Rules for happiness

Happiness is a state of being that has been elusive to me all my life. I don't know why. I am not wired properly perhaps?

I have so much to be grateful for in my life. Intellectually I know that. But my heart does not feel the happiness. Instead, of appreciating what is, I focus on what is missing in my life. I can't help it seems.

Lately, I have been trying to remedy this. There is hope for people like me. In an article in Time Magazine entitled The New Science of Happiness (2004) by Claudia Wallis the work of Martin Seligman on Positive Psychology is showcased. According to Seligman, we can raise our level of happiness. Happiness can be learned.

This involves working on the three components of happiness— getting more pleasure out of life (which can be done by savoring sensory experiences, although, he warns, “you’re never going to make a curmudgeon into a giggly person”), becoming more engaged in what you do and finding ways of making your life feel more meaningful.

Gratitude exercises can do more than lift one’s mood. I have kept a Gratitude Journal for over seven years. Every night before bed I pulled out my journal and wrote down five things I was grateful for in my day. I went to sleep thinking happy. As I look back on my journals now I notice that it is the small things that make me happy: the fresh cup of coffee in the morning, the compliment I got on a job well done, the hug from my husband when I get home from work, spending quality time with my daughters or the leaves changing colors in fall. I stopped writing in my journal a year or so ago when it began to feel like just another task on my "To do" list. Instead, I have gotten into the habit of doing a gratitude prayer just before I go to bed, rhyming off in my head all the things that made me happy during the day. (These days I can easily list over 10 things - it used to be hard to find five!)

Another happiness booster, say positive psychologists, is performing acts of altruism or kindness—visiting a nursing home, helping a friend’s child with homework, mowing a neighbour’s lawn, writing a letter to a grandparent.

I had dinner with my dear friend Bob this week. He was in town for a week-long meeting. He lives in Halifax and I live in Ottawa. We don't see each other much but we keep in touch by email and phone. This summer, when my family and I travelled to Cape Breton, we made a detour to Halifax to visit with my friend Bob and his wife Jill. We had a great evening together feasting on seafood at a local restaurant and enjoying the acts in the Buskers Festival in the port of Halifax. When I got back home I printed off some of the pictures I took during that evening and mailed them to Bob with a heartfelt note of thanks on a handmade card. Bob said that it was so nice to receive this card with mementoes of our evening together. He and his wife Jill were reflecting on how it used to be good manners to send a Thank You note to hosts after a dinner and that this tradition is being lost. They really appreciated the thoughtfulness.

The single most effective way to turbo-charge your joy, according to Seligman, is to make a “gratitude visit.” That means writing a testimonial thanking a teacher, pastor or grandparent—anyone to whom you owe a debt of gratitude—and then visiting that person to read him or her the letter of appreciation. “The remarkable thing,” says Seligman, “is that people who do this just once are measurably happier and less depressed a month later. But it’s gone by three months.”

Karen was my boss at the Health Department. She was leading an innovative health promotion initiative and hired me on the spot to be a Special Events Coordinator. I had no previous job experience in that field but she saw my potential right away. I am a creative and energetic person and I had a ball coming up with novel ways of promoting heart health in our community. Our pilot project was a huge success and maybe my most rewarding job as a public servant. Twenty years later Karen and I are still friends. A couple of years ago, I announced to Karen my intention of leaving my job with the federal government to start my own business. I seized that moment to thank her for helping me believe in myself. I told her that I had learned so much from her. She was a visionary leader with a can do attitude. She made her staff feel like they part of her family. We were so proud of what we accomplished together. Karen became a bit emotional when I told her this. I felt so good about giving something back to her.

Less powerful but more lasting, says Seligman, is an exercise he calls three blessings—taking time each day to write down a trio of things that went well and why. “People are less depressed and happier three months later and six months later.” according to Seligman's research.

So you see happiness can be learned.

Rubin Gretchen's book entitled The Happiness Project inspired me one beautiful summer day this July sitting on the deck of my mother`s cottage to write my own list of what makes me happy.

I listed every letter of the alphabet on the left margin of a page and found at least one word for each letter that represented something that makes me happy. Some letters were a challenge like X and Z but surprisingly, I easily came up with words for each letter and in some cases, many many words.

"A": art, angels, antiques, Australia
"B": biking, Buddhism, warm baths
"C": chocolate, candles, canoeing, fresh ground coffee

Gretchen Rubin developed a list of Twelve Commandments for her year-long experiment on happiness.

Some of her commandments are:

• Let it go
• Act the way I want to feel
• Do it now
• Lighten up

I decided that in the interest of learning to be happy, I would develop my own set of rules for happiness (15 rules so far and counting)

• Be me (be Sylvie!)
• Dance and sing
• Ask myself: "Do I really want this?" and make a conscious choice
• Move my body
• Spend time in nature
• Say "thank you" often
• Give LOVE freely
• My body is my temple: eat and drink accordingly
• Breathe deeply
• Get rid of clutter: mental and physical
• See the world through a child's eyes
• I am not alone...
• Live life to the fullest
• Don't sweat the small stuff
• Imagine and create

One of the things that kept coming up on my lists of happiness was dancing. So I wondered, if I love dancing so much, how come I am content waiting for the next wedding or conference formal dinner to have a chance to dance? How could I make dancing a bigger part of my life? I could sign up for flamenco or tango classes but that would just add to my already jam packed schedule. Then it dawned on me. The fitness club where I teach yoga has Zumba classes twice a week that I do not have to pay or sign up for since I am an instructor there! I can just go when I have the time and the urge. Zumba is a mix of Latin inspired high energy dances. The first Zumba class I did I had a smile on my face the whole time. I loved it. Getting a real workout and having fun at the same time. It sure beats running my usual route in the neighbourhood to tally up the kilometres in preparation for my next race!

This week, I challenge you to think about happiness and more specifically to make your own "A to Z" list of what makes you happy.

Please share it with me and my readers. Maybe I will be inspired (or reminded) to add something else to my growing list of happy things.

Seize the day

I have been reading a book entitled The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. The author had an epiphany one rainy afternoon as she was riding the city bus: ״The days are long, but the years are short. Time is passing, and I'm not focusing enough on the things that really matter. ״Rubin decides then and there that happiness would be her new life project for the next twelve months. She focused to improve her life as it was - no exotic trips, no impulsive change of job or change of life-partner. Rubin wanted to cultivate happiness in her own backyard. Every month she boldly tackled a new set of resolutions that were key to her leading a happier life. The book recounts her adventures and the lessons learned, some surprising, and others predictable but comforting.

The book had been calling to me for a couple of months now. Every time I went to the bookstore (which is quite often - books are one of my favourite things!) my eyes always spotted the blue cover of The Happiness Project book. I would pick it up, look at the back cover and the inside cover and think. ״Wow, this is cool. I wish I had the guts to do the same thing. ״Then I would put the book back on the shelf with a sigh. For some odd reason, a week ago I saw The Happiness Project book again, picked it up and marched right to the cash. I purchased the book without a second thought. I guess, I was finally ready to read it and absorb the lessons...

The book is inspiring me to seek more occasions to be happy or would it be more accurate to say that I am now looking at my life with a different pair of eyeglasses? Rather than creating new reasons to be happy, I am appreciating more the key ingredients to happiness that are already in my life. Sadly, I think that I have become numb to the little joys of my life. I take them for granted. I don't really taste my cup of freshly ground coffee in the morning, or smell my luxurious mango scented shower gel or feel my husband's hugs with all my senses. I am blessed. I have so many things to be thankful for but I forget to acknowledge all the goodness in my life.

When I was away in Victoria (BC) in July, I got reacquainted with the carefree Sylvie is passionate and has a zest for life. I had missed her so much. It is great fun to hang out with her. The vacation Sylvie is so funny and playful. She has an adventurous spirit and is unafraid. On the last day of my trip, I was feeling sad. I realized that I did not want to go home and that scared me a little until I recognized that what I was dreading the most was who I become at home. The home and work Sylvie is stern. She is a task-master and a party-pooper. She has an endless ״ To Do״ list and does not feel good until every item has been scratched off the list (which, by the way, is NEVER!). She can't rest because there is always work to do. If, by any chance, a loved one manages to drag her off to have some fun somewhere, there is a part of her that stays behind worrying about the stuff she needs to do.

Even though I am aware that I have a split personality (I guess that is partly due to the fact that I am a Gemini...) and that every time I return home from a trip I resolve to have the vacation Sylvie become friends with the home Sylvie, things don`t change much.

So that is why when my good friend Mandy phoned yesterday and said ״Hey Sylvie, Brenda and I were thinking of going to the Island this evening and watch the sun set. There is a astronomical phenomenon occurring right now. About 45 minutes after sunset, you can see a planetary triple play starring Venus, Saturn and Mars. We can just hang out and chat and watch the stars come out. What do you say? Want to come join us? ״

I am thinking: ״This is absurd. Why would I want to sit on a beach to wait for stars to pop out in the sky! It is a waste of time. I am tired. I just want to stay home and catch up doing the laundry. My husband Ed came to the rescue and convinced me to go: If nothing else, you will get some fresh air and some quality time with your friends. We should go. ״

Gretchen Rubin`s words were resonating in my head ״Act the way you want to feel. Although we presume that we act because of the way we feel, in fact we often feel because of the way act. ״ Research has shown that if people put a smile on their face (even if it feels artificial at first), the act of smiling will bring about happier emotions.

If in fact I was truly committed to becoming happier and bringing more of the vacation Sylvie into my everyday life then I needed to say an enthusiastic YES to Mandy's invitation. I have to admit that I could not muster much enthusiasm at first and I grumbled all the way there. Poor Ed who has to put up with my sour puss moods!

Once I got to the beach and saw the smiles on friends faces I started to mellow a bit. I liked the feel of the soft sand beneath my feet and the colourful hues of the sky as the sun was setting. We found some rocks to sit on that still felt warm from the rays of the sun they had absorbed during the day. We settled in, five adults well passed their forties and a couple of teenage boys who came along for the ride, snacking on chips and chatting. We were waiting in anticipation for the planets to show themselves. My husband had a fancy IPhone application that showed us the night sky and the location of the planets from where we were standing and we kept scanning the sky. We shared the binoculars back and forth. We patiently waited for night to settle and for the stars to appear. Meanwhile we enjoyed watching the waves make their way to the shore, the seagulls diving into the water to catch a fish, the blue heron's majestic flight as it searched for the best spot to catch his dinner. Time slowed down. We adjusted our rhythm to nature's rhythm. We were content just being a witness. After a while I realized that I felt at peace and content. I named that feeling: I was feeling happy...

One of the exercises I have done while reading the book is create a master list of the things that bring joy to my life. On the left margin of a sheet of paper I wrote vertically all the letters of the alphabet, A to Z. Then I started listing all the things that start with the letter A that bring me happiness like Art, angels, and antiques. Some letters like U and Z were tricky, but I managed to find at least one thing for each letter. It was a fun activity that made we more aware of the reasons I have to be happy. I keep thinking of new things and add them to the list. Creating the list has made me more conscious to the happiness in my life. I mentally check off an item from the list when I recognize it in my everyday life. This helps me be more mindful and grateful for what I have.

I will be away on vacation for the next couple of weeks travelling to the east coast to commune with the Atlantic Ocean so I will not write again until August 29. In the meantime, I challenge you to create your own happiness list. Please let me know what you find out about yourself in the process.

What makes you happy?

I was driving back home after spending a couple of hours at my in-laws doing groceries, making them lunch and doing a bit of cleaning up. My mother-in-law had her chemo treatment number four on Friday (just two more to go) and she is not feeling very well. The radio was on and the Nickelback song If Today Was Your Last Day was playing. Usually, I'd think "this is a pretty sappy song" but today, for some reason, I paid attention to the lyrics and I had an unexpected reaction. Here is the refrain.

If today was your last day
And tomorrow was too late
Could you say goodbye to yesterday?
Would you live each moment like your last?
Leave old pictures in the past
Donate every dime you have?
If today was your last day...

I thought, “if today was my last day I would be content.” I did some of my very favourite things today. I started my day off with a one hour class of yoga, then went out for some green tea and had a heart to heart talk with one of my good friends. I got a call from my husband who is at an “away” this weekend at a Ringette tournament with my youngest daughter to tell me that she had scored her first goal of the season and her team was advancing to the finals. My daughter loves Ringette and my husband anything to do with ice rinks, strategic plays and friendly competition (whether its Ringette or, his favourite, hockey). I knew they were both happy right now. My eldest daughter is dating a new boyfriend and she is floating on air these days. She actually said “I love you back” when I said I loved her.

And I did a good deed. My mother-in-law was so appreciative that I came over to help her out for a few hours. I left their house feeling really good.That is when I heard the song... If Today Was Your Last Day. I felt like all was right in my little world.

What a great feeling! I don’t have that feeling very often because I tend to look at what is missing rather than what is right. That is just my personality. Over the last two years I have been working hard at changing my attitude. Today’s “eureka” moment was a proof that my efforts are paying off. I would just not have experienced that feeling of contentment a few years ago.

Have you seen the movie “Runaway Bride” with Julia Roberts and Richard Gere? In a nutshell, Julia Roberts' character Maggie, loves to be engaged but gets cold feet the day of the wedding. She has ran away from the alter four times. Richard Gere's character, Ike, is a reporter who is intrigued by this Runaway Bride and decides to write a story about her. He spends time in the little town where she lives, gets to know her and her "exes". Eventually they fall in love, get engaged, and yes, at the last minute, she runs away...again. There is a scene in the movie that struck me. Ike tells Maggie that with every one of her ex-fiancés, she morphed into a different person to please them. One fiancé tells Ike that Maggie likes her eggs over-easy. He remembers that about her because that is how he likes them. The second fiancé says that Maggie prefers her eggs poached, the third says she likes Eggs Benedict and the fourth say she likes her eggs scrambled. Ike`s point is that Maggie does not even know what she likes. After her broken engagement with Ike, Maggie spends time figuring out who she is. There is a scene where she tastes all the eggs dishes. She discovers that she likes Eggs Benedict but not any other kind.

So why am I telling you this story you wonder? In order to change my attitude towards life, I had to start with the basics. I was a lot like Maggie in the Runaway Bride movie. I was a master chameleon trying to please everyone. I could easily rime off a whole list of things that made my mother happy, my sisters happy, my husband happy, my kids happy and my boss happy...but I did not really know what made me happy. I had forgotten along the way. Realizing this, I decided one day to make a list of the things that made me happy. It took me a while, but I managed to identify quite a few things that brought joy to my life. That day, I made a decision to start choosing to include these joyful things more often in my life. What makes me happy are small things like a vase of fresh flowers or a walk in nature. Over time, as I built up my happiness muscles, I started to dream a bit bigger. I signed up for acting classes and did community theatre. I got trained as a yoga instructor. And, more recently, I left my government job to start my own consulting business.

Consciously choosing to include in your life things that make you happy is an act of self-love. The trick is to have a healthy balance of self-love with love for others. Maybe that is why I would be content if today was my last day. Today I had a healthy balance of things that made me happy and things that made others happy (and by the way, sometimes they are one and the same...)

My challenge to you this week is to write your own list of what makes you happy. I have a second challenge as well if you are up for it: choose to do at least one thing that makes you happy every day.

Let me know how that goes.

Are you a pleasure seeker or a meaning seeker?

Does this ever happen to you? I was driving to work one morning and all of a sudden it hit me...I felt totally happy and content. There was no particular reason. I just was. I had picked up a healthy breakfast treat from the bakery, the sun was shining, the flowers along the Rideau Canal seemed more colorful than usual, and I was singing along with a catchy tune on the radio. For that moment, I forgot my worries, my aches and pain (from too much running) and just was at peace with the now. I caught myself smiling and thought "Look at that. A glimpse of happiness. Right now. Just because."

In his book "A New Earth" Eckhart Tolle urges us to slow down and savor the every day miracles of life. Simple miracles like our breathing in and out or a child's laughter or tree leaves dancing in the wind. Tolle teaches us to quiet the incessant chatter of the ego and accept that the only thing that really matters is the present moment (the past is over and the future has not arrived, there is only the now).

Martin Seligman, the father of Positive Psychology, also talks about this concept of investing yourself totally in the moment. He calls it "the flow". Flow means being so intesely concentrated on what you are doing that you lose track of time. You become one with the activity. Seligman gives the example of a musician getting inspired to write a new piece of music and the melody just flows out of him. In a way, it's as if the music has a life of its own and the musician is simply the vehicle for it to be born.

In his research on happiness, Martin Seligman has come to distinguish three types of happy lives.

1. The Pleasant Life: Individuals who live this life try to get as much positive emotions and pleasures as they possibly can. This constant search for pleasures may involve things like trips, wild parties, fast cars, designer clothes, gourmet food, etc. This is the kind of life that Hollywood stars like George Clooney and Pamela Anderson live. The downside to this kind of life is that pretty soon you are looking for better and more sources of pleasures. Seligman gives the metaphor of having ice cream to explain a phenomena he calls habituation. When you take your first bite of ice cream you taste it 100% but with each subsequent bite the pleasure weakens. You get used to the taste and it does not give you the same sensation as when it was a novel experience...

Focus is on outside satisfaction.

2. The Good Life: A person who has a good life according to Seligman is someone who is engaged in his life. They have work that brings them income and satisfaction. They have a strong social network of family and friends. They have leisure activities that allow them to totally invest themselves in something pleasurable and lose track of time for a while. (Seligman calls this concept flow.)

Focus in on satisfaction that comes from engagement with others.

3. The Meaningful Life: In a meaningful life you use your highest strengths for something larger than yourself. You dedicate yourself to philanthropy. You gain happiness by being of service to others. One might think of Mother Teresa as a role model for this kind of life.

Focus is on satisfaction that comes from helping others.

Seligman's research has shown that if you measure the intensity of happiness along a time line continuum we can observe that initially the intensity of happiness may be high for someone who lives from one pleasant emotion to the next but it is however short lived. On the other hand, the pursuit of meaning is the strongest and more reliable source of happiness. The life satisfaction you derive from engagement, the marker of a good life, is a close second.

How would you rate your life?

If you were to give yourself a rating on a scale of 1 to 10 on the happiness quotient of your life what would it be?

Seligman believes that we can be taught how to be happier. If you go on his website you can complete a battery of tests that will give you some insight into what you need more of and less of in your life. I just did the Authentic Happiness Inventory Questionnaire and I was pleasantly surprised. I have made some real progress in the last few years... What about you?

Think Yourself Happy

On Saturday I was in Quebec City (one of my most favorite city in the world). I must have walked over 15 km around le Vieux Québec, up and down the many stairs leading from la basse-ville to la porte St Jean towards Château Frontenac. It was raining again as it has been for the last 4 weeks. We only get two months of summer and the first month has been cold and wet this year!

By midday I was drenched and feeling tired and grumpy. I had created my very own black cloud hanging over my head with my bleak thoughts. I decided to escape the weather for a while and see a movie at the theater, De père en flic (the title is a play on words from the expression De père en fils - "flic" means policeman). Québecois comedies have a unique type of humour that I find so refreshing. I laughed out loud many times. Lo and behold, when I left the theater I was in a very positive frame of mind.

Many authors have talked about the power of positive thinking. Norman Cousins wrote a book called Anatomy of an Illness in 1979. He was diagnosed with a incurable degenerative disease (ankylosing spondylitis), and was told he had little chance of surviving. Cousins developed a recovery program incorporating mega doses of vitamin C along with a positive attitude, love, faith, hope, and laughter induced by Marx Brothers films. "I made the joyous discovery that ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep." Norman Cousins died of heart failure on November 30, 1990 having survived years longer than his doctors had predicted.

One of my all time feel good motivational speaker is a spunky woman of Italian descent, Loretta Laroche. Loretta calls herself a Stress Management and Humor Consultant and has been in the business for over 30 years. She has written several uplifting books. One of my favorites is entitled Life is Short - Wear Your Party Pants. What I love about Loretta Laroche is that she injects her particular brand of wit and irreverent humour in describing every day occurrences and helps us see how silly we really are when we fret over life's foibles . I've had the privilege of meeting Loretta on a few occasions. The last time we chatted she asked me what I wanted to be when I "grew up". I shared with her my dream of bringing humanity back into the workplace. In many ways that is Loretta's mission in life as well. She told me that she had recently enlisted in Martin Seligman's online classes on Positive Psychology. She suggested that I look him up.

When Dr. Seligman became interested in the study of happiness in the early 1980's, a literature search on mental health would generate over 46,000 papers about depression compared to only 400 papers about joy. We knew a lot about what makes people unhappy and mentally ill but had little insight into what makes us happy and at peace. Seligman and his colleagues looked across cultures and centuries to distill six character attributes that contribute to happiness: wisdom/knowledge, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence. Seligman believes that pessimists can be taught the skill of optimism.

Seligman believes that optimism is a skill rather than a personality trait that you may have inherited from your parents. We can actually learn to be more hopeful and positive. Our lives can improve simply by changing the way we think. That is a powerful concept don't you agree?

Are you a glass half empty or a glass half full kind of person?

When you are in a sour mood what helps you snap out of it?

Are there people in your life that always know what to say or what to do to pick your spirits up? Who are they? How can you surround yourself with more positive, energetic people?

What do you do for fun? What are your simple pleasures? What brings you satisfaction and contentment? How can you invite more joyful experiences in your life?