Tiny Tips to increase Happiness

I was delivering a talk on Happiness.  When I asked people to consider, “what gets in the way of your happiness?” one man said, “Time.  I am so stressed and have so much to do, I don’t have time to do any of the stuff that makes me happy.”

OK, so let’s establish something: Happiness is not something you do, it’s something you are.  It’s not stuff, it’s how you feel after you do that “stuff.”  It’s something you carry inside of you.  It’s a feeling you can nurture and strengthen through practice.

And if time is an issue, here’s the good news: frequency (of practice) beats duration every time.  Let me explain.  Do you remember when you learned to type in high school?  Your teacher told you to practice 30 minutes daily.    Yikes!  Who has time?  Still, at the end of the semester here’s what happened.  The people who practiced every day typed faster and better than those who crammed in their practice on Sunday nights, even if they only did five minutes each day to the crammers’ several hours.

“What might help you, sir,” I suggested, “are what I call micro-practices; little practices that take just a few seconds each time and which can, literally, recalibrate your whole system when done regularly for 30 days (or forever, for that matter!).

Breathe into your deep belly.  Whenever you have a moment between meetings, sitting at a traffic light, shifting from one task to another, take 15 seconds (you can spare that!) to take two deep breaths, in through your nose and out thru your nose.  Notice how your body moves to calmer.

Express gratitude. Look people in the eye and say ‘Thank You.’  Keep a list of good things that happen around you during the day.

Appreciate what you did. Whenever you finish something — a phone call, a transaction on your desk, a batch of mail, a project, or a conversation — pause before you move on.  Take five seconds to give yourself credit for what you just accomplished, and notice that tiny piece of good feeling you hold around getting that thing done.  Let it soak in.  Then move on.

Offer praise. Compliment someone else on a job well done, or when they do you a favor.  The time you take to “fuel their tank” will also cause you to feel better about yourself.

Smile when you walk.  When ever you go from one place to another at work, put on an intentional smile.  Even if it’s fake, wear it for your walk.  Notice how your spirits lift as you go from one place to another.  (you might also notice a lot more people smiling back at you, which will feed a little positive emotion into your tank!)

Pay attention to how your “happiness” muscles get stronger when you use them a little bit.. little bit… little bit… every single day.

What Happiness and Guilt have in common

At the YMCA this morning two guys sitting at weight machines were having a conversation that went like this:

A: “Why do I do this? I come in here three days a week to beat myself up?”

B: “I agree. This is crazy, to come in here and pull and push and sweat. Why DO we do this?”

A: <after a short pause> “You know what it is? Guilt. If I don’t come in, I feel guilty.”

B: “Yeah, I know what you mean. If I don’t come in, I feel like I let myself down, ‘cuz I know how good I feel on the days I work out.”

A: “Guilt is a pretty good motivator.”

Listening to this exchange, I found myself chuckling. So many people I work with are driven by guilt into beating themselves up for not being perfect, for not “taking care of” everyone in the world, for not meeting impossible standards, and so on… and guilt in those circumstances has become negative and corrosive.

Yet, all guilt is essentially us telling ourselves that we’ve failed to meet some personal standard. So if my standard is that I work out three days a week, and I fail to get my butt out of bed on Monday morning, I feel a little guilt, which serves to motivate me.

Guilt, unchecked, can eat us alive.  Yet if we use it (in small quantities) to hold ourselves accountable when we fail to honor one of our own values or when we renege on a promise we made, guilt keeps us honorable.  And when I keep my promises, I feel happier.

So what guilt and happiness have in common is that they can each, in their own way, serve to motivate us and cause us to shift our behavior.

Thanks, Guilt, for keeping me honest, and supporting my happiness!

Happiness is just being alive and well

Wednesday I delivered two programs for employees at the Veterans Administration.  This was the eve of the seventh anniversary of 9/11, and signs up and down the hallways at the center reminded people of a memorial service to be held the next morning.

During lunch and after the program I got to mingle with a number of disabled veterans who were hanging around the recreation hall where we held the programs.  Mostly it was older men in wheelchairs or using canes to get around, slowly.  They just wanted to chat, and a fresh face like mine meant they could tell some of their stories to a new audience!  I just listened…

At the end of the day, after the staff departed and I was left to pack up my stuff, the old guys returned to reclaim their rec hall.  I chatted with a couple of them as I shut down the sound system and stowed my laptop.  I noticed a group of young kids jostling down the hall, and a couple of them spun off and into the hall.  They started moving some chairs around, and I assumed they must be maintenance guys coming in to tear down and reset the room for the next event.

Then, I notice that one of them was missing an arm.

And another carried a significant limp — he was walking on a prosthesis.

I looked again.  These guys were young.  VERY young, by my standards.  Younger than a couple of my own kids.  They were also veterans, here to use the hall.  They were just rearranging the chairs to clear some space near the pool tables.

In that moment, I felt awash in a number of powerful, and wildly different, emotions:

Gratitude for their service (Iraq War veterans).

Sadness for their injuries.

Anger at a system of world government that uses young children to fight old men’s battles.

Hope for their future (they were just being goofy guys… no more, no less)

Happiness for my own health and for the well being and safety of my family.

Don’t just think about it.  FEEL it.  Today, take some Happiness from the fact that you are alive and well and have all your faculties about you, and you can feel safe in your own home.

Happiness is cool nites and dinner on the deck!

As my wife and I were preparing dinner last evening she looked at me and asked, “when was the last time we ate dinner at the kitchen table?”

Hmm.  Great question.  We traveled back on our calendar and realized that we started eating dinner on our deck when we returned from our vacation, which was 56 days ago.  Wow!  AND we live in Cleveland, Ohio, which is not exactly San Diego, weather-wise.  Fact is, while there’s been a near drought and my lawn is long ago brown, there’ve only been four days in the past two months when we did not go outside at dinner time to eat on our uncovered deck.  Once we decided to do “dinner and a movie” in our living room, and the other three times we went out to eat at restaurants where — you guessed it — we always sat on the patio.

I am sometimes sad about the state of my lawn… yet the optimist in my always looks for some good in every situation.  This run of mostly dry weather allowed Cheryl and I to use our beautiful deck as an extension of the house for most of the summer.  It pulled us out of the house to socialize with the neighbors (who were often dining on their own deck) and enjoy the sights and sounds of our neighborhood at play.  It’s been really lovely.

At this point, however, I am ready to move back indoors.  The remnants of Hurricane Gustav, colliding with spinoff weather from the many other tropical storms attacking the east coast, caused temperatures to drop back into the 50s at nite, and eating on the deck in a sweatshirt isn’t as much fun.

Ah, but guess what?!  Those 50-degree nites are FABULOUS for sleeping with the windows open and the crickets chirping.

Sometimes, the universe makes being an optimist so easy!

Happiness is cool nites, and dinner on the deck…

Don’t Watch TV! (well, maybe a little…)

Sometimes the statistics on advertising make me sad. The other day I read an article that reminded me that the average kid, by the time they enter school, will have already viewed 30,000 commercials. A typical working adult who listens to the radio as they commute by car on a freeway and who watches a hour of television daily can be subjected to between 300 and 1000 marketing messages daily.

One message, over and again: “Don’t be satisfied with what you have.”

Who can be happy when every minute of your day someone is telling you you can’t be happy unless you have their product? Unless you have a sexier car? The body of a supermodel! A bigger house! Nicer stuff!

Marketers live in mortal fear of satisfied people. Why? Because people who are satisfied are no longer consumers. They stop buying ‘stuff.’

~average hour of TV = 40 mins program, 20 mins commercials. Avg commercial 30 secs, that’s 40 per hour, not including product placement on TV shows and movies.

You’re exposed to such messages all over the place, of course. TV is the champion because so many people spend so much time in front of it.

I’m not REALLY saying you should stop watching TV. It does provide entertainment. Still, 33% of your viewing time is spent absorbing messages that say, “don’t be happy! don’t be satisfied!” And then you wonder why you can’t experience more happiness.

BE AWARE of the messages. Turn them off for awhile. Turn off the TV for one week, and let your system rest. Then when you go back to it, notice what happens to your contentment.

Happiness is in the air

It was a spectacular Labor Day weekend here in Cleveland.  The temperatures were moderate, the sky was clear and blue, and the sun shone on us for three straight days.  Thus, everywhere I drove it was with the windows down and the music upbeat.  What a wonderful long weekend to say goodbye to the summer of 2008!

I had to make several trips to and from other parts of town over the weekend, and with the windows down the breeze brought in the smells of greater Cleveland.

I passed twice thru the lower west side and experienced the nasty odor of rotten eggs that permeates the neighborhoods around the steel mills– it’s not sweet, but it always smells to me of the economy at work!  I took in deep lungfuls of the chlorine-tinged air around the city pool, which always takes me back to my high school and college years of swim competition.

I drank in the smell of hot asphalt, which for strange reasons always reminds me of summer vacations at the beach with my family.  At my cousin’s house for her annual Oktoberfest event, I reveled in the sweet smell of the whole roasted pig stuffed with brown sugar.

When we went for homemade ice cream at East Coast Original, I stood near the open window and sucked in the cool scent of chocolate and sugar and butter pecan.  And at the Cleveland Indians’ game on Saturday evening I sat happily in an aroma cloud of popcorn, peanuts, and good old Stadium Mustard.

But the best of all was when we drove back and forth past the curve on Route 176 just north of the I-480 bypass.  There is a bakery just on the other side of the tree line, and when the wind is just right… Ahhhhh!  There is nothing like the smell of fresh baked bread on the breeze.  Yum!  My mouth still waters just writing about it.

Happiness is in the air, indeed!

Happiness is a hot shower

Yesterday I went to the gym feeling particularly well-rested.  So while I was on the treadmill, I threw in some sprints — one-minute bursts at 8 or 9 miles per hour.  Oooh, that felt great.  Then I went to the weight bench, and instead of working with 10 and 20 pound dumbells, my usual range, I went with 15 and 30 pounds.  Same routine, 50% more weight.  After a good stretch at the end, I felt really strong. I totally enjoyed the golden glow of health throughout the rest of the day.

Then I got up this morning.  Ouch.  Upper arms…hurt.    Ankles…pain.  Shoulders… stiff.

I know my body.  I have to keep moving.  But I kept it low key today.  A nice brisk walk, no sprints, no weights, LOTS of slow stretches.

Then I got in to the shower and turned on the hot water.  OMG!  OH.  MY. GOSH!  As the hot jets of water hit my aching shoulder and leg muscles, I could feel ripples — nay, waves — of warm relaxation wash over me.  Whatever tension I was feeling in that moment totally drained away.  I stood under that shower head with steaming water massaging my body and warming my bones for… well, I lost track of time.

After a long while, I came back to reality.  It was time to leave this place of bliss and head to work.  So I did. But it was really hard to pull myself away from the pure pleasure of a hot shower on sore muscles.

Hedonistic pleasure as a form of happiness is typically short lived, but ohhhhh… it feels so good!

Today, Happiness is a hot shower!

Sometimes you just have to make the decision to be happy

In my year-long quest to see all of the movies nominated for Oscars from last year, I finally picked up Away From Her, with Julie Christie in an absolutely brilliant performance as a woman literally melting away from her life as the linkages in her brain come apart — while her husband, Grant, struggles with the fact that the woman he loves so deeply… no longer remembers him.

Trailer for Away From Her on YouTube

When Grant can no longer handle it by himself, he reaches out to the wife of another Alzheimer’s patient, seeking desperately to ‘fix’ what is happening.  While Grant is alternately sad and angry, Marian (played by the always-fabulous Olympia Dukakis) has a different perspective.  During one scene she and Grant get philosophical.

Marian: “I’m thinking that sometimes you just have to make the decision to be happy.  Just decide.  Things aren’t ever what you hoped they be; not ever; for anybody.  The only thing that separates one kind of person from another is that there are some who stay angry about it and there are some who accept what comes their way.”

Grant: “what kind of person are you?”

Marian: “I was pretty mad about it.  But now — looking at what came my way — I could be the other kind of person!”

And that’s what I’m often talking about — choosing to be that other kind of person.  There’s nothing wrong with anger.  Anger and frustration and sadness are all very real and should be honored and felt deeply.  If we remain too long in those emotions, however, they eventually start to eat away at us and prevent us from noticing that good stuff still occurs in our life.

So, at some point, you just have to decide, “I’m going to give myself permission to experience happiness.  Right now.”

You say that’s not who you are?  That you’ve always been the angry one?  Well, Olympia Dukakis has another great line in the movie: “It’s never too late to become who you might have been.”

You can start today.  Just decide.

« Previous Page