Five Keys To Becoming Happier, Healthier and More Authentic

Back in 2003 I read a book by Martin Seligman called Authentic Happiness, in it he talks about all the various ways to live an authentically happy life.  I was so impressed with this book that I signed up to take a six month course from him on authentic happiness coaching.  It was an eye opening adventure.  I highly recommend this book, if you have not read it.  One of the most significant concepts in the book is that people who experience a lot of positive emotion and who think in positive ways, live longer, are happier and more satisfied with life than those who have a more negative or pessimistic view on life.  This seems obvious, but is it true?  This is one of those concepts that is difficult to study in a scientific way since there are so many variables, but Seligman found a study that was able to predict who would live a long, happy life and who would either die at a younger age or develop debilitating illnesses and therefore live a less than happy life.  It's called the Nun Study and it was originally was done to study Alzheimer's.  Nuns, by the very nature of their work, their environment, the food they eat and their level of income and the fact that they all begin at the same age and are all female, made this group the perfect group to study.  One of the major clues to how these nuns viewed life was taken from their application to become a non.  In other words, what they wrote about themselves, their families and why they chose to become nouns, gave the researchers clues to what would happen to them down the road.  What they found was that fifty to sixty years later the nuns who had written positive, upbeat and descriptive essays about themselves and what they expected from their lives as nuns, were the very ones who were happier and more satisfied with life and had less health problems than those whose essays were pragmatic and devoid of emotional language.

Positive Emotion - The First Key

Like the Nun Study suggests, if you want to live a long, happy life then you need to think, talk and act in positive and upbeat ways.  What this means is that instead of going around looking for what's wrong in your life, you look for what's right and focus on that.  It means that you pay attention to your self-talk and listen to what you are saying to yourself about your life and your circumstances.  Is your self talk generally positive or is it generally negative or neutral?  Neutral, by the way, is essentially the same as negative since it is not adding to your positive emotion.  One of the things I see about some people is a tendency to put forth a positive self image - on first meeting them or in encounters with them, they begin with a smile but then within a few minutes they are talking about negative subjects or will give you a yes, but, if you talk about something positive.  Ironically, however, if there is something negative going on in your life, it is actually better to begin with that and get it off your chest and then go with a positive smile and say I'm really okay, just had to vent that. First, this doesn't deny what's going on and second it allows you to vent and then to begin problem solving,  So go ahead and bitch, moan and complain about it but then say, yes, but this isn't really all that bad and put a positive spin on it. This can be done even if it's something really negative like an accident or some kind of illness.  Telling yourself and others that this sucks, you're worried about it or scared, but then to look for and think about how this can be a positive thing for you is what positive people do.  You could say to yourself or others, ma ybe there is a message here for me and I'm going to think about it.  If nothing comes to your right away then take some time and let it peculate.  The reason this is better is that it's good to vent our frustrations rather than denying them which is a form of repression and is a poor way to negotiate life.  If, instead you put a positive Polly Anna smile on your face while you are boiling inside or are very fearful, that will come back to bite you.  Or if you pretend to be in a good mood and smile all the time when in reality, you are an unhappy soul, that too will be seen and heard anyway.  Remember, body language tells the real story, not that fake smile on your face.  One of the things about being authentically happy, is that you have to be authentic and if you're angry, scared, depressed or disillusioned but you pretend instead, not to be, this is not authentic, so admit that and then go on to looking for the positive.  If this does not work and you are generally unhappy and frustrated with life, then I suggest some counseling to get at the  dep cause of your unhappiness..  Of course, if something truly tragic happens to you then allow yourself to grieve until you feel you can move on.  You will know when you are ready to do this.    

100% Responsibility  - The Second Key

Whether we like it or not, we are 100% responsible for our lives.  Now, I don't mean that if something tragic happens we caused it or that we are responsible for negative circumstances, things happen, good, bad and ugly.  But we do have 100% responsibility for how we react and deal with these events.  We are responsible for what we do in life and how we manage the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.  In fact, I would say this is the key element in one's character - do we play the blame game or do we get on with doing something that will change our circumstances.  I grew up in a dysfunctional family with no money and lots of chaos but when I was eighteen years old I looked around and told myself that if I didn't get out of there, I'd have the same kind of life. That action put me on a path that I am still on.  So today, look around at your life and if there is something you don't like about it, then get busy doing something to change it.

 Failure is an Opportunity - The Third Key

No matter who you are, you have probably had some failures in your life.  Some people take failures and shove them under the rug and never mention them again to themselves or anyone.  Others think and ruminate on the failure in a never ending cycle of regret and reproach.  Others see the failure as an opportunity.  They look at it and say, what could I do differently this time and they try again. They look back on the failure and  ask themsleves to identify what made it a failure, but also, what was right with it but maybe just needed some tweaking.  They then decide which things they can keep and which ones to eliminate.  In this way, they begin again, but this time with insight and expeirce.  As Henry Ford once said, "failure is just a resting place;  It is an opportunity to begin again more intelligently."  So today look at your failures, or those things that did not turn out the way you wanted them to and see what you learned from the experience and what you could do now to make it work or what you could do now to go in a different direction.  .  .  

Purpose - Serving a Greater Good - The Fourth Key

If you want to live a happy, healthy and authentic life then you need to be doing something that serves the greater good.  We are not animals who spend their time eating, sleeping, procreating and playing - they have no other purpose than that.  They don't think, contemplate or create things - they simply live and die doing the same things over and over again.  Now some of you animal lovers may say that they serve us humans by giving us pleasure and that is true, but they themselves don't decide to do this, humans make the decision to enjoy animals whether they are domesticated or wild.  But we humans have the big brain and this allows us to do more with our lives than animals can.  We can use our brains for the greater good or we can live like the animals do and simply further our own petty little wants and needs.  I believe, and so do most of our great thinkers, that humans need to serve a higher purpose than just taking care of ourselves.

When you have purpose in your life and that purpose serves a greater good, then like those nuns, the happy, long lived ones, you will live, in most cases, a long and satisfying life.  But what does serving the greater good really mean?  It means that what you do, particularly your work, career or a passionate cause, needs to be a positive contribution to the planet and the people on this planet.  If what you do detracts or is a negative influence or a drain on society then it's not a contribution to the greater good.  It can be anything in the world of work or the world of our society, from business to education to government and politics.  It can feed people's bodies, minds and souls or it can provide creature comforts or entertainment.  As long as it fits into the great puzzle of life in a positive way, then it will serve the greater good.  It also has to serve the individual who is doing it, that too is part of the greater good. If what you are working at is something you hate, or that brings stress and pain into your life,  then no matter if the end product contributes to the greater good, if it's not contributing to your own greater good, then you need to find something that will.

According to Erik Erikson, the human development theorist, and my own research and experience with my clients, especially those in midlife, the challenge is to become a person who gives back what you have been given and if you don't do this, then you will become a person who is stagnant.  As Erikson, said  "Adults (45 and beyond) need to create or nurture things that will outlast them, often by having children or creating positive change that benefits other people.  Success leads to feelings of usefulness and accomplishment, while failure results in shallow involvement in the world."  So begin today to see if you can come up with something you can do that will contribute to the greater good and will also leave some legacy of your life here on earth.

Gratitude - The Fifth Key

To truly live out your life feeling positive, happy, satisfied and gratified that you have lived a life of honor and value, you need to have this last key as part and parcel of that life.  To be thankful, grateful and humble about a well lived life and not thinking you did it all yourself and you deserve all the credit, is to live a life feeling entitled and arrogant.  Believe me, that is not a positive and gratifying  place to be.  But with gratitude you will live a more soulful life and as all of you know, I'm all about living the soulful life.  So why be grateful?  Here are some things that gratitude will bring into your life.  Gratitude allows you to celebrate the present and it magnifies positive emotion - which is the first key to happiness and success in life as I said.  Gratitude blocks toxic, negative emotions such as envy, resentment, regret, emotions that can destroy our happiness.  Grateful people have a higher but humble sense of self-worth because they know they did not do it all themselves.  They know and will give credit to either God or the Universe for their gifts and talents. They know that although they may have honed their gifts and talents, they did not earned them outright.  They believe that either God or some other unknowable force blessed them with these gifts and talents.  They also know that some circumstances were afforded them that they also did not earn and therefore they feel blessed in this way as well.  Barack Obama was blessed with high intelligence, charisma, and he was born at the perfect time in history for a black man to run for president.  If he had been born even ten years earlier, the opportunity would simply not have been there for him to do this.  And last but not least, grateful people are simply nicer and easier to be around and so they have more friends, better relationships and more positive work.  This makes them happier, more successful and a lot more satisfied and gratified than those who are not grateful.

Blessing, Lorraine