How To Find Happiness In An F'd Up World

I think I'll start with a story.

When I was younger,

When I was a kid,

I think if I look back,

You know,

I had a lot of anger as a kid and I wasn't happy with how I looked and I wasn't happy.

I was trying to belong in a lot of ways and I told myself that if I could get this video game system I wanted,

Things would be better.

If I could just get this Nintendo,

Things would be better and I'd be happy.

And guess what?

Well,

Around the corner I was fortunate enough,

The holidays came around and I got it.

And things shifted for me.

I started feeling better,

My emotions started getting better and I was felt really satisfied with the way life was going at that point,

But that didn't really last.

And so,

You know,

A lot of us have this experience when it comes to finding ways to feel better in difficult times where we are looking to something to make us feel better.

Like we say things like,

I'll be happier if this happens.

You know,

Once COVID is over,

I'll be happier.

Once I can kind of integrate this thing,

I'll be happier.

And before COVID we said things like if I change this about my house or my living situation or if I get rid of this partner or if I do these different things then life will get better.

And that's a certain type of happiness that we have a confusion around,

Which is more a happiness around sometime later and not being able to uncover what's here right now.

And so when I look at,

I want to talk today about,

You know,

How to find happiness in an F'd up world.

And so,

You know,

When I think about happiness,

People,

Some people are right here that are listening to this right now are reviewing what happiness is all about.

I think about two different kinds of happiness.

I think about the kind that a lot of us are used to or a lot of people in the world are used to,

Which is this form of hedonic happiness,

Which is focused around pleasure.

It's focused around when I get this thing,

When this thing happens then I can be happy.

And then there's the type of happiness that the Greek called eudaemonic happiness.

Hedonic happiness is more around having a sense of purpose and meaning.

It's a deeper form of happiness that's more enduring.

It's not an I'll be happier when.

It's a can I find a sense of meaning and purpose in what's happening right now?

So it's important to think about like right now in our lives,

Like it's not the next thing that we're looking for is our mind kind of inclining towards thinking when something happens,

Then I'll feel better or something will change and my life will be better.

I think it's good to consider that and to ask yourself what's actually happening right now.

What are things in my control right now?

While life is like this way,

While things might be difficult or challenging that I can do that might be supportive to me and might move me towards feeling more connected and a greater sense of meaning or maybe a sense of purpose that can support me right now.

And there's so many things in the field of wellbeing research that points us to this.

For example,

We know that moving our bodies makes us feel good or as good for us is healthy for us.

We know that finding ways to connect with people,

Not how I can't connect anymore,

But what are ways that I can connect can be supportive to us.

We know that things like forgiveness and letting go of things as a practice can be healthy for us.

We know that eating better makes us feel better.

It makes our body feel better.

We know that getting better sleep and inclining towards that supports us.

There's so many things that are,

We know that watching good meaningful shows can sometimes be a source of joy.

There's so many things that are out there that are happy.

Now we don't have to and they can support us.

Now we don't have to pick all of them.

That's the beauty of it.

There might be a whole plethora of things.

If we go online right now and say,

What does the science say about supporting my wellbeing?

There could be like a hundred things that are listed by different people.

The beauty of it is we don't have to do a hundred things.

We just have to do,

We just have to start engaging.

We have to just ask ourselves the question,

What can I do?

What am I drawn to?

And just start kind of doing that as a practice.

In other words,

In some ways we're treating the situation that's here.

We're applying different things to the situation that's here.

So sometimes I use the metaphor of a soup and I've used this before.

If you've heard me talk before that we have a soup and this is our life right now and maybe a whole lot of pepper has been thrown into this soup and we can't extract the pepper from it.

If someone said,

I just don't like the taste of that pepper.

I don't like the taste of my life right now.

We can extract the pepper out.

It's already been mixed in,

But we can do a start adding some things in there.

So sometimes it's simple in some way to ask ourselves like,

What can I do?

What kind of things,

Ways can I treat myself?

Maybe in more loving ways.

What kind of ways can I give to others?

And what impact does that have on me?

What type of practices and rituals can I be that am I already doing?

Or can I begin to integrate into my life that might make this soup taste better?

And what if I just chose a few of those and asked myself,

What can I do instead of what can't I do,

Which is where our brain typically goes.

So we think about that.

What are some practices I can do that can support me?

Is it meditation?

Is that supported to me?

Is it taking walks and being able to look around with a beginner's mind and see things as if for the very first time?

Is it to take a walk and be aware that I can even take a walk at all and also be aware of the colors that are around me and how amazing it is that I even have this site at all as a practice,

Right?

Not as a Pollyanna approach,

But as a practice.

Can I move my body more?

What are some things that I can begin to bring into my life to help me find resiliency?

And even if I dare say the word happiness,

Because it's a real word and if I feel more connected,

I can almost be sad and happy at the same time.

It depends on your definition of happiness.

If the definition of happiness is psychological well-being,

I feel like there's a sense of openness and balance that's here and I can hold this feeling that's here.

It's okay.

And I can also be aware of the good while being aware of the challenging at the same time.

In other words,

This challenging thing is happening,

But all these other things are still available to me.

You notice how I use that word a little differently.

Oftentimes the way our mind is going to use it is,

Yeah,

This good thing happened,

But look at the world right now.

Look at the situation I'm in.

Look at the challenges I have ahead of me.

Then that negates that first sentence.

But if you switch it around and say,

These challenging things are happening,

But look at these good things that are still here.

These things that I can still do,

These rituals,

Practices,

These joys in the world that I can attend to that are all real.

They're real.

I'm not making this stuff up.

And I'm holding both.

I'm allowing for both.

We can use that as kind of a practice.

So what really,

What can I do?

One of the things that I found that is the most impactful thing for me during this time,

And I think many of you will resonate with this,

Is a particular practice of appreciation and gratitude.

It's an overused term.

And it sometimes gets diluted by a lot of the media articles out there or just by being said in so many ways.

But to me,

The proof is in the eating of the pudding.

If I wake up in the morning and I think about someone that I care about and I remember what it is about them that I appreciate so much as a person,

Maybe some things they do or some ways they are,

All of a sudden I wake up in the morning with a sense of appreciation and connection versus just whatever other routine I have in the morning.

If I take time out in the day to remember moments in my life that I'm so appreciative for,

I'm really happy it happened.

And I visualize it like a movie in my mind and pause it at the peak moment.

I feel it in my body and it's real.

I'm not making it up.

And it's a practice that inclines me towards connection and feeling good too at the same time.

It's a little bit of eudaemonic and hedonic happiness there in that moment.

And it's real.

It's not made up.

It's a real memory.

I'm not fabricating something.

These are wonderful practices that can support all of us in finding a sense of happiness during this time.

And again,

I use that word if that word happiness is like,

Ah,

What does that really mean?

It's just optimistic thinking then just take it for like feeling alive and balanced and full in life.

And so this is a wonderful practice to have.

And if you were to journal any of this down,

Not just the five things you're grateful for,

But how you felt in doing any practice like this,

Then you could review it before you went to bed or even in the morning.

And it brings it top of mind.

You see all these things that we love in life or appreciate in life or are grateful for in life get buried by all the news and all the,

It's not even the news,

It's the way we attend to it,

By all the other things that take our attention and by our natural bias towards fearful and dangerous things.

But it's all there.

And so all we want to do is bring it top of mind.

And so this is a practice that does that.

And even journaling and writing it down is a wonderful thing.

It's also worthwhile if you were to do a meditation practice to say,

I want to spend a little bit more time with this.

There's lots of structured meditation practices that bring appreciation and gratitude alive.

The different ways of making this come alive in your life.

Here's another way.

Yesterday or two days ago,

I was on a call with a client.

I have a small private practice and I was suggesting to him,

Cause he was having a hard time filling down that he thought about the similar practice that we're talking about right now.

And,

But instead of just thinking about it to pause and write that person and tell them what it is you're appreciating about them.

Now this is a,

And I'll,

This will be a little stereotypical for a minute,

But you have to humor me cause it fits with this client of mine.

This is,

This was hard for him cause he was a younger male and it was a little touchy feely and to be able to reach out to another friend of his and say,

Hey,

This is,

I just want to share this with you.

This is what I'm appreciative of you for.

I challenged him to like move beyond the vulnerability of it and just to see if he did it,

How he felt.

And we got off the phone and because it's COVID time and so we do this all stuff.

We do this stuff by phone only.

And,

And he was just amazed by how he felt.

He texted me back.

So that was great.

That went really well.

I got a text back on how appreciative the guy was of hearing that.

And it's great.

And it created a stronger connection in that moment that giving him that practice inspired me to do the same thing,

Which I,

I immediately reached out to my dad who was the person in my life who initially wrote a book.

And I was just amazed that he wrote a book.

The book was called life can be this good.

And he wrote a book and it made me realize like,

Well,

Maybe if he wrote a book,

Then I can write a book and I'm writing a new book right now.

And so I wrote to him and I said,

I just want to thank you for inspiring me to,

Or to even believe in myself that I could actually write a book and write a book that I'm writing right now.

He wrote back big purple hearts,

Lots of red hearts,

Like,

You know,

That kind of thing.

And I know that really made him feel good.

It made me feel good.

And so this is like a thing we can now bring this great gratitude practice appreciation practice and bring it out into our lives and give.

So now we're turning it from gratitude to generosity and it's regenerative.

And we know this.

And even me telling you this right now might only be bringing this top of mind.

It might not even be news,

But if all it does is take it from,

Takes it from the bottom of your mind,

It brings it top of mind and then turns it into some kind of action,

Then that's time well spent.

And so considering this,

How to bring this kind of happiness even in this f-ed up world right now,

Like how this could actually be something that we could do.

And we don't need to compare ourselves to others along the way.

You don't need to say like,

Well,

This person,

This person,

This person so so well over here,

So happy,

Or obviously is full of appreciation,

Gratitude,

We can,

We can get lost in our social media comparisons.

We can take note of that and just very gently bring ourselves back and say,

This is my life.

This is just about me.

This is just,

In other words,

This is just,

This is just what I'm doing right now.

I don't need to worry about what other people are doing,

But we can share it with each other to inspire each other about like,

You know,

This is something that I,

I do in my life that can be supportive.

So just thinking about things for you right now,

This was just one idea,

But how do I inspire a mindset even in difficult times to be able to incline my mind in this way to support myself and maybe even make the world a little bit better,

Make the,

Make the,

The,

The community I'm living with a little bit better just by me,

Me trying to do this for myself.

The,

The ripple effects are pretty awesome.

And then whatever we're holding onto,

That's kind of bringing us down something from the past.

Maybe we can,

We can practice forgiving ourselves for letting go of it.

And,

And we may,

And it's just about,

I'm,

I'm kind of ready to release the burden of being so hard on myself around things in my life or ways of being towards myself and we can let that go.

So considering this,

Considering these things when it comes to integrating this into our lives right now,

What can you do today in respect to any of the things that I've just been talking about to support you being a little bit happier or feeling a little bit more well in these times.

And I'll end with just this,

This poem that I quote quite a bit by Huffy is that many of you have heard already which is how did the rose ever open up and show to the world all its beauty?

It felt the encouragement of light against its being.

I mean,

It's just so true.

Otherwise we all remain too frightened.

Felt the encouragement of light against its being.

So just considering this,

We can come back to this again and again and again.