Ideas up for grabs Introduction to Happiness This could be another project: a crash course on how to make ourselves happy, indepent of external circumstances. It would teach basic techniques, a little bit like Oriental approaches do, but without any reference to religion. I'm determined that happiness is available for almost anyone, and that it depends much more on our own way of thinking than on the outside world. One cannot become rich overnight (unless hitting the jackpot, which is rare), but yes, everybody can become happy. Instantly. This book would tell you how. First of all, you can do exercises every day. In the morning you can wake up realizing that you are still alive, you are not sick, you still have ten fingers and ten toes and so on. You should appreciate that. You can enjoy the workings of your body, the muscles, the circulation, the lungs, the heart. Even hunger means a lot: you have a stomach, you have saliva, you have your digesting apparatus -- all running, all under your command. Use your body, stretch your arms and legs, take steps in the room. When you shave or comb, smile at the mirror, and enjoy that the mirror smiles back. This is the first exchange of smiles every day, and it will be followed by many more smiles. When you have breakfast, eat slowly and enjoy the way food gets chewed and moves down. Appreciate every bite. Enjoy the process of eating and concentrate your attention on it. You can enjoy the flavors as well, but on this level it really does not matter whether your food is tasty or not. To eat is wonderful, by itself. When you go out of your home, breathe in the fragrance of the world: identify the trees and bushes, the flowers, the grass, and the fresh air. Enjoy the early morning sunshine, and be happy: your neighbors have also survived the night. Say hello to them, and enjoy the continuity of events. If you have a car, enjoy that you can be polite with other drivers, enjoy your own civility (when others get mad at each other). If you take a bus or use the subway, enjoy the other people (this is a good opportunity to realize: you are not alone!). If you have a seat and an elderly and fragile person gets on, and no one else yields his or her seat, you may do it, to enjoy your ability to help others. By the time you get off, you may collect quite a few praises from others (and if not from them, then from yourself). You may become your hero, confirmed every morning. At the workplace the pleasure starts again: your coworkers are fine, too, you can now appreciate the fact that you still have a job, you have something meaningful to do, your working environment is good or tolerable (the temperature is good, no rain, etc.), and in general, everything feels normal (at least as normal as yesterday). When you have to work, enjoy your movements, enjoy your control. When at a break, enjoy that you may have a rest. When getting back to work, enjoy your energy. Some days may drag more than others, but if you focus on what you have done, it becomes meaningful after all. After work you can enjoy freedom, shopping, the crowd in the streets (again: you are not alone). If you want to have a good time, read a good book or watch TV. If your eyes are tired, put on a good CD and listen to it with your eyes shut and your headset on. (This practice is not only good so that others do not get frustrated, if they do not share your peculiar preferences in music, but it also insulates you from the outside world and it makes you sink in the vibrations of music.) If you live alone, enjoy your freedom. If you are horny, watch an erotic movie, read an erotic novel and masturbate, then appreciate your ability to do all this and to survive with pleasure. (In a restrictive society you can add the pleasure of being free of inhibitations.) If you live with a partner, turn to him or her, and enjoy the pleasure of being a happy couple. By the time you turn off the lights, you should feel relaxed. You can recall the numerous good moments of your day. (If there were too few, you can cheat and add some from yesterday...) The focus should be all day on the good points, on the good things you have and not on the things you don't have. Don't let bad news (from the papers, from the TV, from gossips) affect you, ruin your mood. Listen selectively: get only the most important facts, especially if you are involved. Don't worry about South African diamond mines -- unless you own one. Assume that you had a wonderful day, so good that it can hardly be reproduced. Don't worry. Start every day from zero. This is one of the most important tricks. Happiness is relative. This is why slaves could sing out of joy and the richest people of the world would still kill themselves. The point of reference is everything. If you do not compare your situation to the best situations in your life (possibly long ago) or to the situation of others (possibly much better than yours), then you will be able to see the good points. One tragedy of the spoiled youth today is that for them the standard to which they compare their current situation is too high. Not only is it as high as their best situation so far but the advertisements make them expect more every day. They are slaves of a future they will never be able to reach -- since when they get what they want now, they will want to get much more. So stop expecting, and start appreciating. There is a natural ambition in us which drives us to live better, to own more, to get higher, to ensure better ciscumstances for our children etc. It is fine -- as long as it does not enslave us. There is a basic set of properties which makes it possible for us to live a decent life, without worrying about food and shelter. We should be able to eat and should have basic tools for this. But the difference between silver and plastic utensils is less important. We should have a good sleep in a bed. But it is not that important how pretty the bed and the bed-cloths. You can want more and better things but you should weigh the profit and the cost. Time is money and money is time and time is your life. Is it worth to own a private airplane if you have to work for years to get it? Is a Carribbean vacation worth six months of your life? You can ask yourself these questions about a lot of things people normally want to have, from fashionable sneakers to gold chains to a newer car to a bigger house. You can even weigh things like living alone or sharing your apartment with someone else. It is not only a valid question when you are a college student. It is always valid. (As for me, if I had no rentor, I would have to moonlight for the same money. I've decided my privacy is just not worth a second job.) Of course, a lot of people ask themselves, but the majority decides to work more to own more. And then they still feel unhappy. Balancing out your life is another important trick of feeling happy. One often has an alternative in life, such as going to this college and become a Nobel Prize winner in astrophysics or going to that college and become a football star. Or dating this or dating that. Or applying for this job or for that job. My suggestion is: build a structure where the advantages and the drawbacks roughly balance each other. Then if either option materializes, it will never be a tragedy, you can focus on the good points. (An example: once I applied for an interesting job but it was a little risky, as opposed to my current, tedious but safe position. If I had gotten the risky job I would have been happy for the adventure, and when I did not get it, I was still satisfied with the safety of my existing job.) This balance does not mean that you are indifferent. On the contrary: you are aware of the advantages of both sides, so either way you do not lose anything, but you are able to enjoy the situation. And this is no self-deception. In real life the good points and bad points are well balanced, this is the normal state of things. It happens that certain things surprise us, they knock us off balance. But if we have this balancing routine, we can build this framework real fast and regain our balance. There are bad things which will be with us for a long time. No problem. They can serve us as bases of comparison. And we can appreciate our future good points even more. As we age, our values and skills are constantly changing. But if we are conscious enough, we do not take this process as a loss but as a natural change. We lose one thing and obtain another. We lose physical strength but get mental strength. We lose boldness but get wisdom. We lose passion but get beauty. The balance will remain in our life. This focus on balance will even work in the area of personal relationships. Your partner may break up with you but it has a good point: now you become free to choose another. One door closes, another opens. And if your partner has decided not to love you anymore, you do not really lose anything. What you feel you have lost is not yours, it does not exist anymore. Why would you insist to have a wife/husband who would cheat on you? Related to this focus on balance is the issue of will. If you want balance, you may not want anything very much. If you want something, you surrender yourself to disappointment. Wanting something badly is a road to mental suffering. Instead, a balance-oriented person would choose from the existing options. The issue of resources is also critical. You can really want something which you are able to get using your own resources. For instance, an adult can buy a new TV if he or she chooses to do so. A young child cannot. A young child has to negotiate, has to manipulate the parents to buy something for him or her. If you want something you do not have the resources for, you have a chance to get disappointed in the end. A lot of people are unhappy because they started wanting something they did not have the resources to get. And this is not only valid about objects. If you want to go on a trip with your partner, and with your partner by all means, you want to use him or her to get your satisfaction. And this is risky, this frequently leads to failure and disappointment in marriages. (You can still try manipulation, but it can hit back. No one likes to feel manipulated.) Using your own resources makes you feel confident and safe. It is true that if you refuse outside sources, like a loan from a bank, you may reach your goals later. But in a happy and well-balanced life the question of when is not as important as the question of what. And if you enjoy life as much as you can, nothing can really be added to your maximum happiness. This is an area where 1 + 1 is not 2, but a stronger 1, a richer 1. The issue of compromises has to be addressed because we normally play the game with others, and there are games where one wins and someone else loses. If they decide to reach a compromise, neither side will get all, but they will not lose, either. My problem with compromises is that in most cases both players lose. They already wanted something, and now they can get less. It is clearly a loss, for both sides. What I recommend is cooperation. What you cannot do with a partner, you will not do. The difference is in the starting point. In the former case you start with a goal and you get frustrated because it cannot be fully reached. In the latter, you only have a vague idea, and you start looking for a partner. If you do not find a partner for your idea, then the idea proves to be unreal. If you do find the right partner, you can be happy. No frustration, no disappointment. Do not expect, but take advantage: this is the route toward happiness. This cooperative model also shows that the resources of others can never be granted. Now, what happens if we would like to do something but there are no partners to cooperate with? We can still do it alone, using our own resources. Or we can cooperate with someone else. (A wife is never taken to the opera by her husband. Finally goes with another lady.) Marriage can be happy if this model works. Even if there is no practical cooperation (the husband loves car races and the wife loves gardening), doing things separately is still better than forcing something on to others. With no cooperation, a mutual respect and understanding can still be reached -- as opposed to the mutual frustration of compromises (today the wife is irritated by the race, tomorrow the husband will be bored at a gardening show). If you are happy and well-balanced, you will radiate with it. Others may be attracted to you, but because of their own inbalance they can get frustrated easily. Your balance will be appreciated mostly by other happy and well-balanced people. Two happy persons can share their happiness and can intensify it. However, happiness is very often personal and unique. What this means is that different people may like different things, and when they want to share their own pleasures they may not agree on what is good and what is not. Two happy people may create a more intense harmony but this only last for a short time. These joint happy moments are all the more valuable. The interesting thing is that when the common joy between two persons ends, the both fall back into their own happiness -- it is always there, it is the basis. If you are ill-balanced, learn to watch and consider other models. Most of us are conditioned to follow the majority of people in everything, from gestures to clothing to phrases. But the majority is not happy, the majority strives to be happier today than yesterday and the majority fails in this. If you want to be really happy you must discover other models. When we speak about joint happiness we think of the happiness of a married couple most of the time. But it is not necessary that two should be the limit. Sex is very likely the most enjoyable and safest between two steady partners (of the opposite sex or of the same sex), but love as affection is a broader concept, it may incorporate everything. Think of Christian love: a whole congregation can be happy to learn that one member has recuperated from illness. The same happens with true friends: they worry together and feel relived together. You can consider the joint happiness of three or more people, men and women alike. But what was stated before about the joint happiness of two people will apply: this common happiness is fragile. Each member of this happy group needs to be, to become, a happy individual as well. This like group aerobatics: only those can do common tricks in the air who are good pilots on their own. In this be-happy book a separate chapter should be devoted to conflicts and how to handle them. Strictly speaking, this is an extra, since if you have a happy personality, you are insensitive to conflicts. They are out of you, in the external world, and as such, do not necessarily affect you. On the other hand, to handle a conflict is a test of your autonomy and integrity, a "moment of truth." The simplest case is when someone insults you verbally. If this happens in private, between you and the insulting person, you can ignore it, since it will not change the world around you. Somebody's negative opinion cannot do any harm to you. On the contrary: it revals the personality of the insulter, and you can even learn from the criticism if it has some truth in it. (An example: my girlfriend accuses me with cheating, based on notes she could only get from my private diary. What does this tell me? 1. She has read my diary. 2. She assumes that I've cheated on her. 3. She may even suggest a name I might have good chances with. This is a joke, but shows the information we may have from an insult, so we should not be offended, instead, be grateful.) If a verbal attack happens in front of others, it is a quite different situation. Of course, it still has some features of the former case: you can learn from that too. On the other hand, if the accusation is wrongful, you have to defend yourself. This is a game, and it is always better to win than to lose. This game has its own rules, and you had better learn them. A special case of this when you fight not for yourself but for some friend, spouse, parent, etc. At least there are situations when the spectators expect you to defend someone else. Because this is not your personal case, you have just gotten involved, you cannot control the situation as easily as when you are insulted alone. But in every case you should weigh the pros and cons, weigh the cost and the profit before you make up your mind. And in some cases the best decision is to run away and call for help when you are safe. (It may be that your girlfriend will say you were a coward when you did not defend her with your fists, but if you enter a fight before anyone else knows, both of you can end up beaten up and no one will help, no one will know.) Part of conflict management is how you handle uncertain situations. You can get hurt even when no one intended to hurt you. There are a lot of misunderstandings in everyday life which often lead to conflicts. A happy person, naturally, will be very cautious. If your date has not arrived, he or she could be detained by traffic, may have had an accident, etc. You do not know. And if you do not know what happened, you can not get real hurt. To look for an explanation and to wait for it should be the first thing to do. Emotions should come later. A lot of people get hurt automatically, and then you are stuck: you have to handle your hurt first, while the person you think has hurt you may not have the faintest idea of your feelings. There are other books about handling verbal insults and hurts, but my recommendation is: first try to find out what has happened and only afterwards should you have your opinion of the situation. Of course, it may happen that it was really your partner's fault and then, finally, you can get hurt. However, by this time your original anger typically evaporates. The tension is gone, but the experience remains. Guilty conscience, accusing yourself is a special case of pain. And you cannot change the past. Certain degree of shock does not do any harm. But a great deal of self-reproach makes no sense. You must be able to learn from your own blunders and wrong-doings. Always turn the bad things into good actions. Let the future heal the past. Even when feeling guilty, you can recreate your balance, only now the determination to mend a fault must be part of this balance. In other words, this type of mental balance is more active. You are not automatically happy but in a condition: you are happy if ... you will correct your behavior and compensate for the bad things. And there are situations when these tricks cannot help. There is real pain. When you lose your parents or children, there's no use of making yourself happy no matter what. Or you may realize that your whole life has been screwed, you were marching in the wrong direction all the time. There is time when you cannot help crying out your pain. If you want to be happy, you must be able to go through the hell of suffering and loss. Even this may prove useful in the end. You can use these worst moments later, as a base of comparison. This book could help a lot of people change their lives for the better, obtain wisdom and relief. Exercises may be added so that the words and actions may become interwoven. Someone should write this book.