Archive for: Our Happiness Blog

Remember the movie “Pay it Forward”? The idea was that you do a kind thing for someone and they then pay it forward by doing a kind thing for someone else. Did you know that just by the act of giving or doing something kind for someone else, you become happier – you don’t even have to wait for the Karma of someone then doing something nice for you, the act itself is its own reward. Research suggests that there is a kindness feedback loop; because doing something kind for someone in the past has made you happy, you are likely to do something kind again to have that remembered experience. (https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/kindness_makes_you_happy_and_happiness_makes_you_kind)

What does this mean for us in day-to-day life? I think so often we get so caught up in our own busy-ness and our sense of obligation that we can lose sight of the need to be kind or generous to others. And, giving does not have to be something financial.  Often the best gifts are when you give your time, attention, hugs, and compassion.  Of course, my niece would prefer that I give her a car (and that would make me happy), but I know that giving her love is effective, too!

It’s easy in December to think about those in need and to give. It is less on everyone’s mind as spring lazily moves forward and we begin to enjoy the longer days and warmer weather. So, hit the pause button and think about what you can do today to be kind to someone. Notice how just thinking those thoughts make you feel. Then, act. Then, tomorrow, do it again. Try it for 7 days, and then respond with a comment below about how you are feeling. Are you happier? More content? Maybe a little less edgy or tired? If it feels good, keep doing it!

By guest blogger: Wendy Kuhn, Holistic Health Coach
Break Through Consulting, LLC
www.breakthroughconsultingllc.com

Jumping on the happiness research bandwagon, Matt Killingsworth developed an app that tracks people’s happiness in real time (trackyourhappiness.org). Analyzing 650,000 real time reports from a diverse group of 15,000 people, he asked participants to report on three things at random times throughout the day: how they feel, what they’re doing right then, and if they’re thinking about something other than what they’re doing. He learned that 47% of the time we’re mind-wandering – thinking about things other than what we’re doing.

We all know that it’s important and even necessary to be able to focus on more than one thing at a time. There’s been a lot of talk about mindfulness lately but there’s also been substantial research on the benefits of mind-wandering (planning, digging deeper for the meaning of an event, cultivating empathy and compassion, exploring memories, moral reasoning, improvisation, creative pursuits, etc). Killingsworth’s data indicates that we’re less happy when we’re mind-wandering.  Not only that, but we’re less happy because we’re mind wandering (rather than mind-wandering to soothe already feeling unhappy). He learned that even when people are focused on something unpleasant they’re happier than when they’re mind-wandering.

So 47% of the time we’re making ourselves less happy because we’re not focusing one-mindfully on what we’re doing. As with so many happiness skills, mindfulness is something we can cultivate. So let’s focus and get happy!

We try to avoid pain and discomfort. It makes sense – those are often warnings that something is unhealthy or unsafe so this instinct has helped keep humans and animals alive for a very long time.  It’s why we yank our hand away from a hot stove and throw out that funky smelling raw chicken. But what about when you procrastinate working on your thesis or avoid parties where you don’t know a lot of people? Avoiding discomfort there doesn’t seem to keep us safe and healthy; in fact, it seems to detract from our long-term happiness.  What gives?

Avoiding pain and discomfort isn’t always a good idea. Since people usually have a natural tendency to avoid things that will actually hurt or kill them (though for very real biological reasons adults tend to be better at this than adolescents or children), I far more often talk with clients about turning toward discomfort rather than turning away. This discomfort is typically secondary anxiety – anxiety about feeling some other emotion. You avoid asking someone out because you’re anxious they’ll reject you and you’ll feel shame, sadness, embarrassment. You dread telling the kids you’re getting a divorce because you’re afraid they’ll be angry and devastated and you’ll feel grief, guilt, sadness. You postpone getting that mole checked out because you’re afraid it’s cancer and you’ll feel fear, hopelessness, grief.

Typically, turning away from this emotional discomfort either robs you of potentially wonderful opportunities or worsens the situation. And what we usually find when we finally turn toward it is that either the worst case scenario doesn’t happen or it happens and we can handle it. Next time you’re avoiding “feeling bad” in some way, take a deep breath, turn toward it, and know that by feeling this pain you’re avoiding suffering.

As the mother of a toddler and an upcoming newborn I’ve become more interested in the importance of sleep.  I recently read that many Americans have a sleep debt and don’t realize it.  Most people need around eight hours a night.  If you’re getting six then over two weeks you’re missing almost two nights of sleep.  This adds up quickly and many studies have demonstrated an association between inadequate sleep and various health and safety issues: heart disease, obesity, diabetes, lower pain threshold, problems with anger and depression, poor work performance, driving accidents, relationship problems, poor memory, poor reflexes, and poor focus.  Several major disasters have been linked to fatigue: Chernobyl, Exxon Valdez, the Challenger explosion, Three Mile Island, the American Airlines 1420 crash.

I frequently talk to clients about good sleep – the importance of it and how to get more.  Most people know the obvious ones – avoid caffeine for six hours before bed, don’t drink alcohol before bed because it’s more likely to disrupt restful sleep in the second half of the night, exercise but not too close to bedtime, etc.  For the sake of brevity I’ll share here my three cardinal rules of good sleep hygiene:

1. Don’t do anything in bed besides sleep (and sex).  You want to associate your bed with restful sleep and nothing else (not even enjoyable reading or boring TV watching) because it can contribute to problems with initial insomnia, midnight wakening, and non-restful sleep.  This leads to another great tip – don’t be in bed for longer than you need to sleep, otherwise you’ll be awake in bed and associate your bed with not sleeping.

2. Get up at the same time every day, no matter what time you went to sleep (except when you’re sick or occasionally needing to catch up).  The more your body knows what will be expected of it in the morning the more it can self-regulate on the front end and start getting sleepy when it needs to.

3. Wind down in the same place near your bed every night at the same time.  Do it in dim light so melatonin can start flowing.  Do something relaxing and enjoyable like read a good book and only get into bed when you’re about to fall asleep.  Don’t try to push through your sleep window to finish the sentence.  This should take care of any initial insomnia and get your body into the wind down/sleep routine.

Good luck and good night!

A friend of mine used to be terrified of losing people he loved. He would sometimes feel crippled with depression and anxiety about things that hadn’t happened.  He’d spend hours imagining the worst case scenarios, especially his fiancée getting cancer.  No one close to him had ever had cancer and his fiancée was the picture of good health, yet these intrusive, compulsive fear thoughts became overwhelming.  After a few years of therapy and medication he was able to develop some strong cognitive and behavioral skills that helped a lot and he resumed med school without too much disruption.

Then his fiancée was diagnosed with an advanced stage of cancer that is difficult to treat.

Fast forward a few months.  I met him for lunch the other day and he was happier than I’ve ever seen him.  He wasn’t struggling with anxiety and he wasn’t depressed.  He was focusing on current joyful stuff and positive future possibilities.  He felt an internal strength that was new to him.  Nothing outside of him had changed – his fiancée’s health hadn’t significantly improved and he hadn’t increased or changed his meds.  Years of anticipatory anxiety and resulting depression had been shucked when the worst thing happened.  This surprised him but it makes perfect sense.  Anticipatory anxiety has no limits and no end until we impose them ourselves, which can be very hard to do after years of training yourself to think that way and you have no proof that you could handle something horrible.  Event anxiety is a different creature because you’re forced to handle the crisis right then and usually you see pretty quickly that you aren’t powerless – you can change what you can and accept what you can’t.  You see that you have more skills and resources and strength than you knew.  It can be hard to have blind faith in your own resilience before it’s tested but once you believe it’s within you life is a lot less scary.

The other week we looked at the results of one study which suggested receiving from others makes us happy while giving to others provides us a sense of meaningfulness, and they talked about these things as though they were mutually exclusive.  The author of this study did say that if you consider it a meaningful, good thing to give to others then this will make you feel happy.  However, their study factored out the effects of meaningfulness and happiness on each other which led to their conclusion that takers are happier people and givers are people who have more meaning in their lives.

If you’re like me you’re wondering what the point is in separating meaning and happiness since for most people they are so obviously linked.  It’s what suicidal people are talking about when they say, “I have nothing to live for.”  Over many years I’ve worked with scores of depressed people whose depression is maintained largely because they have nothing they consider meaningful in their lives.  So what was this research actually looking at?

Perhaps they were differentiating between hedonic and eudaimonic well-being.  Hedonic well-being is based on the idea that more pleasure and less pain leads to happiness (having fun with friends, eating a great dinner).  Eudaimonic well-being is based on the idea that life purpose, challenge, and growth leads to happiness (volunteering at an animal shelter, spending your career in a helping profession).  Researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill think this distinction is worth understanding.  Their study suggests that these two types of happiness affect us differently on a molecular level.  They found that people with high hedonic well-being are more likely to have a chronic inflammatory response which will eventually suppress immune function.  Earlier studies have also found that eudaimonic well-being is associated with good health (better sleep, less reactivity to stress, higher good cholesterol, less insulin resistance).

There you have it.  Give to others or be all swollen and generally unhealthy.  The choice is yours!

Whoops.  Happiness Day was March 20^th, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned through writing this blog it’s that it’s never too late to start being happy!  In honor of March 20^th, let’s revisit 20 things you could start to do differently to make you (and others) more happy.

1. Smile.  Lots of studies support the idea that smiling can make us feel happier on a psychological and biological level.
2. Do something for someone else – it immediately feels good, plus they might pay it forward.
3. Remind yourself of how grateful you are for things that make you happy so you don’t start taking them for granted.
4. Get into a flow – that sweet spot where you lose yourself because you’ve found the perfect balance of high challenge and high skill and you are neither bored nor anxious.
5. Pay more attention to positive, happy stuff.
6. Spend time with friends and family you love.
7. Cultivate curiosity.  Practice being intrigued with ordinary and new things and people.
8. View something as a challenge rather than a threat.
9. As much as possible do stuff because it comes naturally to you, you value it, or you enjoy it – not because you feel guilty for not doing it.
10. Remember that the “bad” stuff allows you to appreciate the “good.”
11. Savor life.  Reminisce about great experiences, appreciate wonderful moments as they happen, and fantasize positively about the future.
12. List stuff you’re happy about.  They can be small details or major things. Make a game out of creating a longer list each time.
13. Strive to find meaning in adversity and despair.
14. Practice radical acceptance and creating change.
15. Notice and reward small progress.
16. Get your needs met.
17. Practice believing that everyone is doing their best.
18. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
19. Be specific when you express gratitude toward someone else.
20. Decide to be happy.  After all, so much of it is within our control!

Do happiness and meaningfulness always go together?  You might consider it meaningful when you rush your friend to the vet with her dying cat to have him put down but the experience doesn’t exactly make you happy.  You might feel happy when you settle in to watch the season premiere of Sherlock but probably won’t count it as a meaningful experience.  But we all know that happiness and meaningfulness can coexist because we often do something we consider meaningful – help a stranger change their flat tire, for example – and feel happy about it.  So what’s the difference?

One study conducted by Baumeister at Florida State University surveyed almost 400 adults to figure out the relationship between happiness and meaningfulness.  Here is one of their most interesting findings:

Happiness comes from what others give to you; meaningfulness comes from giving to others.

But what about all those times you’ve given to someone else and felt happy about it?  Baumeister would argue that you’ve assigned meaning to that act of giving, and that if you factor out the importance of meaningfulness, people who receive more are happier than people who give more.

Hm.  Takers are happier than givers?  Let’s parse this out further next week…

The happiest person I know is also the person I know who has had the most loss.  My godmother’s mother died after a long illness when my godmother was in her teens, and her father died when she was giving birth to her first child.  She had two children with her first husband, who struggled with alcoholism and whom she eventually divorced.  Her daughter was born with cystic fibrosis and died in childhood after a short lifetime of medication, painful daily chest therapy, and many hospitalizations.  The last decade of my godmother’s second marriage was extraordinarily difficult because her husband’s strokes robbed him of the ability to empathize – he was completely different from the compassionate, loving minister she had married.  She has just moved to a small town in the north where she knows no one.

My godmother doesn’t see herself as a victim at all; rather, she views each life experience as a gift and a learning experience, and uses it to add to her life and to the lives of others. She doesn’t focus on her daughter’s struggle with cystic fibrosis but rather on her daughter’s strength and feisty spirit, how well loved she was by everyone who knew her, and how blessed the family was to receive such incredible support.  Instead of focusing on the deterioration of her first marriage due to her husband’s alcoholism, she compassionately talks about the guilt he felt about their daughter’s genetic terminal illness and acknowledges the struggle they had in supporting one another.  She doesn’t focus on the last decade of her husband’s life and how different he was from the loving, gentle, clever man he had always been.  In the aftermath of his death she considers the passing of time a gift that allows her to reconnect with the man she married.  In her new town she is enthusiastically finding opportunities to continue the work she’s done for so many years – volunteering as a bereavement specialist in hospice and the school system.

There are so many lessons to learn here about happiness (what we choose to focus on, gratitude, compassion), and the one that stands out most to me is the connection between happiness and meaning.  Which turns up just as many questions as it does answers… stay tuned for next week’s post!