“Writing from a moment of deep sorrow.
Tonight, I am alone in Spain. I feel lost. A dear friend touched a very ancient wound. I thought it was a cleared matter, a souvenir. But set the décor, rerun the script and bad memories come haunting you. You are only a nutshell on a furious ocean.
Where is happiness in those moments?
How can someone who is writing about happiness and living it everyday can make such a deep dip? I feel like a frog with my swollen eyes. Coldplay is signing melancholic songs for me, only for me. Far from everybody, I am a lonely soul. So where is happiness when my heart feels it has been left on the side of the road?
“If you ever feel neglected
If you think that all is lost
I’ll be counting up my demons”
It’s not the first time that the same demons come knocking so what is the way to go?
First, there was rage. It took over me. I was screaming, walking all over. I could have broken everything in the flat. Rage, what a curious emotion. Rage like a feeling of omnipotence. Rage, taking back the control over matter when you are totally losing it.
Second, there was self-pity. Why, why, why me?
Third, there was the need to run away. Fourth, fifth… just because the situation, the people touched a painful spot. I thought all this was far behind. What a surprise!
That’s where happiness lies: the truth. Oh yes, I wish I could be way ahead on the road but I still have some undone business to take care of. I have no clue on how to get this past me but I know that if I don’t change my methods of coping, it will rise again. It’s with a swollen heart that I wish I will get to a place of peace to talk to my friend. I know that in these moments you can be quickly overtaken by that suffering voice.
Happiness can’t ignore suffering just like with those kids in the japanese school.
I can’t hide or avoid. There are places, moments in this life that make me question the foundations of my happiness. It seems so clear and easy and suddenly concepts are shadowed by fierce emotions. But even then I can still see the shiny person within who is now coming back to the surface.
A happy life is not a life free of pain”
The next day coincidences started to knock at my door again as if life was winking at me and a new door opened. I learned a lot from that moment of despair and how your mind can focus on details to match with your internal scenario. In a world where communication is a central matter, I realize that mine shuts down in crucial moments, only to push myself in recurring stories.
I wanted to share that moment because happiness seems so obvious to me but that little shot reminded me that it will always be an ongoing process.
Ayurveda is often described as a holistic science of health and happiness. So I went for a week in an ayurvedic center in Normandy to take a massage class. I stricktly followed the vegetarian, ayurvedic diet.
The 5000-year old Indian system of medicine tells us what to eat, when to eat, how to reside and how to behave. It summons us to a kind of life style that is supposed to lead us to a better living and a long life.
The Ayurveda describes the nature of a happy and unhappy life ( Sukhayu and Dukhayu):
- Sukhayu (Happy) is the life with mental and physical satisfaction, good power of thinking, physical strength, healthy body, satisfaction in life, energy.
- Dukhayu (Unhappy) is the life full of mental tensions, diseased body, unsatisfaction in life.
According to Ayurveda, happiness implies feeding our body and mind with good food and education, entertaining healthy relationships with friends and family but also feeding our soul with righteousness. The Vedas (Sacred Texts of Hinduism) say that one can achieve happiness and health only by spiritual practice.
A flash in my mind. One of the key to my happiness is compassion.
I have always been very hard on myself. I always thought I might have some qualities but they were always overshadowed by my ugliness. Whether it was physical or mental, at times, it was unbearable to live with myself.
We are all made of light and darkness but again, your vision, the importance you give to one or the other is a major player in what you will feel and develop.
In 2005, I had left New York for a new job in Amsterdam. I was living in a very nice two storey flat in the antiquaire’s quarter. I believed firmly that the lack of meaning I had felt would be erased by a change of scenario. But amazingly, the same symetry in people, situations appeared in my new life! That’s when I asked: “Is there an other way to experience life?” and, shortly after, I met two women.
The first one was Teresa and was a masseuse. She was of Indian (American) descent and used bird feathers and drum music to gently rock your heart. She was very motherly and told me I was beautiful. She nourished my body and my heart.
The second one is Joëlle and is a therapist. She taught me a lot but the main door she opened was compassion.
I was talking with a friend this week who told me how even though she is a tuff cookie, she lately told her story to a group of strangers and the compassion she received changed her vision of life.
That’s what Joëlle did for me. I told her, and for the first time to someone, my story from A to Z and in one sentence of compassion, she opened a huge door in my heart. It felt as if someone was seeing me for the first time.
Once you have compassion for yourself, not self-pity or indulgence, but real compassion, you start to feel the happiness rising. You know you did the best you could with what you had. Now you take responsibility of your destiny and your own happiness. You can now give compassion to the people you cross path with because it has the power to free people from suffering, you’ve experienced it.
Well that’s what I experienced.
I almost forgot! Those two women, Teresa and Joëlle, popped into my life within the same week to teach me just as if I was a child learning the fundamentals of life again. My mother’s and father’s names are Thérèse and Joël. A coincidence.
http://www.dailymotion.com/videox2b3xk
I have a slow pace when it comes to writing on the blog but now it’s worse than ever. My commitment is one post every week and I am below that! I start to worry but Bobby McFerrin comes to my rescue teaching us one of the key to happiness: when you worry, you make it double.
Lately it seems everybody I meet has something to do with happiness: happiness diners, happiness teacher, happiness scientist… So I need to gather my thought and write but I didn’t find the right time. I also opened a french blog (tab above) because so many people are interested but don’t feel at ease with english.
I join the slow food movement and create the slow blog community. If you are a reader that likes to take it slowly: welcome! If you want more everyday use the “I Follow” in the sidebar.
BE HAPPY NOW
Follow the link if you can’t access the video : HOME
Today I went to the library to buy a book and I came back with five!
I went by the personal development section and discovered loads of books about happiness. It surprised me because I never realized there was so much literature on happiness.
You have to know that here, in France, people can be very cynical about happiness. Happiness is for fools or it’s a sect’s slogan. When you surf the web, most of the people writing, talking about happiness are Australian or American (it seems)(well I don’t speak Tamoul or Chinese).
But lately my beliefs are shaken. Everywhere I go, the topic comes up. Just this week, I was helping a friend at a festival and happiness was on everybody’s lips at conferences. Then a couple of days later, I was at a red light on my bike, and just there was a friend eating at a terrasse. I joined him for half an hour, only to discover that he was organizing happiness diners. They invite specialists on the subject like Ruut Veenhoven director of the World Database of Happiness and editor of the Journal of Happiness Studies and discuss.
I was in shock. A happiness tribe!
Since there is prolific information on the web about happiness (see my blogroll for exemple), I could contribute better by investigating what French have to bring to the table. I have a few people in mind and I hope that even if France is the world champion antidepressant consumer, it has the capacity to produce great happiness thinkers. To be continued…
In the meantime, he is not talking directly about happiness but he is French and I see an evident link between how we treat our planet and the fundamentals of happiness. As I exposed in a former post, when you start to investigate the subject of happiness, more stuff (when basics needs are met) is not doing the trick. Happiness doesn’t lie in having more, wasting, war, exploitation… Once every man will discover his inner happiness, the need to destroy our environment will not be the logics anymore. Well that’s what I believe but It seems I am an utopist ☺
So don’t miss this sublime movie that has been released for free in several languages for us to team up and improve the life of each one of us.
<Little souvenir from my stay in Brittany where I enjoyed my peace of mind >
Our body is a machine, a fined tuned machine, an unbelievable partner. I don’t know how you see your body but its mechanics are amazing. I ask “pull tongue to little boy” (bad bad girl), “shake but on dance floor”, “take fork, bring food” and you know what, my body does it for me! But that’s only one part! Once I have enjoyed that meal, he digests it and does all the work without me asking for it or even understanding how he is doing it. I may sound foolish but it is a miraculous thing to have a body. When I think about all what my body is doing for me, I often wonder why I am so cruel to him at times.
Anyway, that’s not the subject. My point today is to explore the chemicals of the body that induce happiness.
In the synapse, the space between two neurons, two neurotransmitters have been identified to be major players in affecting our moods: serotonin and dopamine.
Dopamine acts as a pacemaker: if we have too much, we are restless; too little, we are slow.
Serotonin acts as an antidepressant. If you produce a lot of it, you have a tendency to have a positive representation of the world. However, the production of serotonin obeys to a genetic determinant. Certain genes produce long proteins, which enables them to carry more serotonin.
But if those neurotransmitters are the key to happiness why is there a gap between the day a patient swallows his pill and the effect? Why do antidepressants reduce negative emotions, such as anxiety and fear, but do not seem to boost optimism or extroversion? (1998 study - Brian Knutson)
In addition to the neurotransmitters, hormones would also have their say in the mechanics of happiness. Among them, endorphin is a molecule secreted into the brain, blocking the transmission of painful stimuli. That’s why sport is key to happiness since 30 minutes of exercise will increase your endorphin secretion five times.
Other hormones might have a role to play such as estrogen or testosterone. Even if they have clues , scientists are still investigating the chemistry of happiness.
If tomorrow, the pharmaceutical industry launched a pill that would trigger all the right hormones and neurotransmitters for happiness, would you take it? Isn’t happiness also the joy of overcoming difficult times? Isn’t sadness necessary?
Imagine that one day such a pill could be used to make everything OK. A dictator, a guru, any abusive person could drive users because you are happy, happy, stupid! I really doubt that the chemistry is our way to happiness just like the Dollhouse guy said, happiness is nothing without awareness or even will.
I am not a specialist in this subject but “the how of happiness“ by Sonja Lyubomirsky was a good overview of what is positive psychology to me. It was the book that hooked me on the subject.
Sonja develops 12 strategies to a happier life:
- Practicing Gratitude,
- Cultivating a More Optimistic Outlook,
- Avoiding Rumination and Social Comparison,
- Building Social Networks,
- Practicing Kindness,
- Developing Coping Strategies,
- Practicing Forgiveness,
- Increasing Flow,
- Savoring Joys,
- Setting and Working Toward’s Goals,
- Engaging in Spirituality,
- Developing Body and Mind
But the beauty of it is that it is based on empirical research.
It spoke to my left brain giving it loads of experiments and numbers to crunch. And it talked to my right brain because it’s all that has been great with my life lately and it was written black on white. I loved that book.
I immediately did a search on the net and I am now following Sonja’s blog and have enjoyed her work overview video at google. And if you have less than 5 minutes here is a casual TV interview:
Sonja is also the cocreator of an Iphone application to be released by signal patterns: Live Happy
I highly recommend this book to those of you who want an entrance door to positive psychology.
