A TRUE KEY TO HAPPINESS

The world has never been busier trying to be happy than it is right now. We buy. We work. We create. We diet. We exercise. We set goals. We work two jobs. We work three jobs. We get more education. Read more books. Attend more seminars. We leave our kids at daycare. We don’t eat together as a family because we’re so busy. We sit in our cars or in trains for hours as we go to and from work. We despoil the planet.

On and on it goes. We’re like mice on a spinning exercise wheel racing towards happiness.

That must be where we think we’re going, towards happiness, or else why would we do all this stuff? Why would we spend less time with our family and friends, less time in our homes hanging out, less time playing together, less time in the garden, less time chatting aimlessly, less time eating leisurely, and less time simply doing things for no other reason than that we simply enjoy doing them?

Why, in one form or another, do we work so hard?

Yes, you might say, but I enjoy my work. I enjoy it more than anything else.

If that’s true for you, that’s great. You can count yourself amongst the lucky ones, because for the last fifty years the trend has been for decreasing satisfaction with work.

As a matter of fact, studies show that there seems to be decreasing satisfaction with many things.

Throughout the 1950’s, Gallup Poll data showed that the British were happier than they are now. In 1957, for example, 52% of the respondents said they were ‘very happy’ as compared to 36% who say they are ‘very happy’ today.

Interestingly, during the same period of time, from the 1950’s to the present, the average person in Britain has experienced a 200% increase in wealth, but a decrease in happiness.

This kind of data has been collected for many countries around the world. R.D Putnam reports in Bowling Alone that in 1955 44% of Americans enjoyed their working hours more than anything else they did. In 1999, only 16% of Americans could say the same thing.

During the same period, from 1955 to 1999, the country had enjoyed great economic prosperity but it did not make people happier.

            Japan has experienced a 500% increase in income over the last 40 years, but the level of happiness has remained unchanged, and may even be showing a slight dip, and that was before the current economic crisis.

For fifteen countries in Europe, the decade ending in 2000 showed either no increase in happiness or a slight decline, though Europe experienced great economic expansion during the decade. 

More prosperity, more money, and more success, do not seem to make us happier; in fact, the opposite seems to be true.

Of course, we need enough money to buy food, clothes, shelter, necessities, health care, and the like, but that amount of money is surprisingly low in comparison to our aspirations, which can seemingly be unlimited. And those unlimited aspirations, those attempts to be all you can be, and to have all you can have, is making us less, rather than more happy.

We know this. We’ve heard the saying. Money can’t buy happiness. Or love. And yet we go right on doing just that as we increase our unhappiness and deplete the planet. 

Why?

It’s a long, deep, and convoluted story, and not fully understood, but it has something to do with the way we understand things. It has to do with our brains, our wiring, with the fact that we sort of have two brains, the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere, and that though both contribute to our view of the world, the views are different and they often clash.

Right now the left hemisphere, what we can call logic central, is in ascendancy. And the right hemisphere, the be-here-now, the go-with-the-flow hemisphere is getting a good whooping from the left hemisphere.

Put simply, we’re out of our right minds and in our left minds, and we’ve lost sight of the things that make us truly happy.

We’ve had our eyes on the prize, or prizes, but it’s been the wrong prize.

You can’t go at happiness directly. You have to go towards the things that you think will make you happy or allow happiness to arise. And the very act of going towards is part of the problem. Goal-directed activity is a very left-brained activity and it can interfere with happiness, because happiness is only here and now, in the moment, if it’s anywhere. As the pace of activity has heated up around the world happiness has gone down and depression has skyrocketed.

So if money and stuff and goal-directed activity don’t make us happy, what does?

Health? You’d think so, but research doesn’t support that.

There could be a number of things, but in his research Robert Putnam found that in the U.S. and around the world happiness is best predicted by, ‘the breadth and depth of one’s social connections.’

            That’s it. Now we know where the real ‘prize’ is. It’s in the depth and breadth of our friendships and relationships. It’s in our connections with our family, our friends, and our community.

And how might you increase ‘the breadth and depth’ of your social connections, other than the obvious ways of spending more time and energy in these areas of your life?

Fortunately, that question has been studied by researchers, too.

(As you can see, the left hemisphere is a good thing to have because it helps you do this kind of research. The problem occurs when things get too out of balance, as they seem to be doing during this time in history.)

One key to deepening one’s ability to connect with others is a healthy acceptance of ourselves. And how do we achieve a healthy acceptance of ourselves? By being open and vulnerable. By being honest and present and willing to let go of control, predictability and safety. By being okay just as we are, which means standing still and accepting ourselves as we are, unfinished to-do lists and all.

Herein lies one of the keys to the mystery of why we often find ourselves wrongly going after things like money and possessions that leave us less happy. Money and possessions are about security and control. They’re left-brained activities. It’s how the left brain goes after happiness.

They’re the opposite, in many respects, of vulnerability and openness to whatever happens in the moment, the domain of the right hemisphere. Control, invulnerability, and protected-ness interfere with our ability to develop deep connections with others. They interfere with our ability to cultivate the soil of happiness.

We have to stand still long enough to connect. To stand still, we have to accept our selves and our lives just as they are. As we accept, we open, to ourselves and to those around us. As we open, our connection deepens and broadens. And a smile comes across our face, but we don’t know it, not yet, because happiness has found us, and we haven’t found happiness. We’re happy, so happy that we will only know about it later, when happiness has passed a bit and our left hemisphere can take a look at it and enjoy the afterglow.

So, the next time you notice yourself racing towards things you think will make you happy, stop and realize that you will never be happy till you slow down and connect, first with yourself, and then with whatever and whomever is around you. That connection, not more money or things or achievements, is the foundation of the happiness we seek.

            Namaste.
            I can be reached at drjohnluca@gmail.com and 805/680-5572

LIFE IS SHORT WE MUST MOVE VERY SLOWLY

What are we to make of this so-called ‘new’ year? It’s just a bookkeeping trick anyway, isn’t it? It just happens to be the first day of a new year, but really it is just another day.

That’s true enough. To the trees in the neighborhood, and the rocks resting in the park, it’s just another day.

Actually, it’s not. Trees and rocks don’t know squat about time and days and death and all of that. And that’s the point. We are time-bound beings, at least on the level where we live here on earth.

We may talk about the timeless, those of us inclined towards the spiritual, the mystical, the philosophical, but all of us live in time, and we know it. After a certain age, we’re all conscious that the clock is ticking, and though we may not like to think about it, we know what happens when the clock stops and time runs out.

That’s why to some degree or another we psychologically register the beginning of a new year around January 1^st or whatever day begins the calendar we adhere to.

I’ve seen a picture called the Hand of Death. Some people don’t like it. There’s an old woman, lovely, to my mind, with a gentle but old and somewhat skeletal hand reaching towards her, about to touch her left shoulder. It’s the hand of death. To those chased by time, worried that the game will end all too quickly, the drawing is a painful reminder of something we would rather not be reminded of: death is coming.

What a macabre subject to be writing about, you might be saying, especially at the beginning of a new year when we should be setting goals and making plans and diving into life with vision and gusto as we plunge into 2011. (That’s what my last blog, You Can Too Make Commitments That Work, was about.)

Yes, we set goals--I do anyway--and we set course for the new year, and we look back at what we’ve done and how our lives have gone. But I think we need to be careful and attentive.

What are our annual New Year’s resolutions, our commitments, our goals, our plans, in light of the unarguable truth of our death?

If you stay with this for a moment, though you may not like it at first, you may come upon something surprising.

I’m in my fifties, not old, I would like to think, but I am no longer at an age where I feel as if I will live forever. I know now for certain, like I did not when I was younger, that I will die.

And the unexpected thing about that is I am also more in touch with a sense of timelessness than ever before. The awareness of the fact that I will not live forever, that my time is limited, somehow opens me up to a greater appreciation of the present moment in such a way that I have a clearer sense of the timeless quality of life. This is tricky to explain, but I feel like someone who is visiting a place he truly loves and is on the last day of his vacation. He looks around and his eyes take in the place and he breathes in the place in a way that a native of that place might never do. The native has more time, so he can take the place for granted and maybe never look at it deeply, never see it clearly, unlike the man who must leave and knows he may never return.

An awareness of death, of the limited time we have, opens our eyes to the beauty, the depth, the poignancy and the fleeting quality of this place we call home and so often take for granted. Paradoxically, our awareness that our time is limited can slow us down enough so that we can be still long enough and quiet enough to open up to the timelessness of the present moment. We open up and hold, as Blake said, “the world in a grain of sand and see infinity in an hour.”

We live in two worlds. That’s why we have a brain with two separate hemispheres. We live in time. We live in our plans, our work, our goals, and our history.

But we also sense the timeless.

Maybe it’s when we’re out on a quiet walk looking up at the stars or into the eyes of a newborn child, or when we breath deeply into our own mortality that we open up to the timeless mystery of the moment, the ineffable sacredness of existence, and the shock of our being conscious in the world.

It’s the beginning of a new year, time to dream, and plan, and work, and build, and create. Be a force in the world. But also allow yourself to open to the timeless, to that which was here before you arrived and will be here after you are gone. See if you can live your life with the here and now, and with the timeless presence of ancient hills, with eyes that look at the world as if you were 10,000 years old and had never taken a step, but had still learned to watch the flowing river of life with a sense of peace and acceptance and gratitude.

You will never achieve all your goals. You will never do everything on the big to-do list. There will always be another article to write, another walk to take, another conversation to have, another problem to solve, another deal to make.

 That’s our life in time. That’s us trying to live fully and deeply. But no matter how hard we try, we will never take it all in, at least not that way. There comes a time when all our getting and gathering comes to a stop.

So, live your life if you can with the awareness of the timeless. Let infinity find you. But to do so, you must have some time, some space, and some opening. You must have the eyes and the heart of the traveler who is in the town square for the last time, knowing that soon he leaves, never to come this way again.

In that last glance, it’s like the traveler looks right through the present moment to the timeless heart of the place, to the heart of all places. It touches him and opens him to the mystery of the ages. In that glance and in that moment he sees more than he ever has in his life, and he feels more alive and more present.

It’s not the place that does it. It’s his eyes that do it to the place. He sees through the place, through the present moment, to all places and all times. And for that moment he lives and is truly thankful for his life.

So, be a traveler in your own place. Have eyes that see deeply and a heart that responds accordingly.

The journey is not to see new places, but to have eyes that see anew.

Be well. Plan, Work. Create. But remember to see the present moment as deeply and as richly as you can, and to do that, you must let yourself be still so that the timeless can find you.

Namaste.

            I can be reached at drjohnluca@gmail.com or 805/680-5572.
            

YOU CAN TOO MAKE NEW YEAR'S COMMITMENTS THAT WORK

             So, this is it, the end of 2010, and the beginning of 2011, but before we leap from one year into the next, let’s take a look back and see what our 2010 looks like. This is in preparation for 2011.

             Take some time to look over your year and list some of the good things you made happen.                 

             Oftentimes, we don’t do this and feel that we haven’t done much, or anything, but if you take the time to look, you will see that you did quite a bit.

             Did you go to the gym more often than in the past? Did you improve your golf game or your ability to bike long distances? Did you deepen your relationship with someone? Did you weather the financial storm of 2010 with a better attitude than you might have in the past? Did you take on a new job? Learn a new skill? Improve your diet? Your attitude? Your relationships? Your living situation? Did you stretch in any way? Reach out to someone or something new? Help anyone, including yourself and your family? Go on an adventure with the family? Take care of business, somehow? 

              How did you deliver in 2010?

              It’s important to not restrict yourself to only one area such as finances. Do not reduce yourself to homo economicus who tallies his or her life solely in terms of dollars and cents. Remember love, friendship, and mental, physical, and spiritual well-being. It may be helpful to review your year looking at the broad categories of career, finances, family, personal growth, leisure, adventure, legacy and charitable work.

              It can be a little scary to write down what you’ve done, because your critic wants to get in there and tell you how little you’ve actually done. But that’s the very reason to do it: to stop the critic in its tracks.            

              Oftentimes, we think the way to get ourselves to get anything done is to criticize ourselves, to whip ourselves like unwilling horses; we forget that a spoon of sugar and a carrot are often a better way to get any horse to do the right thing.

               So, give yourself the scary gift of listing some of what you’ve done this past year. Acknowledge yourself. (Which can also be scary.) Share it with a friend or family member. (Which can be even scarier.)

   I would be honored if you would share what you've done with me via email. As encouragement, I will list a dozen or so things that I helped make happen in 2010 that I am happy about and grateful for.

Started a blog and posted over 50 articles.

Secured a weekly online column at the Independent, and a different column at the Noozhawk.

I asked Lisa to marry me.

Sold off unprofitable real estate and solidified our financial position.

Started a second men’s group.

Worked with clients privately and in small workshops to help them live the lives they want.

Wrote a rough draft of a self-help book.

Meditated every day.

Went on a number of adventures with the family, including taking my 90-year-old mom to New York, and my son backpacking in the Sierras.

Finished another year of Somatic Experiencing training.

Attended workshops at UCLA and elsewhere.

Co-led two men’s retreats.

Was a good dad to my four children, a good friend, and a good partner.

 Now, it’s your turn. Make a list of a dozen things or so that you made happen in 2010 that you are happy about. Take in what you’ve done. Let yourself feel empowered by how you’ve lived this past year.       

Stay positive. Do not go into “yeah, but” mode where your critic wants to shower you with the dung of how you ‘should’ve, could’ve, and would’ve’ done better. The power of this exercise is to silence the critic and take in and be grateful for all that you’ve been able to do this past year.

That's part one.

Now, for the second part.

Let yourself feel the energy and satisfaction of what you’ve done this past year. Let it empower you. Now envision what the next year might hold in store for you. What would you like to make happen?

Oscar Wilde wrote, “New Year’s resolutions go in one year and out the other.”

We all know that so many of our resolutions go by the wayside, but it is also true that we are much more likely to do something if we commit to doing so. I, for example, meditated haphazardly for over thirty years, some days doing it, some days not. Sometimes a month would pass and I wouldn’t meditate. A little more than two years ago, before a group of men, I committed to meditating every day. I’ve done so ever since.

Making a commitment, especially to a group, can be very empowering. I made a commitment last year to two local papers to write at least two articles per week, and I’ve done so every week since then.

            What commitments do you want to make for the coming year? Do you want to exercise more? Do you want to reach out to others and deepen your relationships? Do you want to write, sing, dance, or play? Do you want to pray more? Apply for a new job? Learn a new skill? Practice gratitude and acceptance for things just as they are, including yourself?

Whatever it is, go for it.

            Here are some of mine:

I commit to finishing my book this year and sending it out to publishers and agents. 

I commit to finishing the classes for my fifth graduate degree.

I commit to hiking Evolution Basin next summer with Lisa.

I commit to deepening my relationship with my children by being there for them on a daily and weekly basis throughout the year, for example, by talking with them, texting them, visiting them, taking them to the library, playing games with them, and sharing meals with them.

I could go on, but that’s what I have the courage for right now.

What about you?

Go public with your commitments. I would appreciate it if you would send them to me. Think about your commitments carefully. You are committing to them. They are not just dreams, wishes, or nebulous goals. Be specific. Be realistic. Set time limits. Be thoughtful about your choices. You are saying you are going to do them. 

            If you are interested I am offering a workshop on Saturday, January 22^nd, 2011 for setting goals and making commitments for the year. We’ll explore what is at the root of your choices and expose any resistance you might be having. Research has shown that it takes about 10 weeks or so for people to get established in new habits or to change old ones, so I’m offering follow-up classes that will meet each week for ten weeks on Tuesday evenings from 5-6:30.

            So, list some of what you’ve done this past year, then stick your neck out and make some commitments for the coming year. Enjoy. And give thanks. And Happy New Year to You and Yours!

Namaste.
            I can be reached at drjohnluca@gmail.com or 805/680-5572

WHAT HAVE I EVER LOST BY LOSING?

The Buddha somehow did a lot with his life, so did Jesus, and Gandhi. I’m calling these guys winners, same goes for Mother Teresa.

Winners win, and losers…well, you know what losers do. And who wants to lose?

Play along with me here, and don’t get too philosophical about the whole win/lose thing.

Can you see yourself as a winner? Can you see yourself, as master coach Robert Hargrove asks, living an inspiring impossible future that you can passionately engage in?

Can you begin to live that future right now?

One of our challenges is that often we are semi-guided missiles. We have a target, maybe, but once we hit it, we’re done. And it’s off to the next target.

This is fine, if we’re enjoying the journey. It’s deadly if we’re not.

We have to keep our eye on the separation between who we are and who we want to become. Of course, we’re all about change and growth and learning and all that good stuff, but just like your vision of an impossible future draws you forwards, it can pull you away from the present moment where all the gifts and all the blessings are.

The great dance is to embrace the present moment as fully as possible with all its faults and shortcomings, and yet move ahead trying to learn, and grow, and even do the impossible. Impossible is the way of the universe, by the way. Impossible stuff like flowers and babies are happening in and around you all the time. It’s how you play the game of life that matters. That having been said, here’s an interesting little win/lose game for you to play.

Ask yourself, and answer quickly and generously, “How have I won?”

            Here are some of my answers to serve as an example.

I have won the being a human game (rather than the being a pet rock or an ashtray game).

I have won the love game.

I have won the divorce game.

I have won the parenting game.

I have won the being a son game.

I have won the great place to live game.

I have won the real estate game.

I have won the laughter game.

I have won the spiritual journey game.

I have won the education game.

I have won the health game.

I have won the travel game.

I have won the love of nature game.

I have won the friendship game.

I have won the writing game.

How can you win at divorce? I won because we did it well, with respect and decency and concern for the children. How can you say you won the real estate game? A few articles ago, you said you lost your shirt this last year. I did, but I’ve done some great remodels and I’ve made much more than I’ve lost.

Play the game. Look at all the things you have ‘won’. Did you learn to speak, walk, and write? If so, you’ve won the speaking game, the walking game and the writing game. Have you ever loved anyone or anything? Then you’ve won the love game.

The idea is to take your winnings to heart and embrace them.

So, how are you a winner? What have you won?

Just in case you’re stuck on being a loser, here’s an interesting game for you to play.

Ask yourself, “How have I won the losing game? How have I won by losing?”

I’ve lost a lot of sorrow in my life.

I’ve lost some old habits.

I’ve lost some negative self-talk.

I’ve lost some emptiness.

I’ve lost some fear.

I’ve lost some ignorance.

I’ve lost some old stories.

I’ve lost some guilt.

I’ve lost some failures.

I’ve lost some limiting beliefs.

Now, please, play the winning and losing game for yourself, even if only in your head. If you do this seriously, you will be surprised at how well you’ve lived your life, how much you’ve gained by losing, and how much of a winner you really are already

Now, let’s really blow the doors off our little game and bring in the big guns. Here’s a little Rumi for some serious perspective on this whole winning and losing business.

For millions & millions of years I lived as a mineral.
Then I died and became a plant.
For millions & millions of years I lived as a plant.
Then I died and became an animal.
For millions & millions of years I lived as an animal.
Then I died and became a man.
Now what have I ever lost by dying?
- Rumi

Have fun and burn bright. And don’t be a pain in the neck.

THEY SAY IT'S YOUR BIRTHDAY

Today is my oldest daughter’s birthday. Gianna is twenty-six. I’m proud of her. I’m proud of all my four children.

She’s working on her Ph.D. She’s a scientist. She loves lab work. 

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a scientist. Einstein was my hero. I wanted to be a physicist like him, studying the universe. I was a nerd. I had a lab in my basement. I competed in math competitions, and won both times. I dreamt of being the next Einstein.

But I never became a scientist. Just couldn’t pull it off. Didn’t even major in physics in college, or any other science. It was an unfulfilled dream that quietly gnawed at me over the years. Went back to school to get a masters in math, but didn’t go on for the doctorate. The unfulfilled dream at times became a festering wound that never fully healed.

I did teach high school math and physics. Some of my students went on to graduate school, and I did interview Walter Kohn, a Nobel Laureate, a physicist who won the award for his work in quantum chemistry. That was as far as I got.

            Now my oldest daughter is working on a doctorate in pharmacology. She researches compounds with possible applications to cancer treatment. I get to see my dream of becoming a scientist materialize in her as she does her work in Ann Arbor. 

And today is her birthday. She’s making her dream come true, a dream inspired by a gifted high school chemistry teacher.

But most dreams do not come true, at least not how we might have thought. I never became a scientist. I did not remain married to my daughter’s mom. My daughter’s life has been no different. She’s suffered her share of setbacks. Same thing was true for Einstein. Even he had his challenges, like his mentally ill son, and his strained relations with the people in his life. He struggled for over forty years to come up with a theory that would unify the forces of nature. He never succeeded. He was considered a bit of a flop by many younger physicists as he aged, though he’s not viewed that way now

            For a long time I was unhappy because I wanted my life to be a certain way. I wasn’t completely sure what it was, but I knew there was something missing and it made me unhappy. In Buddhism I would be classified as a grasping or greed type, always wanting more.

But I’ve learned. I learned to live more in the here and now, with what life offers, with the day-to-day. I’ve come to appreciate my life more than my idea of my life. Before I would argue with what is and miss it and not appreciate it. Now I see that the wonder of my life and my existence far exceeds any shortcomings I might imagine about my life. There is a hair’s breadth between me and Einstein compared to the distance between me being alive and me never having existed. The gift of life, whether mine or Einstein’s, is so staggeringly great and profound, that to lose sight of that gift by focusing on the differences between my life and his is like finding yourself at the most magnificent banquet table prepared by Merlin himself and wondering if your seat was as comfortable as the next guy’s.

You can indulge in that sort of thing if you insist, but it’s a sure recipe for unhappiness, even while in heaven. Now I know that some people suffer profoundly through no fault of their own, but that has not been my lot. Though I did my best, much of my suffering has been self-inflicted.

            And so, on my daughter’s birthday, my prayer for her and for all my children is not that they get the life they want, though I hope they do, but that they love the life they have.

LONGING FOR HAPPINESS

You think you know where you want to go. It’s hard enough just trying to get there. That part you know too well, and you’ve learned to accept it, mostly. But what if a Harvard professor, the Harvard College Professor of Psychology, Daniel Gilbert, told you—supported by about 350 references—that you were pretty much clueless about what would make you happy in the future? Gilbert starts his book with a quote that pretty much sums it up:

“One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness; one only stumbles upon them by chance[.]” 

Willa Cather

If you thought the book of your life might, if you were lucky, be entitled Sailing Towards Happiness, Gilbert argues you’d be lucky to have a life where you were Stumbling On Happiness, the name of his book.

Gilbert’s stated intention is “to explain why we seem to know so little about the hearts and minds of the people we are about to become.” And because we know so little about who we are to become, we know little about what will make us happy tomorrow.

I think he’s right.

I wish I could accept his premise right down to the core of my being. It would be radical to really get what Gilbert is saying. In a sense it would put an end to the future psychologically. It would put an end to becoming. It would put an end to the idea of tomorrow being better than today. If we really got that we have no idea about what would make us happy in the future, we would see that our only choice is to be happy now.

It would put an end to any sentence that began, “I will be happy when…”

Gilbert argues from oodles of psychological studies what mystics and wisdom teachers have been teaching for millennia. There’s only now to be happy. This is not to say that there isn’t suffering and pain. It’s not to say all moments are happy. They are not and never will be, though I think there are radical possibilities here nonetheless.

The point is if you are going to be happy, it better be now, and since you don’t know the conditions that will make you happy, you must free yourself from your happiness being conditional on circumstances outside yourself.

“I will be happy when I get my driver’s license.” Remember that one?

Or how about, “I will be happy when I graduate college, or get married, or have children?”

I will be happy manana. I will be happy someday, but not today.

A haiku by Basho, translated by Robert Hass, captures so much of what we struggle with even when we get what we’ve longed for.

Even in Kyoto --
hearing the cuckoo's cry --

I long for Kyoto.

Don’t you know that feeling? I’ve experienced it a thousand times. How hard it is to simply be in the moment and be happy, even while walking the very streets of the old city you so longed to see.

In the first few pages of his book, Gilbert makes his great statement, what he half-jokingly calls The Sentence, and which he italicizes. “The human being is the only animal who thinks about the future.” Gilbert finds this capacity for consciously imagining the future to be humankind’s greatest achievement.

It’s also the root of a good deal of our unhappiness.

You can set this book aside, and ignore it, or simply find it of casual interest, but the danger is your life may pass and you will never be happy. Happiness is here and now, if it’s anywhere. It’s an inside job, which you’ve heard before. And the good news is you can work the inside.

Tibetan monks seem to smile a lot, the Dalai Lama included, so does Robert Thurman, a former Tibetan monk, and Uma Thurman’s dad. The venerable monk and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh told a gathering of western meditators that he wouldn’t come back again unless they started smiling more often. Sounds silly, but it’s not. These practitioners spend time each day engaged in practices meant to open the heart and lead to acceptance and gratitude and happiness for the moment just as it is.

Daniel Gilbert states, “Despite the third word of the title, this is not an instruction manual that will tell you anything useful about how to be happy.”

            I could not disagree more fully. Gilbert offers us an invaluable, though very difficult, lesson to swallow.

You do not know what will make you happy tomorrow.

So, you cannot effectively plan for your future happiness.

            Therefore, my conclusion, which I stole from countless wisdom teachers, is you must learn to be happy now, and give up the illusion of being happy tomorrow.

            I think that’s a pretty useful lesson.

You can email this to a friend or post it to facebook and twitter by clicking the icons below. Please comment and share your thoughts. Namaste.

BE A HAPPY LOVER: THE VIDEO

Statistics are crazy and sometimes they’re tossed around like rice at a wedding, but if you’re not a statistician and a specialist in the field it’s hard to know what they mean.

That having been said here are a few stats for your consideration.

In her book, The How of Happiness, Sonya Lyubormirsky, states that 40% of our happiness is set by genetics and possibly unchangeable effects of early experience, 10% is due to our circumstances, like being rich—though money only helps make you happy when you are close to being poor, above that, money has a rather small effect on your happiness—and a whopping 50% of our happiness is due to us, to what we do with our lives, and more importantly, what sense we make of our lives, what meaning we give it, how we think about it and how we respond to it.

This is not a new idea, but old wisdom is no less wise and no more common simply because it’s been around for a while.

Epictetus, in “The Art of Living”, said, “People are not disturbed by things, but by their view of them.”

William Shakespeare, no slouch when it comes to understanding human nature, wrote, “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”

Of course this is often a lot easier said than done, but no one said it was easy, just that it was possible.

The performance artist, Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed’s partner, said in a recent interview, “There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re a human being, and being human is hard.” 

It’s up to you to decide whether you want to pick up the gauntlet and fight for your share of happiness, or whether you want to live your life at the mercy of that 50% that you seem to have little or no control over.

But before you go off thinking that it might be too hard for you to make yourself a good life, take a look at this guy’s video clip, and know that no one has a monopoly on hardship, nor on happiness. Your life may not always be easy, but there’s a lot you can do to make it a good one.

Namaste.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILYziCZjAWM

IS GOD IN THE DETAILS OR NOT?

Fortunately for me, I do not read Details, the men’s magazine. No offense, but within sixty seconds of opening a recent copy I experienced a sinking feeling in my stomach--which I realized, by the way, was much too large.

How could I possibly get my hands on one of those $965 shirts, and the killer abs to go with it?

I’m not saying Details did it on purpose, but in a recent blog, the marketer, Seth Godin, told us dissatisfaction sells.

And he should know.

Normally, I’m not this crazy, but Details with its good-looking, successful, creative, powerful guys, made me feel dissatisfied with myself, my life, my looks, my house, my ass, and my watch—even though the damn thing is an Omega that will live longer than I will.

I exaggerate, but not by much. For a very long 15 seconds it was true, until I caught myself and became mindful of what was happening. Then I was able to breathe normally. I haven’t always been so lucky. Comparison, image, and ambition have conspired at times to make me truly miserable for days. Or made me do very foolish things.

We all have our Details. Maybe for you it’s the neighbor’s three-year-old kid who’s learning to speak Mandarin, his third language, or the guy who wrote the great novel, or the woman with the real estate portfolio and the great figure.

Or maybe it’s Gandhi who makes you feel like a loser.

Whoever and whatever it is, when it comes you have to pay attention. Your dissatisfaction will make you want something. Ask yourself the tough questions. What did Gandhi or Details stir up in you? Is your dissatisfaction making you want something that is in alignment with your deepest intentions? Go to the root.

My friend Howard Schiffer started Vitamin Angels because he was dissatisfied with kids going blind from not having enough Vitamin A. Howard has been so dissatisfied and so effective at getting other people to be dissatisfied that his organization helps over 20 million kids a year.

His next goal looks like 30 million kids.

Clearly, dissatisfaction is not always bad. It can drive you to do great things, but you have to dig for what it is you really want.

Otherwise, you may just end up with a ridiculously expensive shirt.

THERE MAY BE NO TRAFFIC JAM IN YOUR SOUL

You’ve decided on something you want in your life, but you have had a hard time making it happen.

             Let’s say, for example, you want a significant other in your life, but you don’t have one. You’ve gone deep into why you want this by asking question after question dealing with things like loneliness, sexual desire, fulfillment, self-esteem, friendship, security, children, stability, fun, companionship, laziness, and so on. You have come to a deep, satisfying place of knowing why you want a life partner and what you are willing to do to have one.

Now you need to look at counter-intentions, intentions of which you may not be aware, intentions which may be keeping you from getting what you want.

You ask yourself the possibly difficult question, “Why do I not want a significant other in my life? Given that I do not have one, this may be a manifestation of my strongest intentions. What might those intentions be?”

And off you go, deeper and deeper with each question. You are not looking for causes that are not under your control that can get you off the hook. You’re mining for the places where not having a partner is exactly what you want.

You may find, for example, that you feel you will not find someone, or that you do not deserve someone, or that if you do find someone, it won’t work out. You do not want to run the risk of sticking your heart out and having it broken. But keep going deeper. Ask yourself seemingly stupid questions like, why do I not want my heart broken? What will happen if my heart is broken? What is my alternative? Is my heart broken already? Am I broken? If so, what can I do to fix things? And so on.

If you do a good job, are honest and go deep, you will come to a place that once again feels like you are getting to solid ground. It may be a hard journey.You may find places that are wounded, places where you have felt like giving up, or where you are ashamed. Look at those places in light of the essence of what you truly want, the essence you discovered when you delved into why you want a life partner. If you delved deep enough into why you want a life partner you will have touched something that has the power to heal your fear, your shame, or whatever it is that is keeping you from going for what you want. An awareness of your deep intention will give you the strength to move through your counter-intentions.

At this point, stop. Take in what you discovered from asking both sets of questions, the why and the why not. Let it all sink in, not just into your head but into your body and your heart. Don’t try to figure it out.

            Let your body take you for a walk. Breathe deeply. Sleep on it. Trust that something is at work like a seed planted in rich soil. Give it time, and you may be surprised by a new sense of clarity and energy that begins to flower, and that the possibility of what you really want is more alive in you than ever before.

TAKING YOUR CLOTHES OFF

            Yesterday we talked about asking yourself deeper and deeper questions as to why you want something in your life. This could be simple, like my mother asking herself why she wanted to paint her kitchen cabinets ,or it could be something trickier like why you want a life partner, a new career, or a child.

Gurumayi, from the Siddha Yoga lineage, talks about asking questions and “extracting the essence of your thoughts”, and then “crystallizing that essence into something worthy of manifestation.”

That sounds serious, serious about how to live fully and happily in accordance with your deepest values. 

Maybe it sounds too serious for you, but there’s nothing wrong with girls—or boys—who ‘just wanna` have fun’. No one is suggesting you not have fun. Fun is good. The Dalai Lama says the purpose of life is to be happy. We’re all about fun and happy, but you might want to ask yourself a few questions to begin to find the roots of your wish to have fun. You may end up being happier if you do.

Often, we get what we think we want and we are not happy. Why? Because we have not looked for our deep intention, so we either end up getting things that we did not truly want, or we get what we want, but we don’t recognize that we’ve gotten it.

Gurumayi, puts it this way, “If there is no clarity about your intention, you may be deprived of its fruits.”

Or to paraphrase Yogi Berra, “If you don’t know where you are going, you just might not know when you get there.”

            Why would we not acknowledge what we really want in our lives? Because it scares us. It exposes us. It’s like taking our clothes off and standing there naked for everyone to see.

It’s not for the faint of heart. But if you do it, you may find that you are not standing there by yourself naked. Surprising forces may gather at your side. Doors may open that you did not know existed.

As William Murray says in his book, The Scottish Himalayan Expedition, “[T]he moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. A whole stream of events issue from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen… assistance[.]”

So, not to fear, help is on the way, but you have to commit fully, and to commit fully, you have to know what you want and why.

Once again, my thanks to Dana Drobny, lallidana@gmail.com, of SB Adult Education who teaches a great course in clarifying intention.                                   

WHY DO YOU WANT THAT?

Whenever you think about something you want in your life, consider asking yourself, “Why do you want that?”

Think of your want, wish, or goal as a leaf on a tree. You ask questions about what you want until you reach the roots. The roots are where you will find the deeper intention behind what you want.

I recently did this with my mom who is ninety.

“I want to have my kitchen cabinets refinished.”

“Why do you want to do that?”

Of course I explained in advance what we were doing, otherwise she would think I was just giving her a hard time, like I usually do.

 “Because it will make me happy.”

“Why will it make you happy?”

“Because they will be nice and clean and beautiful, and they will look good when my friends come by.”

“Will it make you happy that your friends will think your place is beautiful?”

“Yes, but it’s more about me. It makes me happy and grateful that I have a nice, clean home. I am grateful to God for my beautiful home.”

I was a little blown away at this point. My mom is a ninety-year-old Sicilian woman raised, as you might guess, as a Catholic. She’s always been a believer and a churchgoer, and her faith as she has gotten older has deepened, which often happens as people approach the end of their lives, and she has always liked beautiful things, but I was taken aback at how a beautiful home was such a portal to something deeper for my mom.

My mother’s deep intention behind painting her kitchen cabinets was beauty in her home and connection to the sacred. A beautiful home connects my mom in way that a walk on the beach, for example, might not.

Given that my mom now spends most of her days in her home, that's a deep intention. That’s a good reason to paint some kitchen cabinets.

So, what’s the intention behind what you want?

Ask yourself questions until you get to the roots. This can be tricky to do on your own. We’re often a little afraid to discover our deepest intentions. You may find you no longer want what you thought you wanted. So, you might want to try this with a friend, or a coach.

Next time I'll go into why your happiness and success may depend on connecting to your deepest intentions. 

If you live near Santa Barbara, Dana Drobny teaches an Adult Ed class on intention. She can be reached at lallidana@gmail.com. I can be reached at drjohnluca@gmail.com.