5 steps to happy goggles

This amazing TED talk by Shawn Achor not only knocks the lid off the misconceptions around happiness but gives you a methodology that takes only 21 days that promises to help change your outlook on life! That means by the end of #HAPPYRIL you'll definitely be HAPPY!

Namely every day for 21 days: 

• Write down three new things you are grateful for
• Record one positive experience in a journal
• Exercise
• Meditate
• Do random acts of kindness, like a positive email to someone

But worth watching the lot as this guy is on to something here and it is a damn sight more interesting than our trained existence.

I am going to try it out - let me know if you are too.

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The opposite of Freedom...wait what?

Picture an over-achiever at the Easter Show. She is a Mum, she has two children and a husband with her and she has a program in her hand. She has the time it takes 2 and 3 year old boys to lose their minds at lunch (about 10 minutes if she's lucky) to chart a course through the rest of the day that will make it the greatest day and a day worthy of fighting thousands of people, strollers, goats and showbags. 

As you have probably gathered I am that person and I am telling you now as my brain computed the program: Alvin and the Chipmunks at 1pm, 3pm, 4pm, Flying and Diving Pigs 2pm and 4pm, Shaun the sheep at 12.30 and 1.30, Pat a pig at 2pm and 4pm, Woodchopping 1.30, 3.30, 4.30 and so on and so forth; I was not happy. I was getting miserable not being able to compute the travel time between the Davidson stadium, the Kids Tent, the big arena and the Pig & Goat Shed. And crossing that with the fact that we had to end up near the entrance at the end of day was driving me slightly insane. All I wanted at that point was one clear choice. 

This was not planned and wouldn't have happened if I had figured out the perfect route

The thing is if I had watched this video I may have already known that the difference between the perfect route around the Easter Show and the eventual path we took driven by a three year old's tantrum which lead to a new kind of hell (having to enter the Showbag hall) was incredibly minimal. I could have been spared the angst and anxiety I went through for a good hour after I left that lunch table, not to mention my husband, who copped a fair amount of vitriol due his "I don't care as long as we ended up at the entrance around 4.30pm" attitude. 

Any way don't watch this when you are tired, it does require some concentration but it is fascinating in its revelation that freedom of choice does not equal happiness.   

What do you think? Willing to give up some choices to be happy?

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10 movies that made me PML

Milton and his stapler from Office Space

I adore laughter and frankly life is far too serious for me most of the time. So I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to see the funny side of things, even in corporate meetings, what can I say? wisdom and humour don't always go hand in hand. I wouldn't go so far as to say I am a funny person, one of my particularly funny friends often reminds me of this, as does my hubby, but you know, points for trying please. For instance I am no where near as funny as The Bloggess or Joe Hildebrand, although putting those two in the same sentence is sort of funny. 

Anyway my point is, not for me to make you laugh directly but indirectly and so I share my top ten movies that have made me howl, roar and p1ss my p@nts laughing; they are in no particular order otherwise my shanty town for a brain would get too lost: 

1. a recent one - The Five-Year Engagement

2. a modern day monty python type one - The Trip

3. Does Seinfeld's Ugly Baby episode count? (breathtaking!)

4. a dysfunctional one - Home for the Holidays

5. another dysfunctional one - Sideways

6. in the words of my hubby, a really weird one - I heart huckabees

7. Ok because I should have said ten - Knocked Up

8. because will ferrell just is - Step Brothers

9. because Maude is my hero - The Big Lebowski

10. because I worked in Advertising - Crazy People

11. and finally because Seinfeld is not a movie - Office Space

Laugh a little - stuff that - laugh until you snort your drink out your nostrils! Research loosely shows it improves your immune system and reduces stress - so worth a bit of germy liquid spraying on your lucky dinner guest me thinks... or in my case I'll be targeting my really "funny" friend - you know who you are. 

P.S. And if you do crave the more serious side of happiness - check out yesterday's post where a real researcher has unlocked the secret that happy people inherently know. 

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What is HAPPINESS?

How do you define happiness? 

The dictionary says: 

delighted, pleased, or glad, as over a particular thing: to be happy to see a person. and characterized by or indicative of pleasure, contentment, or joy:a happy mood; a happy frame of mind.

Simple right, just be delighted and pleased and smile alot? Well not so much. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics nearly half (45%) of all Australians have experienced a mental disorder at least once in their life, and most commonly anxiety and depression are the culprits.

The thing is as much as happiness is elusive, defensive and aggressive behaviours based on fear and pride are running rife, smothering the workplace, the home, sport and schools. I was lucky enough to attend a course recently for work, HeartStyles, that lifted the lid on why we behave like this, and exposed how we are spreading unhappiness between us as fast as a cold virus can sneeze and cough its way through a peak hour bus.

The premise they lead with was how the vast majority of people have a good heart and good intentions. As they move through life wounds and voids occur and often work to crowd out the goodness as we protect and defend ourselves from having to suffer again. Our once vulnerable self is covered by a dark wall that lets nothing and no-one in to hurt you again. This is when happiness really becomes a huge struggle. Brené Brown, a researcher "storyteller" from the US explains it so well in her TED talk below. 

The courage to be imperfect and show imperfection to others. 

I love every minute of what she has to say - basically she has found that if we are going to be happy vulnerability is key. Her research shows that those people that are happy are living wholeheartedly, being vulnerable with the knowledge that they could get hurt. And even more interestingly they strongly believe they are worthy of love in spite of their imperfection. 

For the sake of our children

We can't escape our parents, you will become your mother, the good and unfortunately the bad stuff passes down the line. Our behaviour gets hardcoded into the neural pathways of our children, and even more so our whole outlook on life. Our anxiety when their imperfections start to show is SO damaging to their worthiness and like Brené says "Our job is not to keep them perfect but to realise they are imperfect and hard-wired for struggle...our job is to make sure they know they are worthy of love and belonging." 

I can't think of any better reason than looking into the beautiful unaffected eyes of my two sons to find a way to be grateful and wholehearted about my life. Maybe by doing so I can start to really get on this single ride I've got in this big theme park called life. We only get one chance at it and quite frankly I'm tired of not throwing my arms in the air and screaming with unbridled joy. 

Do you want to get on too? or are you on it already and can share what it feels like to us who are still holding back? 

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Getting HAPPY! Time for #HAPPYRIL

Last year when the Puberty Blues trailer came on and Dragon's Marc Hunter sang "Are you old enough?" my stomach twirled in two and wrapped itself around my heart. The memories washed over me, the summer heat, the beach, my first kiss, my wideeyed expectations of what my life was going to be. 

What I didn't know then and I'm only just discovering now some 20 years later is that I was looking for my life outside of myself. A tall gorgeous man, a career, money and an enviable existence  were going to make me happy, because if I got them I will have made it and if I made it I'd be satisfied because I would have proved them wrong. Them being the boys that broke my heart, the ones that made fun of me being half-italian, the ones that looked down on me for this reason or that, and the worst kind, the dumb beautiful people that rarely knew what I was talking about, but proving they were not so dumb, made sure I felt their inadequacy more than them. 

For the sake of this little HAPPY face, I declare April - HAPPRIL! 

So off I went, foot to the floor, achievement after achievement. Whatever I put my mind to I succeeded at, I wanted to be a designer, I got hired by the top Sydney firm, I wanted to be in advertising, I won a Cannes and got offered a role in New York, I wanted to go back to Marketing, I got a job in a global multinational, I wanted, I wanted, I wanted. Mainly because whatever I got, wherever I ended up wasn't enough. Like a junkie I wanted more because that happiness, that satisfaction I had expected to bask in, kept eluding me. 

This is the part where you expect I say having children cured all that and I am at last satisfied. Well the twist is, that little overused chestnut, is BS of the finest form. Motherhood doesn't cure completely misunderstanding the world, instead it suddenly puts immense pressure on working out quite quickly where you are effing up, so you don't inadvertently turn your perfect little people into anxiety-ridden, fame hunters. 

Thing is, life is a lot harder and more complex than I ever imagined. The first time my heart was broken it took me so badly by surprise my stomach still knots when I think of it. Having now seen the Brené Brown video (see tomorrow's post) I realise that I was not trained to be vulnerable, in fact I was taught the way to navigate life was to be very, very careful. And I was not trained to feel worthy, I was judged harshly by someone very close to me and my brain just interpreted that to mean if I wanted to be worthy I would have to fight hard to be something more than who I was. Which of course was a recipe for disaster, not on the face of it as it drove me to be an over-achiever but behind the successful face of it there's a fearful and defensive soul fighting to accept being just me. 

Well I don't know if any one else feels this way but what I know now is that we are all worthy of love and acceptance, we are enough in our own skin, flaws and all. And so I am declaring April - HAPPYRIL - a month to get happy. Happy with your life, your personality, your achievements, your place in the world, your relationships, but mostly to get happy  with being you. 

I am going to be posting as much as I can, posts about how to get happy, videos, ted talks, experiences, sayings, stupid movies and sharing what others are saying along the way. 

Want to get HAPPY with me?
Join me for #HAPPYRIL and please share your thoughts too! (despite the ridiculous name!)

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BEAM ME UP SCOTTY! Another teleporting accident waiting to happen

For the last few weeks I've felt a bit like I'm being beamed up by Scotty but still haven't rematerialised anywhere, let alone the Starship Enterprise. So my material self is currently a sparkly set of atoms bouncing off each other in limbo waiting for Scotty to somehow re-organise them back in to something half way resembling the original version of me. 

Once I explain my current exploded self, it will make complete sense, of course (I am being sarcastic but sort of not at the same time) Firstly the loveliest of friends found out she had Breast Cancer, and is now suffering through Chemotherapy, I can't even start to explain what this has done to my heart let alone hers and her beautiful family's. Secondly I ended up in the paper smiling broadly in stark contrast to my what my insides look like and then writing for The Punch last week, so feeling a little out there and suddenly awkward/embarrassed which is a bit unexpected. And lastly I am preparing to return to work in January after what will be fifteen months of maternity leave. 

All these things in differing degrees are disturbing the rhythm of my life, which pretty much resembles that of a toddler's, seeing I'm hanging out with two of them most of the time. And if you haven't heard, toddlers LOVE a consistent schedule, marked by simple, repetitive things like eating and playing and sleeping. Either new Mums and toddlers have a lot in common or I am severely stunted because with all this ambiguity and sadness and exposure, the schedule is well and truly out the window. And there's a lot of screaming going on in my head that is tending to resemble my 14 month old's reaction to an overstay at the supermarket.

Fact: It is difficult to write when you're screaming, even if only on the inside. 

So I suppose this is a lame attempt to explain what I perceive as a negative change in the content of my blog and tweet stream of late. (BTW Hubby has banned the iPhone from our bedroom which doesn't really matter as my atomised brain is finding it tough to come up with any twitty banter that would see followers lunging for the retweet button. Because, of course, before I got involuntarily stuck in a Star Trek transporter that was happening all the time. These thoughts remind me of why my husband married me, that is for my calm and logical mind.) 

To steer this away from a list of excuses, let's just leave it as this is me trying to paint a little picture of where I'm at. It is not a particularly nice place, my stomach always seems to be churning just a tad and my usual equilibrium that enables me to share all manner of nonsense seems a little damaged. We have the best engineers from Star Trek working on re-assembling me in the correct way, that is my usual incorrect self, and hopefully some time soon you may see some stream of consciousness stuff spewing forth here - defining at last, my ideal life. 

P.S. Some trivia only the amazing Jenny "The Bloggess" Lawson may appreciate: William Shatner is the only person to have actually said the exact phrase "Beam me up Scotty" in the audio adaptation of his novel Star Trek: The Ashes of Eden. Now there's a great dinner party opener!

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RU OK? Day: A shadow at the door

My hubby tells me no-one wants to hear about negative things on a blog, “there is enough negativity out there” he surmises. He would be right too, there is, but I wouldn’t be being honest if I didn’t share my dark days with you as much as those where the sun shines in.

In my late teens after a dishonest and quite mean-spirited boy broke my heart, my idealistic and bright outlook changed. Not content to just see me sad he set out to destroy all semblance of confidence and pride I had. I think he did it to make himself feel like a big, strong man in a desperate attempt to cover the fact he was hurting as much as I was.

I don’t know if I was clinically depressed but I turned from being a thin, vivacious and cute 15 year old to a chubby, sad and awkward girl in under two years. And the sadness I couldn’t seem to bounce back from, threw a shadow over everything. It took advantage of the small negatives already imprinted on my brain and then drove them into deep rivers of blackness that flooded out all the positive patterns that used to co-exist alongside them.

Even my triumphs were stained grey with illogical assumptions. And thoughts spill into behaviour, where you look for evidence to prove your inner beliefs of worthlessness. It is warped, it is powerful and although it only exists in your mind it is very real and sometimes fatally destructive. And that is why contrary evidence is so important in these types of cases. A kind word, an honest ‘how are you?’ or an unconditional acceptance can go along way to challenging this kind of blackness.

I was lucky, my life took a new turn when I went overseas and I was able to rediscover my former vibrant self. I was also extremely fortunate to never have considered suicide, but so many others are not so. Suicide is a leading cause of death among young people aged 15-24 years and claims more Australian lives each year than car accidents. Maybe without supportive friends, a rowing crew and an ever-present black journal I may have been amongst them.

So tomorrow why not take a deep breath, be brave and ask someone the question; Are you ok? And if you do, maybe, just maybe, that kindness may challenge their negative point of view of the world if only for an hour. But if you catch them at a particularly dark moment it may give them that crucial reason they're desperately looking for to hang around. 

RU Ok ? Day is September 15 – asking could change a life.

Need help now - click here or call Lifeline on 13 11 14
or Suicide Call Back Service on1300 659 467

Planning a conversation - click here

©MyIdeaLife, 2011 Original sketch by Nicole McInnes, All rights reserved.

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