Ce mois-ci, le bonheur était à l’honneur grâce à la croisée des blogs. Un grand nombre de blogueurs ont participé et je les en remercie. D’autres ont répondu à la fatidique question « Qu’est-ce que le bonheur ? » devant ma caméra.
Voici un petit tour d’horizon des contributions :
Julien de World Emotions nous fait un exposé des fondements du bonheur basé sur quelques études de la psychologie positive. De manière didactique, il rappelle que le bonheur est en partie génétique ou lié aux conditions mais qu’une part importante peut être travaillée par des activités intentionnelles.
Max de Blog Homme rappelle les 3 piliers du bonheur énoncés par Martin Seligman, le fondateur de la psychologie positive, lors de son passage à TED.
Jérôme de Pourquoi entreprendre se penche sur une étude de l’APCE qui met l’accent sur le bonheur d’entreprendre puisque les entrepreneurs semblent être comme on dit en anglais « a happy crowd »
Isabelle de Idées blog sur la vie aborde le sujet du bonheur au travail. Elle rêve d’un monde non plus centré sur la productivité et la rentabilité mais sur l’humain. L’amorce de ce rêve c’est l’entrepreneuriat social qui donne du sens au travail.
Sylvie de Job avec vue partage avec nous une fable qu’un tunisien lui a racontée. Un homme malheureux gravit une montagne et rencontre son bonheur. Une histoire qui fait réfléchir : que comprendre ?
Sophie de Esprit de succès pose la question : vaut-il mieux chercher le bonheur ou le succès ? Lequel est l’œuf, lequel est la poule ? Heureusement, les études sur le sujet nous ouvrent des pistes.
Joanne Tatham de Vie Simple nous parle du bonheur dans l’instant, la sensation. Reconnaître la présence du bonheur par la légèreté ressentie. Puis faire confiance à l’intuition, à soi.
Gregory de Deviendra grand rappelle un premier pas simple et efficace pour ceux qui veulent inviter le bonheur dans leur vie : souriez.
Nicolas Pène du blog éponyme nous parle de capital bonheur et comment la thésaurisation se fait de l’intérieur.
Anaïs de Jobmachine nous dit : soyons positifs, décidons d’être heureux et créons un cercle vertueux car le bonheur ne dépend pas des facteurs extérieurs.
Sébastien de Bonnetblanc pose la question de comment être heureux au travail. Sa philosophie se rapproche de celle de Confucius “Choisissez un travail que vous aimez et vous n’aurez pas à travailler un seul jour de votre vie”
Sam de Sam… but different nous propose de faire un pas en arrière et de regarder le chemin parcouru ces derniers mois. A bas le pessimisme!
Jean-Philippe de Révolution Personnelle parle du bonheur à tout prix dans la société. Le bonheur ne va pas sans son pendant, le malheur. Il nous rappelle de chercher l’équilibre, le réalisme. Le bonheur c’est maintenant, dans les choses simples.
J’en profite pour vous faire remarquer le logo de « Aidons le Japon » dans la colonne à droite de ce blog. Jean-Philippe vit à Tokyo et est au cœur du cataclysme japonais. En échange d’un don à la croix rouge, il offre des ressources (livres, vidéos) créées par des blogueurs.
Voilà ainsi s’achève la croisée des blog de Mars. Je passe le témoin à Franck de Papablogueur.
Je publie habituellement tous les jeudis mais la machine était grippée. Je n’avais que fichtre du Bonheur, j’expérimentais des remous intérieurs. Il est facile de parler de la félicité quand tout vous sourit mais beaucoup plus difficile quand nos blocages personnels se dressent tels des murs face à nous.
Le nez dessus, je regarde vers le haut, à droite, à gauche et je me sens bien petite et impuissante. Je reconnais ce mur, la couleur et l’odeur de la brique. Je suis déjà passée par ici. Tiens, là, cette encoche, la violence de mon poing qui tentait de traverser, d’exterminer, de détruire ce mur qui n’avait rien à faire là.
Donc me voilà face au même mur. Il a toujours l’air aussi grand, aussi solide. Tout se déchaine en moi. Pourquoi suis-je à nouveau face à ce mur ? N’ai-je rien appris ? Colère, violence intérieure, constat d’impuissance. Vais-je devoir à nouveau subir mes émotions ? Mes pensées sont vampirisées, aspirées, squattées. Les émotions seules maitresses du navire, c’est la grand voile en folie et le risque d’un coup de bôme.
Eh bien ça va vous paraître bien banal mais, avec un peu d’aide, je viens de réaliser que les murs sont parfois là pour nous aider à formaliser ce que l’on veut en ayant devant les yeux ce que l’on ne veut pas. Grace à mon mur, je comprends ce que je désire. J’ai presque honte d’écrire ça parce que c’est d’une simplicité déroutante mais jusqu’ici je n’arrêtais pas de me dire « je ne veux pas ça, je ne veux pas ça » et je fuyais, niais, combattais alors qu’il suffisait de rajouter « si je ne veux pas ça, c’est que je veux ceci ».
Je me concentre sur ceci et je longe le mur jusqu’à ce que ceci apparaisse.
J’aimerais maintenant partager avec vous l’interview de Stéphanie rencontrée le même soir que Yann au cinquante. Elle avait trouvé un peu trop facile de résumer le bonheur à quelques mots car quand la vie ne nous fait pas de cadeaux, tout ça ce ne sont que des belles paroles. J’ai retrouvé Stéphanie pour qu’elle puisse nous donner son point de vue qui fait écho aux difficultés que j’avais de parler du bonheur cette semaine.
When I was younger, I studied Economics at the University. I had to use esoteric terms, complicated theories, hypothesis “all things being equal”, going from micro to macro… I felt I had to understand a monster created by us but not for us.
We have to feed the giant to maybe have a chance to see him do what we want him to do. The pulse of the beast: the GDP. But didn’t we develop all those tools to have a better life? Is it working? What’s the point of all that if human wellbeing is not in the center of our economics?
A small but famous country, Bhutan, is showing us a new way. Bhutan is Famous for it’s measurement of gross national happiness instead of GDP. But measuring happiness is a first step and doesn’t mean that the country is the country of happiness. A wave of suicide has been reported as a consequence of modernization and weaker family links.
Let me introduce you to my friend Gilles who is passionate about emotions and founded an emotion based city guide: Sencities. He is working with specialists in the field of emotions and introduced me to Florent from the Lab LUTIN (Imp in French). They pluged me on a machine that took several data like my heartbeat, my eyes movements and my breathing. The lab is studying and measuring our emotions for industrial purpose, in this lab it’s specifically for the videogame industry but we can easely imagine that it could be used to measure happiness eventhough for the moment they can’t make the difference between anger and happiness for example.
I tried an other machine/gadget/tool that claims it can raise your happiness level: hearthmath. It helps you monitor your emotions and through exercices coordinate your brain and your heart. It’s called coherence.
Technology is trying to measure happiness but on a world level it seems that happiness became a hot subject. Even the very famous social network Facebook launched an analysis of our happiness level using keywords in users status. Learn more about it with this article or this video.
But in the end do we need so many criterias to measure happiness?
In Hypertension and Happiness across Nations , David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald measured blood-pressure of 15,000 randomly sampled individuals from 16 countries. They compared well-being with high blood pressure and found evidence that suggests that happier nations report fewer blood-pressure problems. It matched happiness measurements that were made with a simple scale of subjective happiness.
This other study “examined the accuracy of measuring happiness by a single item (Do you feel happy in general?) answered on an 11-point scale (0-10). Its temporal stability was 0.86. The correlations between the single item and both the Oxford Happiness Inventory (OHI; Argyle, Martin, & Lu, 1995; Hills & Argyle, 1998) and the Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985; Pavot & Diener, 1993) were highly significant and positive, denoting good concurrent validity. Moreover, the single item had a good convergent validity because it was highly and positively correlated with optimism, hope, self-esteem, positive affect, extraversion, and self-ratings of both physical and mental health. Furthermore, the divergent validity of the single item has been adequately demonstrated through its significant and negative correlations with anxiety, pessimism, negative affect, and insomnia. It was concluded that measuring happiness by a single item is reliable, valid, and viable in community surveys as well as in cross-cultural comparisons.”
We can continue measuring cold data like money but I believe that there is space to use happiness as a legitimate indicator and driver for our society. Who’s in?
Astounding. I have a blog about happiness trying to conceptualise it and now I say there is no recipe.
It’s true. For me. Everything I write on this blog is my path on happiness. Those are the steps I made to understand my truth. I guess there are as many ways to reach happiness as there are individuals.
So yes you can try to squeeze happiness in a book or an application but true happiness is boundless and there could be as many books as people. My happiness is what you may sense in this blog through words. But It’s a every moment appreciation.
Happiness is a cursor. Happiness leads you to your true self.
True self could sound mystic but let’s take out the glitter. True self is for me when my thoughts, my emotions, my acts, my heart are in sync.
Happiness opens the doors of compassion, love, excitement, peace.
It’s the flow of coincidences, the smile, the quick steps on the pavements. Happiness is confidence, the eye quick to catch. Happiness floats around you, generous.
Sure now I can look back and see the books, the people, the events that touched me but take those same books, people, events and throw them at me in a different timing and I would have heard nothing.
There is no recipe to happiness. There is a questioning and a listening to the answer that can come in any shape like a dialogue with yourself.
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 ofomnipotence. 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.
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.
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.
To my biggest surprise nothing can through me off for a long time. Deceptions, feeling of rejection, anger, sadness, loneliness, nothing seems to stick anymore.
I remember being in New York. I was alone in the penthouse apartment floaded with sunlight. I was crying. I would sit on the stairs and cry. I would stand up at the window, look at the statue of liberty and whip. I would lay down on the sofa and stare at the ceiling.
I had it all! The apartment, the car, the outfit of a life on track. I had the fun nights in Manhattans, the home cooked meals with friends, the gym, the paycheck. And still sadness was sticking.
Now I can see that I was feeding it with interpretations, internal stories, my outlook on life.
So what is the difference?
I believe mainly two things have changed:
First, like if I had developed the negative roll, I see life differently. I see all situations, bad or good as opportunities, opportunities to experience and learn. And, if there is something I enjoy in life it is learning. This shift didn’t happened in a day but really started when I said to myself “Is there an other way to experience life?” That question alone brought to me a series of encounter that changed my life and my vision.
Second. Now, I use my emotions like if they were little flashing lights on a car board. Sadness is not a companion anymore; it is merely a nice refreshing shower.
I still experience uncomfortable situations and I feel emotions rising and kicking but I know two reassuring things:
One: I have been through it before and I overcame it.
Two: if it’s too overwhelming, I can retreat and switch it off. Yes just like that. I go to my place, I sit and I am me doing the best I can. I will deal with it but I take a little time off. As soon as I am alone, I am peaceful. It’s like those white flags or like we say when we are kids: “Thumbs up” (at least here in France). When you are in a game, it means, stop. Usually you stop the game to discuss the rules.
Now when I feel a negative emotion, I know it’s a signal. What does it mean? What triggered it? Is it an interpretation, an old vision or do I have to change a way, act differently?
I still have old patterns glued to my brain but even if I don’t stress on it, I know I will tackle it when the time is right.
I can’t give a definition of happiness yet but contrasts in my life give me hints as how to describe it.
Croisée des blogs: qu’est ce que le bonheur?
by Joanna on 27/03/2011
Ce mois-ci, le bonheur était à l’honneur grâce à la croisée des blogs. Un grand nombre de blogueurs ont participé et je les en remercie. D’autres ont répondu à la fatidique question « Qu’est-ce que le bonheur ? » devant ma caméra.
Voici un petit tour d’horizon des contributions :
Julien de World Emotions nous fait un exposé des fondements du bonheur basé sur quelques études de la psychologie positive. De manière didactique, il rappelle que le bonheur est en partie génétique ou lié aux conditions mais qu’une part importante peut être travaillée par des activités intentionnelles.
Max de Blog Homme rappelle les 3 piliers du bonheur énoncés par Martin Seligman, le fondateur de la psychologie positive, lors de son passage à TED.
Jérôme de Pourquoi entreprendre se penche sur une étude de l’APCE qui met l’accent sur le bonheur d’entreprendre puisque les entrepreneurs semblent être comme on dit en anglais « a happy crowd »
Isabelle de Idées blog sur la vie aborde le sujet du bonheur au travail. Elle rêve d’un monde non plus centré sur la productivité et la rentabilité mais sur l’humain. L’amorce de ce rêve c’est l’entrepreneuriat social qui donne du sens au travail.
Pour David de Etre Riche, le bonheur se chante et parle d’un moment très particulier.
Sylvie de Job avec vue partage avec nous une fable qu’un tunisien lui a racontée. Un homme malheureux gravit une montagne et rencontre son bonheur. Une histoire qui fait réfléchir : que comprendre ?
Sophie de Esprit de succès pose la question : vaut-il mieux chercher le bonheur ou le succès ? Lequel est l’œuf, lequel est la poule ? Heureusement, les études sur le sujet nous ouvrent des pistes.
Carole Perle de Futur actuel nous offre un poème à fleur de peau, une dentelle de bulles, un hommage à la vie.
Joanne Tatham de Vie Simple nous parle du bonheur dans l’instant, la sensation. Reconnaître la présence du bonheur par la légèreté ressentie. Puis faire confiance à l’intuition, à soi.
Gregory de Deviendra grand rappelle un premier pas simple et efficace pour ceux qui veulent inviter le bonheur dans leur vie : souriez.
Nicolas Pène du blog éponyme nous parle de capital bonheur et comment la thésaurisation se fait de l’intérieur.
Anaïs de Jobmachine nous dit : soyons positifs, décidons d’être heureux et créons un cercle vertueux car le bonheur ne dépend pas des facteurs extérieurs.
Monalisa de Bonheur pour les nuls nous fait voyager dans les visions du bonheur à travers les ages.
Sébastien de Bonnetblanc pose la question de comment être heureux au travail. Sa philosophie se rapproche de celle de Confucius “Choisissez un travail que vous aimez et vous n’aurez pas à travailler un seul jour de votre vie”
Sam de Sam… but different nous propose de faire un pas en arrière et de regarder le chemin parcouru ces derniers mois. A bas le pessimisme!
Jean-Philippe de Révolution Personnelle parle du bonheur à tout prix dans la société. Le bonheur ne va pas sans son pendant, le malheur. Il nous rappelle de chercher l’équilibre, le réalisme. Le bonheur c’est maintenant, dans les choses simples.
J’en profite pour vous faire remarquer le logo de « Aidons le Japon » dans la colonne à droite de ce blog. Jean-Philippe vit à Tokyo et est au cœur du cataclysme japonais. En échange d’un don à la croix rouge, il offre des ressources (livres, vidéos) créées par des blogueurs.
Voilà ainsi s’achève la croisée des blog de Mars. Je passe le témoin à Franck de Papablogueur.
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