Getting to a 9 on The (Admittedly Arbitrary) Happiness Scale
As we dive headlong into the end of the year, I'm revisiting a post I wrote nearly a year ago.
In my review of Gretchen Rubin's book The Happiness Project I wrote the book is, "a tool in your arsenal you can employ to develop your warrior self."
At the end of last year, shortly after my interview with Gretchen, I wondered how I might take my warrior self from a 7.5 or 8 (on a happiness scale of 1-10, which, admittedly, is an arbitrary scale) to a solid 8 or better.
These days, on the whole, I'm at a 9.
Take today. This morning I woke up beside a gorgeous guy. I enjoyed how fresh my mouth felt following yesterday's six-month cleaning. Before noon I had a call with a client I'm intrigued and fed by.
This afternoon I laughed with, and heard what I needed to hear from, my literary agent. This weekend I'm heading to Seattle to meet my friends Siona and Buster Benson of 750words fame. My life is full. At times it seems there are too many balls in the air, but I'm happy.
I'm 9/10 happy.
It seems unfair to keep to myself how I'm at a 9, so I'm going to share some of the tools I've been working with this year.
PERSONAL
Practice
Sit, move, meditate. Keep yourself healthy. In this way, you can serve completely.
If you're not serving completely because you're caught up in your own positive feedback loop, seek help in your practice. For me, it meant finding someone to work with in a coaching and therapeutic capacity. It wasn't long-term. About six months. It has made all the difference.
Cultivate mindfulness
A mindfulness practice may be the key to all of this.
Write daily
Try 750 or OhLife. Thanks to 750 I'm now processing in private. It's superior, in my mind, to blogging publicly about certain life aspects.
Unplug
I've gone on about this at length. Start here.
Move on from relationships & projects
Evaluate your projects and relationships frequently. What's working? What isn't? Are you the problem? Why are you the problem? Be gentle and firm with yourself. If you're giving less than one hundred per cent to a project, get curious about that.
Bow out when it's time. Pass it along to someone else who will enjoy it completely. (Multiply happiness.)
Sit, and stand, upright
I've trained myself to attend to my posture this year. My body thanks me. And I believe it has contributed to my happiness, though I have no science to support that.
Create a Life List
Then make a plan for daily, weekly and moment-to-moment ways to calmly bring your vision to life (without doing harm to others).
PROFESSIONAL
Taking only projects you love
As an entrepreneur, it's tempting to take on any project that comes along. Don't. Take projects you enjoy with people you adore. Saying no is scary. Fear of pigeonholing yourself is real fear. But taking any work that comes along willy-nilly, I've found, isn't a recipe for happiness. Crafting your workday is.
Work with people who delight you
And delight them! It has to flow both ways. That's happiness.
Consider your reverberations
I no longer think it's about living your best life. It's about working with the stuff that makes up the present moment. Best or not. It's fine to keep an eye to the future, but what's arising now is what we get this lifetime.
Each word, each tweet, each email matters.
Every interaction produces reverberations we can't calculate.
Plan, then forget the plan
We can't edit in real-time. We can only work with what's arising. To overly stress on how we won't hit our deadline is to miss the moon rising.
Use the tool correctly
Under each moment is breath. Built on top of each breath is a moment in which to serve. To serve best, we choose the correct tool for the job and use it correctly.
If we don't know how to use the tool correctly, we seek guidance. It takes self-reflection to identify when we're not using the tools correctly.
So, start there.
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Thank you, Gretchen, for inspiring these subtle life-shifts. I'm grateful to you for the book, for your work in creating it. Remember when I told you in Denver it was the last self-help book I'd ever read? So far, that's the truth.
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My next goal? Touching a 10.
(Or not.)
Yours?
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Reader Comments (12)
I am so glad to hear that you are reaching a 9 consistently. Mindfulness has taught me so much as well. Just allowing the bitter to be bitter, when it is, and the sweet to be sweet, when it is. Just being so present with each moment, whether I enjoy the sensation or not. It is truly the key to my happiness.
My goal is to be present, with my heart as full of Love and wonder as possible. I don't really want to assign numbers to myself anymore, because it places some sort of hierarchy on how I feel and ultimately takes me away from the moment.
I want to continue to grow, continue to learn and continue to Love more deeply.
Amelia "Just allowing the bitter to be bitter, when it is, and the sweet to be sweet," is a beautiful way to phrase it. To suffer when we're suffering, without labels or numbers. (I know, I'm a person of contradictions!)
Lovely list! And those pancakes!!! :) I think one of the biggest things I learned this year and that contributed to my happiness was mindfulness, as you suggest here has done much for yours as well. Mindfulness and intention. I don't have it down to a science yet, but am overwhelmed by the happiness and beautiful things that have come my way through what I believe was a year of clear intentions. Makes me excited for the next year. Oh! And I want to read that book.
I need to stick this in my bookmark toolbar -- and especially sit down with all the projects as you suggested because the year's nearly over. How many plans and projects have gone to the wayside for me? Not a fun question to approach, but it needs to be done. Thank you for sharing the mindfulness practices because those have been a very big part in my ability to increase my level of happiness, even when life would usually keep me down.
Great post Gwen! I actually just found your blog this week and already have a bit of a blog crush on you! ;)
I've been doing a lot of the things you mentioned myself this past year, including a move from a soul sucky job that I hated to a new career in SEO/SEM sales that I am so excited about AND starting my own project helping people be happy, healthy and wealthy doing the things they love. I would say that I am also pretty solid at a 9 on the happiness scale now that I have transitioned jobs.
My goal now... maintaining a 9 while continuing to expand my career and personal wealth. Yoga, meditation and mindfulness are my foundation for that 9 and will take me to a 10 in due time.
Namaste
Love this, especially the bit about posture. I remember back in high school my physics teacher and I were talking about a math equation. Before he answered a question I had, he looked me straight in the eye and said, "Sit up straight. I can tell you're not confident about doing the math when you slouch." Certainly, this conversation really touched me.
I often think about posture and how it shows our levels of confidence. And it seems to be something many of us forget about.
My current goal is to embrace my yoga practice, which I had abandoned for the last few years. I want to get into a regular practice, to help me stay more focused with other aspects of my life.
This is a beautiful and helpful post, Gwen! So many of the items you mentioned really speak to me. (And I, too, am in agreement about the power of good posture!) I am curious: do you ever encounter jealousy? By which I mean, do you ever encounter people in your life who are visibly jealous of your success and happiness? If so, how do you deal with that situation (if you acknowledge it at all)?
Like you, I feel extremely blessed and genuinely happy in my life right now. It hasn't fallen from the sky, of course; I work hard for my success and I believe that happiness is something to be practiced and mindfully sought out. (Much thanks to you for your inspiration in these areas!) But I can't help but feel that sometimes other people in my life are envious of my happiness and good fortune and it can make for an awkward (and largely unspoken) tension. These are not people I wish to eliminate from my life, but sometimes simply living my life feels as if I am somehow flaunting. I guess I'm just curious if you ever encounter anything similar and how you address it (or not) in your own life. Thanks!
Thanks for sharing these tools. They are such great tools to make the kind of day that Patrick Horne discusses in the link of his you included. Beautiful, beautiful.
This is amazing. And so is Gretchen. She and her book have inspired me in a million ways. Maybe it's time I sit down and write my own post about it.
And I'm working on the sitting upright too. But you've still got about three feet on me.