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Imagine that you are reading a book. It is a a great read, a murder mystery. You are near the end of the book and it is nearly evening. You know that the murderer will be revealed somewhere towards the last page. A friend walks by:
“The butler did it,” he casually remarks.
You throw the book down in disgust and shout angrily at your friend.
“You’ve spoilt the book for me by revealing the murderer.” You storm off.
Later, I ask you if you are happy and you reply no.
Here’s another version of the story: Read more
- Image by Scuola di Atene via Flickr
When I was a young teenager I was interested in teenage girls. I met several whom I wanted to ask out on a date. Being of a shy nature this was not easy for me. I remember laying in bed at night thinking about asking a girl at work out. I could not sleep because my mind was asking so many questions:
- “What if she says no?”
- “What if she does not like me?’
- “What can I wear to impress her?
- “What if she is off sick and does not turn up for work?”
I was looking at my doctor’s website yesterday and in particular the statistics on what they have treated. Ten per cent of patients are treated for depression. How many more people are not yet at the stage of clinical depression, but are very unhappy?
Are you happy? If not, what can you do about it. Positive psychology believes that it has the answer to happiness. Research has shown that 40% of happiness is under your conscious control. The other 60% is due to our circumstances, where you live, the family that you are bought up in and so on.
Happiness has two main components. You can asses yours by asking yourself the following questions:
- How satisfied are you overall with your life and are you progressing in your life goals?
- How often do you feel positive emotions and how often do you feel negative emotions?
Can mindfulness meditation make you happy?
I have a friend that calls herself spiritual who attends an evangelical Christian church every Sunday. She also does lots of voluntary work in a Christian organization that distributes food to homeless people.
Despite her spiritual practice and her good works, she is not happy. I also have some Buddhist friends who are miserable.
If you consider yourself to be a spiritual person then ask yourself the following questions:
- Does your spirituality make you happy?
- Do you struggle to make sense of life and how you fit into the larger scheme of things?
- Are you content with where you are, or are you reaching for some spiritual or mystical state that always seems just out of reach?
- Have you found your purpose in life?
If you answered no to any of the above questions, then your spirituality could be, instead or a source of comfort, a cause of conflict in you.
All this has got me think about spirituality and how genuine spirituality should, at the minimum, make you happy. Read more
Here’s a video that you may find interesting.
The DVD for “Dalai Lama Renaissance” is on sale now (for a 15% discount click go to http://dalailamafilm.com/buy-dvd.html).
- Image by HaPe_Gera via Flickr
I used to be someone who was always trying to get somewhere. My life was full of nexts. The next partner, the next job, the next place to live, the next gadget, the next self development course…. My life focused on a series of goals.
My mistaken assumption was that happiness, contentment and a purposeful life will flow from reaching these goals. Often when a goal was reached it disappointed or was an anti-climax. The is an old saying that life is the journey not the destination. The trick is to enjoy the journey. Positive Psychology teaches you to take happiness from the moment to moment experiences.
Most branches of psychology do not deal with the controversial issue of God. Many scientsists such as Ruchard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens come from an atheist view point.
Positive psychology claims that spirituality is one of the character strengths we need to have.
In a recent book, Spiritual Evolution: A Scientific Defense of Faith by George E. Vaillant, M.D, he defines spirituality as:
I used to search for enlightenment. I studied under various spiritual teachers who promised that one day I would become enlightened. During this time I experienced what I can only describe as mystical states in which I felt at one with the universe. Unfortunately these experiences did not last, and I would come crashing back down to a normal state of consciousness.
From these experiences I developed a belief system in which I figured out that enlightenment would be like these mystical states, but all the time. I believed that as soon as I cracked the knack of enlightenment I would go around all day with a big grin on my face in responses to my blissful state.
In today’s busy world we often feel disharmony. Life just doesn’t seem to flow the way it should. Wouldn’t it be great if you could feel at peace with the world?
My partner Catherine Shiel and I have created a Cd entitled Harmony.
