—Edith Wharton
It’s been a while since I read a new book about happiness. When I saw the title of this one, I had to pick it up since my word of the year is build: Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier, by Arthur C. Brooks and Oprah Winfrey (2023, Portfolio/Penguin, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC). I’m always drawn to the idea that we can do something to create a happier life.
An overview of Build the Life You Want
I think this is a good basic book about happiness, and it’s
a pleasant, easy read. While there’s nothing especially new and
ground-breaking, it contains some great reminders about ways we can influence
our own levels of happiness.
Build the Life You Want is broken into three parts:
1. Understanding happiness and unhappiness.
2. Managing your positive and negative emotions.
3. Building a happier life by focusing on four pillars:
family, friends, work, faith.
The book concludes by encouraging readers to “become the [happiness] teacher,” since “The best happiness teachers are the ones who have had to work to gain the knowledge they offer, not the lucky ones who fall out of bed every day in a great mood.” (This one sentence sums up my mission and motivation for creating Catching Happiness!)
A few takeaways that resonated with me
You can have high happiness and high unhappiness at
the same time. The two can coexist. You don’t have to wait until all unhappy
feelings are gone before you start to get happier.
The “macronutrients” of happiness are: enjoyment, satisfaction,
and purpose. Enjoyment goes beyond pleasure by combining it with communion and
consciousness—sharing a pleasurable activity with someone else and making a
memory together. Satisfaction is the thrill of accomplishing a goal or
something you have to work for. And purpose, or meaning, helps us face our struggles
with hope and inner peace.
Regarding emotions: “Your emotions are signals to our conscious
brain that something is going on that requires your attention and action—that’s
all they are. Your conscious brain, if you choose to use it, gets to decide how
you will respond to them.”
I loved the suggestion to “choose a better emotion.” You don’t
have to accept the emotion you feel first. You can substitute a better one that
you want. Use gratitude, humor, hope, and compassion to find and feel more
positive emotions.
I’d recommend Build the Life You Want if you want a
refresher course in becoming happier.
What are your favorite books about happiness?
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| A delight Photo by caleb weiner on Unsplash |
You might have noticed that over the last year+ I’ve been struggling with a lot of challenging, sorrowful events and taking you all right along with me into the emotional depths. Even though this blog is intended to be a be a bright spot on the internet, a place you can go to read about more positive aspects of life, I also want to be honest and real about how my life plays out. I don’t want to just give you the highlight reel, or indulge in toxic positivity. I’ve tried to honestly share my feelings and experiences, to normalize the fact that life does hold sorrow and that it’s completely fine to feel that pain and grief.
But while I continue to feel all the feelings, I think it’s
also time to consciously and more frequently focus on something besides dealing
with my heavy and confused emotions. (And aren’t you glad to hear that?!)
Enter the Daily Delight Project (DDP).
A few years ago, I read poet Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights, full of his beautiful little essays about things which delighted
him. Since then, I’ve wanted to do something similar, but you know, Life
Happened. And kept happening.
But now I feel ready to give it a try. I’m starting with
just jotting a few lines in my journal or planner, and I also plan to snap
photos with my phone and post them on Instagram/Facebook. I’m shooting for
every day in May, but I’m not going to beat myself up if I don’t manage that. (Check
out my first few posts here.)
One thing I’ve found already is that first, I have to deliberately
look for a possible delight. This makes me pay more attention to my surroundings
and what’s happening around me, instead of retreating into myself and
ruminating. Once I’ve noticed something, I have to allow it to delight
me—in other words, I have to do more than just notice, I have to look deeper
and think about what I’m seeing.
For example, when I’m outside, I might glance up and notice
the white puffy clouds against the deep blue sky. If I really pay attention, I do
feel delight at their beauty—I really love those puffy clouds! But I don’t
always take the time to enjoy them.
At first, this has felt awkward and kind of weird. But I’m
hopeful that the more I do it, the more delight I’ll feel. As Ross Gay wrote, “It
didn’t take me long to learn that the discipline or practice of writing these
essays occasioned a kind of delight radar. Or maybe it was more like the
development of a delight muscle. Something that implies that the more you study
delight, the more delight there is to study.”
Would you like to join me in the Daily Delight Project?
Start by simply noticing what delights you. You may want to
jot your daily delight in a notebook or on your calendar. You don’t need to do
anything else to benefit, but if you want to share your delights with others,
you might:
Text a friend.
Share a post on Facebook.
Post on Instagram—use the hashtag #dailydelight2024 and tag
me (@kathyjohn335) so I can see your posts.
Share a few of your daily delights in the comments section
below.
Email me with your daily delights at
kathyjohn335[at]gmail[dot]com. I would absolutely love to hear about them!
I hope you’ll join me and share what you find delightful!
It’s easy to think you have to make big changes to boost
happiness, but “22 Small Things That People Say Made Them Drastically Happier” shows
that sometimes the little things can be just as effective.
More tiny habits to help you feel happier.
In “5 Lessons from a Conversation with a World-Renowned Happiness Expert,” Sahil Bloom shares what he learned from a recent
conversation with Dr. Robert Waldinger, the director of the Harvard Study of
Adult Development, the longest-running study on adult life, health, and
happiness in the world. Spoiler alert: These five lessons all have to do with the
importance of relationships for good health and happiness. (See below
for link to Dr. Waldinger’s TED Talk about what makes a good life.)
Since relationships are so important, how can we strengthen
ours? Check out “50 Ways to Show You Care Without Spending a Dime” for tips!
Number 50 just might be my favorite.
I absolutely love this young man’s passion for libraries and
books as well as his openness about mental health issues. His Instagram posts
are a delight.
While writing “For Your Listening Pleasure,” I stumbled on
this website, where you can listen to the sounds of forests from around the
world.
In “On really, truly enjoying things” the Frugal Girl
reflects on the fact that, “If you go through life only halfway observing what
you experience, it stands to reason that you would not extract 100% of the joy
that life has to offer. So, then you’d need twice as many joyful experiences in
order to reach the joy level of someone who is more observant.”
If you’d like to become more observant, click here to join writer
and teacher Jon Kabat-Zinn on May 8 (via Zoom) to learn how to “befriend your
mind” and live your life with more mindful awareness. Dr. Kabat-Zinn is the
father of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, a modern, secular form of
meditation, and the author of several books, including Wherever You Go, There You Are. This free event is hosted by Action for Happiness.
And finally, here is Dr. Waldinger’s TED Talk about what
makes a good life:
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After writing last month’s Happy Little Thoughts newsletter
(click here to subscribe if you don’t already), I’ve been thinking more about listening.
Not just the metaphorical act I wrote about—who/what we listen to, how often we
listen to others, if we also listen to ourselves—but the literal “what” that
enters our literal ears.
Here are a few simple listening pleasures we can incorporate
into our lives to boost physical and mental health.
According to NeuroscienceNews.com, music stimulates the neurotransmitters which affect pleasure by increasing dopamine production, reducing cortisol levels, and even increasing an antibody responsible for strengthening the immune system (immunoglobulin A). Can’t get much better than that!
Even though I love music, I hadn’t been listening to it as
much as I’d like—or as deliberately as I’d like. I usually have the radio on
when I drive, but that can get frustrating since I have no control over what comes
over the airwaves (mostly personal injury attorney ads, apparently) and I’ve
been listening to podcasts while I work around the house instead of music since
my iPod died in an untimely coffee-drowning accident a few years back. (Yes,
yes, I know there are multiple ways to stream music, but I am Old and Set in My
Ways and haven’t taken the time to master them.) So I started playing old CDs
in the car (yes, my car is also old and still has a CD player Do Not Judge Me),
especially ones I can sing along with. Singing has many health and mood benefits, whether or not you can carry a tune, and I love to sing.
The CDs in my collection span many decades of music
listening, and hearing certain songs brings back floods of memories. If I hear Devo’s
Whip It, I’m instantly transported back to tennis team practice on my
high school’s courts. Listening to Broadway musical soundtracks reminds me of
fun theater-going with friends, and one Rob Thomas song reminds me of walking
laps on a track in Texas with my sister-in-law.
One of my new goals is to explore newer music and artists and add to my collection, in either digital or CD formats.
Sounds of nature—the breeze blowing in the trees, water rushing through a creek or pouring over a waterfall, ocean waves, rain pattering on the roof, birdsong—are soothing to our nervous systems and can help to improve health and mood. Even using a mobile app which mimics nature sounds can be helpful if the real thing isn’t possible.
When I go outside to water plants or do yardwork, I try to
pay attention to the sounds around me rather than fill my ears with words or
music. It’s fun trying to identify different birds by their songs, and all the
little rustles and creaks hint at worlds which exist at the edges of my awareness.
I forget my frustrations in curiosity, and am reminded of the connection to all
the living things around me.
I’ve still got the last voicemail my dad left on my phone,
and a recording of my son’s voice when he was a preschooler. They both make me
smile when I listen to them.
Next time someone you love talks, really listen! What does
their voice sound like? Do they use any particular words or phrases unique to
them? You never know when their voices will fall silent. One of the hardest
things when my mom was dying was that she stopped talking shortly after I
arrived to be with her. What I would have given to listen to her during the
last two weeks of her life.
Silence, which is never literally silent, can be incredibly beneficial,
too.
I try to sit with the quiet, but that’s when my mind gets
really LOUD and chattery, and all those emotions I’ve been keeping at bay come
at me. This can be a bit nerve-wracking, but eventually even monkey mind
settles down. I’m guessing we (I) fill our ears with so much noise because of
the discomfort we feel when outward silence allows our inner monologue to take
over. Still, a bout of soaking up silence does ultimately calm me down.
Whether you choose silence or music, loved ones’ voices or
nature sounds, I hope whatever you listen to contributes to a happier, healthier
day!
What are some things you love listening to?
