Rate Your Happiness
The Glory that Once Was, Still Is
As a child you were courageous, persistent,
enthusiastic and energetic. You trusted others, laughed more than you
cried, and found life to be an adventure. Can you recall the luster of
youth? Can you remember how glorious it was to be alive?
Somewhere along the way, however, many of us lost
our enthusiasm. We became jaded, cynical, and pessimistic. Hope gave
way to doubt and life no longer sparkled. What happened? Life did not
change, we did. The glory that once was, still is. Life remains as
glorious as ever, but our perception of it has changed.
Surrounded by, engulfed in, and permeated with
negativity, we have allowed it to change our way of thinking. After
all, if we are forced to trudge through mud, how can we pass through
it without getting muddy? It's not surprising that we later forgot how
glorious life was and how powerful we were.
As our consciousness of the magnificence of life
declines, so does our ability to sense the wonder, beauty, and awe
that lies before our every footstep. We slowly grow blind, unaware of
our own blindness. But at least we feel the pull of discontent tugging
at our heartstrings. It is a sign, a warning, that it is time to
return to our former glory.
How can we free ourselves from the mud we seem to be
stuck in? We can start by training ourselves to find the good in every
situation. To do so, first do this exercise: on a sheet of paper, jot
down ten legitimate complaints. They may be complaints about work,
politics, dealing with others, illness, or natural disasters. Just
make a list of the first ten things that come to mind.
After you finish your list, view the slide show at:
http://www.suabnquahu.com/I%20am%20Thankful.ppt (Requires MS
PowerPoint)
Next, return to your list of ten complaints, and
change it to a list of ten things to be thankful for. By studying the
examples you saw in the slide show, you should now be able to change
any complaint that pops into your mind into something to be grateful
for. Learn to become aware of your negative thoughts and get into the
habit of transforming them into positive ones. Learn to look for the
good, for that is the only way you will find it.
A second way to change our behavior is by monitoring
it. The August edition of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine
gives an example of how powerful this technique is. In a study of
1,700 overweight people, psychologist Victor Stevens and his team
found that dieters doubled their weight loss merely by spending a few
minutes a day recording what they ate during the day. The study was
conducted at the Kaiser Permanente Centre for Health Research in
Portland, Oregon.
If you want to regain the happiness you once knew as
a child, you can do something similar. All you have to do is spend
five minutes, three times a day, recording your level of happiness and
doing a simple mental exercise. Yes, just 15 minutes a day can and
will elevate and optimize your level of happiness.
Our emotions are dynamic. They are in flux, changing
from moment to moment. For example, in a single day you may feel great
upon awakening, get angry as a driver cuts you off on your way to
work, feel wonderful when your boss praises your work, get annoyed
when a team member fails to cooperate, enjoy lunch with friends, feel
stressed as you try to complete a project before quitting time, and
feel delighted as your spouse greets you with a kiss on your arrival
home. By monitoring our ups and downs and practicing a few simple
exercises, we can make dramatic improvements in our lives. A simple
tool, I call the Happiness Meter, can help us monitor our progress.
About 60 years ago, sociologist Hornell Hart, of
Duke University designed just such a system. After studying the
research that others did decades earlier at the University of Chicago
and Columbia University, Professor Hart refined their research and
developed his own "Mood-Meter." After exhaustive testing, he found it
to be a potent tool that changed the lives of everyone who used it.
You can learn more in his book "Autoconditioning: The New Way to a
Successful Life, Prentice-Hall, 1956 (Tenth Printing, 1966).
Meanwhile, I have refined Dr. Hart's "Mood-Meter" by
designing my Happiness Meter. The three-times-daily, five-minute
sessions to optimize your happiness consist of two parts. First,
rating your level of happiness and entering your score in the
Happiness Meter grid. This step takes just a few seconds. Second, one
or two mental exercises are done, which take four minutes at the most.
You can get your Happiness Meter by clicking on this link:
http://www.personal-development.com/happinessmeter.pdf
After opening the document, go to the toolbar that
is right above the top of the page and click on the second icon from
the left (SAVE). Save the file to the desktop or your favorite folder.
If you cannot open the file, you do not have Adobe Reader installed on
your computer. Adobe Reader is used to read PDF files. Since most
e-books are PDF files, I recommend getting Adobe Reader. You can
download it for free here:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html?promoid=BUIGO
HOW TO RATE YOUR HAPPINESS LEVEL
Print out a copy of the Happiness Meter and in the
column that shows the day of the month, use a pencil to draw a circle
showing how happy or unhappy you feel. If you are feeling happy, rate
yourself on a scale of +1 ~ +7, +7 being the highest (most happy).
When you are feeling unhappy, rate yourself -1 ~ -7, -7 being the
lowest (most unhappy).
Think of a rating of +7 as the equivalent of
euphoria, elation, bliss, or great joy. A rating of +1 expresses a
subdued state of happiness, such as satisfaction or contentment. Use
the in- between numbers in a way that is meaningful to you. They can
be used to represent states such as pleased, cheerful, happy,
delighted, excited, and thrilled.
It is similar for negative states or unhappiness. -7
would be the worst state, such as depression and -1 would be mildly
unhappy, discontented or dissatisfied. The in-between numbers could
stand for states such as uncomfortable, distressed, sad, resentful,
angry, and furious.
Use the same column to rate yourself three times
during the day (morning, afternoon, evening). Each time you rate
yourself, use a pencil to show your score. The three circles for the
day reveal your mood swings. To get your score for the day, subtract
your lowest score from your highest. When subtracting two numbers with
different signs (plus and minus), always use the sign of the largest
number. Here are a few examples: +7, -2 = +5; -9, +4 = -5, and +1, -6
= -5. There are more examples in the separate Happiness Meter
documentation.
Indicate your score for the day in ink and join the
scores of the day with straight lines to form a graph. Example graphs
appear in the Happiness Meter documentation. Example A of the
documentation (page 4) shows a typical graph of the average person,
someone who is not monitoring. Example B on page 4 shows the changes
that occur with monitoring. Mainly, the graph moves upward, into the
happiness zone, so even though one experiences ups and downs, he or
she never leaves the state of happiness.
THE MENTAL EXERCISES
As stated earlier, each five minute session consists
of rating your happiness level on the Happiness Meter and one or two
mental exercises. Here are the exercises:
1. Mental exercise for use when your score is in the
happy zone (a plus number).
After rating yourself on the Happiness Meter, take a
few deep breaths, close your eyes, and reflect on five things that you
are grateful or thankful for today. This should take no more than two
minutes, probably less. This exercise is to maintain or possibly
further elevate your happiness level. No other exercise is needed.
2. Mental exercises for use when your score is in
the unhappy zone (a negative number).
When your score is in the unhappy zone, do TWO
exercises. The first is the same as the above exercise; mainly,
reflect on five things that you are grateful or thankful for today.
The purpose of this exercise is to elevate your spirits. For the
second exercise, choose one of the following, varying your choice each
time you are in the unhappy zone. These additional exercises will help
you develop the habit of facing your difficulties and coping with
them, rather than running away from them. As you face and overcome
your problems you will be filled with exhilaration, pride, and
happiness. Each exercise should take no longer than two minutes to do.
a) Take a few deep breaths, close your eyes, and ask
yourself, "How can I benefit from this situation? What good can come
out of it? How can I resolve it?" Look for solutions and they will
appear. Perhaps not at once, but the answers will appear. Learn how to
become solution-oriented. Look for answers, not excuses.
b) Practice what you learned in the slide show to
change your complaints into statements of gratitude by saying "I am
thankful for..." If you need help with this one, watch the slide show
again (http://www.suabnquahu.com/I%20am%20Thankful.ppt).
c) Choose to be happy. If you're feeling a negative
emotion, change it to a positive one by taking these five simple
steps:
i) Ask
yourself, "How do I feel?" The answer could be, "I feel upset."
ii) Ask
yourself, "How do I want to feel?" The answer may be, "I want to feel
calm."
iii) Ask
yourself, "How do I choose to feel?"
iv)
After you choose to feel calm, ask yourself, "How do I feel NOW?"
v) If
needed repeat the above steps until you feel as you want and choose
to.
d) Adopt a hero, living or dead, real, fictional, or
mythical.
Face your problem and ask yourself, "What would my
hero do?" Then do it.
e) Think of people you know or have read about that
have overcome problems far greater than your own. Their lives
exemplify the powerful inner resources we all have. Resolve to join
their ranks and commit yourself to taking advantage of your own inner
resources to conquer your problem.
f) Embrace, welcome, and be thankful for your
problems, for without them you cannot grow more powerful, skilful, and
self- reliant. Thank them and move on.
g) Plan a pleasurable event or something to look
forward to. This will lift your spirits.
h) Read a short inspirational story or quotation to
inspire you.
i) Think of something you don't feel like doing and
do it. Prove to yourself that you can do what you don't feel like
doing. As you experience your self- discipline, you will grow in
confidence and happiness.
Unhappiness or negative thinking is harmful because
it blocks, cripples, obstructs, limits, and keeps us from success.
Yet, if we choose to work with the Happiness Meter, we will find that
despair turns to hope, dissatisfaction gives way to optimism, and
disappointment is replaced by expectation. But, to bring about this
change, we have to devote 15 minutes a day (five minutes at a time,
three times a day). Only you can decide whether that small effort is
worth recapturing the glory that once was.
|
