediately present themselves. That takes mental discipline, which also takes energy to build.
I find that on the subject of emotional pain, we have very little guidance available, perhaps because emotions don't lend themselves to neat and tidy scientific study. In this article, we have an examination of the most common approach to addressing depression, specifically in the West. Unfortunately that approach tends to leave out much consideration of context, and tries to make an excess of any emotional state about a purely mechanistic chemical process. As a life coach, I find this particularly frustrating, because I find that no part of our lives exists as separate from the rest, and nothing is ever this simple. We tend to have all the same challenges/misconceptions around the other big, unpleasant human emotional experiences, including sadness, grief/loss, anxiety, fear, and anger. None of these exists in a vacuum, and there's usually at least some experiential reason for feeling them. For some, these experiences become more intense, but we can all recognize them as familiar; while the human experience is broad, it's not unique in its sensations. We all have all the basic emotions in common, and they all tend to be produced out of similar experiences. In my Tapping work with groups, I find that this realization actually tends to be quite reassuring for people. We often think we're much more isolated in our pain than we are, but it turns out that even in a small group, there will inevitably be a lot of crossover regarding what's on our minds. With honesty and the support of others, we can find ways forward that are a relief.
I do understand that everyone is unique, and bodies can sometimes malfunction such that someone has a tendency that needs constant intervention. I also know that it can be uncanny how when when we improve life situations that cause misery, physical symptoms can sometimes dramatically improve. Even finding ways to just release some stress and feel a bit better about something unpleasant that hasn't changed at all can help the body to inch toward healing itself. I hope that the way emotional difficulties are dealt with in the future evolves to include a broader, more wholistic approach that allows people more latitude to access multiple approaches. If each person could customize an overall plan that helped her/him to feel more supported and understood, I think our results would be drastically better. My contribution to being the change I wish to see in the world in this area has had to do with seeking out modalities that can gently bend a person's future toward greater balance, and sharing those publicly as best I can. If you feel so moved, I hope you'll do the same. The realm of emotions is one in which we drastically need improvements to become available as evidenced by the number of people acting out their pain with varying degrees of violence toward others. If we can normalize even the desire for people to find better long-term solutions, and start getting information out there about good work that's being done on such things, that will be the beginning of positive change.
Getting Free of the Past
“Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair.”
In light of the reported suicides of some very famous and successful people this week, it seems more important than ever to get out whatever information I can about what we know about the pursuit of happiness, and how we can be most effective in it. I'd like to remind everyone about the large-scale CDC study on adverse childhood events and their effects on adult health and happiness that you can find information about here. The story behind it is pretty interesting—a scientist was working with a group of people on weight loss, and was flummoxed about why some people would lose an enormous amount of weight in the confines of a scientific study, but drop out before it was over or then gain it all back very quickly after the study's conclusion. As he looked deeper, this led to startling findings about what types of experiences trigger weight gain and loss. The results are some of the most important information about health you'll probably ever read, but I bet most of you have never even heard of this study.
I hope you'll take a look at those links, but in short, traumatic experiences wreak havoc on physical, mental and emotional health. If you're bothering to read this, that may not seem like a revolutionary statement. Yet the medical community still has not acknowledged, in many ways, that major illnesses are influenced by more than genes and mechanistic chemical reactions within the body. The events of our lives have profound effects on our futures, and who we have the opportunity to become. And even the most rich and famous among us often don't reach out for help or can't find all the help that is available to address the things that hold us all back from our inherent potential. What about those with few resources and many competing responsibilities? We can do better than this.
We can all keep an eye out for those around us who may be struggling and help them connect with information that might help, or just lend a sympathetic ear so that no one in our circle feels alone. We can commit to learning about all the options that exist to help us all spring back from the ways in which life happens. We can all work on instituting some sort of a daily practice that helps to preserve our sanity and make us more of a resource to the world around us, even if this is no part of our career responsibilities. In today's world, it's so easy to feel isolated even in a world teeming with people. Whatever else I'm doing, I hope I help others to know that they are not alone, and help is available all around. You know that I'm a huge proponent of EFT (Tapping) in the quest for health and happiness, but it's just one of many, many helpful modalities. We can all find something that can help us through our next steps, whether it's cognitive therapy, traditional systems of health/medicine from all over the world, or modern blends of numerous techniques used together.
Above all this, we need to destigmatize the work of addressing mental and emotional pain. Experiencing pain of any kind is not shameful, and admitting that you could use help with the aftereffects of difficult life experiences is one of the strongest, most courageous things you can do. Not to mention one of the most effective, because as long as you struggle with daily life, you are denying yourself and the world around you the best results of your inherent brilliance unleashed. Let's stop acting like everyone should be able to just suck it up and handle everything that's ever happened to them alone and in silence. Some kinds of life events are overwhelming. This approach is killing us.
We're going to keep talking about how to get happier, but whatever you do, don't go back to sleep. Please engage with your own needs, your own life, and the others around you, and let's work on growing past this fatal ignorance together. When people find out about all the helpful tools that exist, hope returns and the work of reclaiming desperate, frozen aspects of our complete selves can begin. Balance and happiness may take time to build, but what is a better use of our time than learning these life-saving and quality-of-life-saving skills?
The Health Risks of Loneliness
“A true community is not just about being geographically close to someone or part of the same social web network. It’s about feeling connected and responsible for what happens. Humanity is our ultimate community, and everyone plays a crucial role.”
There is increasing scientific evidence that loneliness is extremely unhealthy. We all know that it feels bad, but it is now apparent that lonely people have worse health outcomes than those who are not plagued by loneliness, often to a striking degree. This article mentions many ways in which the problem presents itself, but one of the most amazing statistics I found in my travels was that chronic loneliness has negative impact that is comparable to smoking about 15 packs of cigarettes a day! Well, when you put it that way, I guess we all need to pay attention!
There can be many reasons for rampant loneliness, as the causes of it are obviously subjective. Some of the main factors may be:
- The pace of modern life, which leaves little time for the kinds of unhurried interactions in which we build feelings of closeness with others
- The fact that we often don't live in close proximity to those we care most about, when in olden days we would have lived in small villages where everyone knew each other, and everyone we knew was physically close
- Young people may experience a great deal of social isolation until they build social skills and find acceptance in a group of friends. This can take much longer than is healthy
- Older people who made friends in school through proximity with others may not have built adequate social skills to continue making friends throughout life. Social skills are generally not specifically taught, so those not naturally talented in this area may struggle for a lifetime
- Because the expression of emotions is still considered taboo in many ways, those in the midst of adversity may retreat inward; admitting to having difficulty could lead to being judged as weak. They then don't receive the healthy support that could help them get through the tough times, which reinforces the experience of loneliness
- Mental and emotional health assistance is still stigmatized, so many who could really use professional health of some kind don't seek it
- Social media, where many get a lot of their interactions these days, can foment nastiness and resentments in public discourse as much as they connect us with creativity and support
Obviously these are just a smattering of the possible causes of modern loneliness, but do any of these sound familiar? Knowing that your long-term health may depend on it, what do you think you might do differently in order to foster deeper, more satisfying relationships? We'll look more at possible solutions going forward, but why not start thinking about ways that you can make the most of the social time you do get?
How can you stay present with the most important people in your life? If you have a choice to make about how to spend time and one of your choices might deepen a friendship, can you choose that one this week? Can you write a note or have a quick conversation with someone about something meaningful to remind both of you of the bond of trust you share? I bet if you just keep thinking about this in the background of your routines, you can find little ways to appreciate and build the relationships you have in small but impactful ways. Relationships are built and nurtured over time, so there's never a better time to start than now. The benefits of growing better habits are and will remain of the utmost importance to the quality of your health and happiness.
Teaching Happiness
“Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.”
Many of us struggle with creating happiness, motivation, and fulfillment, in large part because we weren't given the tools to successfully foster these things on a daily basis as part of our schooling. It's never too late to learn, though, and that's what this blog and my work are all about. It was refreshing, then, to read this week about how various governments are beginning to experiment with adding the development of important happiness-related skills to their school methodologies in order to help kids to be healthier mentally and emotionally, and perform better in school. Predictably (I think) it works really well.
Here's a link to the article I read, and I thought I'd just go ahead and pass it along this week. I hope it serves as a reminder that increasing focus on learning things like giving ourselves credit for what we do well, feeling grateful, and empathizing with those around us has real and measurable positive results. What can you do to model these results this week?