Helene

I’m a passionate person. I usually have one passion that makes me all giddy and makes me do much research, reading etc. For the last couple of months my passion have been happiness: How to achieve it, how to maintain it when I feel it, and ensure that it lasts. I haven’t really come up with a definitive answer, but I have come a long way in discovering how to get there.

So, when I found a news article about happy people don’t watch mutch tv, I joined the choir. I have been a total tv slave, but I have slowly started watching less TV and I don’t enjoy it as much as before. I also notice that I’m not that happy when watching it. There’s a lot of things I prefer doing before watching tv (like exercising). The thing is… I can do both in one day. I’m kind of lucky that way.

The Dilbert creator, Scott Adams, has a nice posting about where his inspiration for Dilbert and other items come from. He states that his passions drives him, not him being in the lead seat deciding “Now I’m going to be passionate about this item”. He states “your passion finds you”.

Before creating Dilbert, Scott Adams used to be a regular Joe with a regular job. What sparked my interest is this quote:

When I had a full-time job, before Dilbert, I awoke at 4 AM, sat alone in a comfortable chair with a cup of coffee, and waited. I did that for a year or two, just emptying my mind and freeing my imagination. I don’t remember the day I picked up a pencil and started drawing instead of sitting during those hours, but I’m sure I didn’t have a choice.

I have heard that statement before by Eckart Tolle. He also used to sit quietly in a meditative state, not doing anything, just letting the thoughts run free without pushing them to the forefront. Tolle has also stated that one needs to take the time doing nothing, to allow ideas to come forward, even if one has to wait a couple of years. That’s how the book “A New Earth” appeared to him. The book was waiting to be written, and at some point it came to Tolle so he could write it.

Oprah tries to meditate every day, doing nothing. She told that one day all she had time to was meditate while her dog was drinking out of the bidet. That was funny

So now I try to take some moments every day where I do nothing, except sitting there in solitude and quiteness. I find it a bit hard, and I only last for a cup of coffee, but at least its something. And apparantly I have to do that for a couple of years before some inspiration grips me. I want it to come sooner than that.

Yes, that’s where I am, in happy land. I’m happy! I’m pleased with my life, I like my life.

Getting there have been work. I started looking at what wasn’t working in my life, what I weren’t pleased with. The first part was recognizing the unhappy thoughts - I dislike my life, I will never be happy, I don’t belong, life is meaningless etc. and figuring out what triggered those thoughts, and what feeling of loss was there, what was I missing in my life?

Then I started looking at what I liked doing, what gave me a sense of pleasure and well-being and what I wanted from my life. What I really wanted was a feeling of peace and stillness within myself.

So how does one find peace and stillness? It’s not something one suddenly can decide and then feel it immediately afterwards. I had to search for it.

The first decision I made was that I will not grow complacent about my own well-being. If I’m unhappy, I need to figure out why and deal with it immediately. If I wanted peace, well, god damn it, then I had to work for it. What stopped me? What troubled my mind? Peace and happiness is an internal mood, but to get it I had to deal with external problems, internal issues and doing activities that I liked.

From a friend I got two tips: Nonviolent communication and Katie Byron. Nonviolent Communication is about how to communicate with others in a compassionate way, but it’s also about finding and recognizing ones needs in dealing with oneself and others. I started working through the issues I had, and my needs behind them.

Katie Byron have come up with a process called ‘The Work’ for dealing with issues and suffering in ones life.

By combining these two methods I started working on myself and figuring out what I needed to do to moving forwards and becoming happy. That was the start, but it’s an ongoing process.

I have never been particularly interested in self-realization books, but when I started to watch Oprah and get some tips, I got the sense that I can use those too feel better and I started reading them. I bought ‘A New Earth’ by Eckhart Tolle and ‘The Secret’ by Rhonda Byrne. I take what works for me and discards the things that doesn’t work for me.  What I have found is that by even taking the time to read those books, I feel better and more happy.

I have made several decisions over the course of time:

1. I shall like and be happy with everything I do.
2. My surroundings shall have people that care about and love me.
3. Affirmations, I tell myself every day that I like my life, I am secure about myself and everybody in this universe will work to make me happy.

Weekly happiness tasks:

• Exercise at least once a week
• Go to a cafe, relax, read a book etc. once a week
• Spend at least one hour each week on my religion (reading, translating etc).
• Doing an activity that connected me to other people. In my case I decided to do some volunteering work for Red Cross and for youths.

Other:

• Indulge myself with a massage twice a year.
• Visit my friend in Trondheim at least twice a year.

All of these activities are something I want to do, that gives me joy. I look forward to each and every one of these activities. And what I find is that this list keeps on growing over the months.

The result: I’m happy

Things like cooking (which I haven’t liked before), I suddenly enjoy. I enjoy baking, cleaning up. Even the smallest task is suddenly something I look forward to. I feel peace and stillness within myself, and my life is richer for it. And I nurture that happiness each day, so that I may never loose it again.

Walther Eidlitz was an Austrian, compelled by a yearning to visit and explore the religious aspect of India, he left his familiy in the end of 1930 and travelled a long way to India. Since he and his family was jews, the family had to flee from the nazis and immigrated to Sweden. Eidlitz have written about his journey to india, and it’s available as pdf’s (Unknown India). There are also more books available there.

by Marshall B. Rosenberg.

My review:

This book is fantastic !!!!! I even liked it so much that I have bought it as an ebook and as a paperbook. This book should be tought in schools, from kindergarten to university. It shows us how we are brought up thinking in terms of right thinking and wrong thinking, instead of focusing on what our needs are.

I often experience that my words are being misunderstood (and who doesn’t?) and when I voice my opinion, people explode in agression. I have one recent experience of this:

My mother just got married, and as it usually is, there was a wedding dinner and party afterwards. I got to know a little bit one of the guests, and she (let’s call her Elise) was having a bit of trouble with her boyfriend of many years. My mother managed to act and say something stupid, and Elise was fuming in anger when I happen to meet her on the way in to the party premises. I got to know Elise a little bit, and after a while I realized that Elise needed a lot of attention and understanding/loving care. The problem was that she went after that attention in the wrong way, by talking about her views, opinions, acting a certain way and forcing others to acknowledge her, which led to others being angry at her for not taking considerations of others.

So while I was sitting with some of these people, she said something like: “Let’s go, I don’t want to be here”, and she left. And then the other people muttered something badly about her. That was when I opened my mouth and told them: Don’t you see how much she is hurting? She needs understanding and loving care from you.

That’s when the explosion happened, and they got quite aggressive towards me, and I reacted as I do after a while, I stopped talking and just accepted the verbal abuse. They were obviously in so much pain that had accumulated over much time, that the only way to express that pain was by being aggressive, taking the high morale way, saying that I didn’t know what I was talking about etc. In other words, they weren’t able to express their pain, instead they were talking about the “correct way of thinking and acting”, and “she doesn’t deserve any compassion, she got herself into that mess”. This book shows me how to deal with these situations, relieving the pain of others and at the same time avoiding being verbally abused myself.

This books shows how one can deal with any situation, in a way that is beneficial for you and others. As the book title says: A language of compassion. And that compassion extends to our selves. It shows how one can focus ones attention to ones needs instead of focusing on what others did wrong or what “I” did wrong.

I strongly urge everybody (and yes, you who reads this), to read this book. It should be one of the compulsory tools in our toolbox for dealing with life.

Book description:

Do you hunger for skills to improve the quality of your relationships, to deepen your sense of personal empowerment or to simply communicate more effectively? Unfortunately, for centuries our culture has taught us to think and speak in ways that can actually perpetuate conflict, internal pain and even violence. Nonviolent Communication partners practical skills with a powerful consciousness and vocabulary to help you get what you want peacefully.

In this internationally acclaimed text, Marshall Rosenberg offers insightful stories, anecdotes, practical exercises and role-plays that will dramatically change your approach to communication for the better. Discover how the language you use can strengthen your relationships, build trust, prevent conflicts and heal pain. Revolutionary, yet simple, NVC offers you the most effective tools to reduce violence and create peace in your life?one interaction at a time.

You never know what you’re gonna get. (Forrest Gump)

One of the things I have been thinking about are how people tend to place others into boxes. Humans have a way of rationalizing everything down into something they understand. That rationalization can be a positive force or it can be a negative force.

On a basic level we need it for categorizing things like females/males, human/animal, skilled/unskilled, fat/thin. This is all very good and necessary. In our everyday life however, we don’t keep it on that level. We add some preference - chocolate (good), tomatoes (bad). A tomato will always have some different flavours, but basically we will not change our perception of the tomato much. A tomato is a tomato.

When dealing with other people we tend to do the exact same thing, but in a more subtle and extensive way. We get a first impression where we evaluate people based upon looks, clothing, body language etc. Already on the first impression we get the feeling of “do we like this person or not”. That impression gets refined each time we have an encounter with that person or based upon others impression/experience/gossip. We can have an instant emotional response and/or we create an image in our mind which validates our feelings and thoughts.

The problem usually arise when negative thought patterns arise. They are there for a reason - there is something within us which responds to our image of the other person. Of course, the image we create might be right, but we can’t automatically assume it’s correct.

Example:
Person1: I would like to work within the marketing division.
Person2’s interpretation no1: Person1 demands to work only within the marketing division.
Person2’s interpretation no2: Person1 doesn’t like to work in the sales department that he currently work in.

So how did the situation go from “would like to” to “demand”? It’s connected to the inner dialogue of person2. When talking to another person we always interpret other peoples messages based upon the body language of the other, our own reality and our inner dialogue. By inner dialogue I mean the voice in our heads (our thoughts) that wonders what and why the other person said what he did. That voice is also the one that tries to rationalize our feelings into something logical. Example: If I don’t like another person, then I will find several reasons why I don’t like him/her. Consciously or unconsciously I will search for reasons that I don’t like the other person, because it will validate my own impressions.

By doing so we are effectively closing down the lines of communications and we are not even aware that we have a judgemental attitude. It’s our own limitations that gets in the way of dealing with other people.

In a discussion we might disagree strongly with another person, but we have to be careful so that it doesn’t validate our own bad impressions.

So how to deal with our own negative impressions of other people?
Usually there’s a situation that is the reason for our negative impression. Then we need to validate if our impression is correct by asking:

Correct way: Do you only want to work within the marketing division or can you work within other divisions as well?
Wrong way: I think you are difficult to deal with because you only want to work within the marketing division.

Correct way: Why did you respond that way during that situation?
Wrong way: It was really bad of you to deal with the situation that way.

Notice that in the correct way of dealing with it, there is no emotional response, only a question where person1 has the possibility to explain his viewpoint.
In the wrong way to deal with the problem we add our own negative impressions and person1 must instead use his energy to weave out all misconceptions of person2. Something that is timeconsuming, difficult and might never succeed.

The problem is that when dealing with peoples misconceptions, a person is guilty until it’s proven otherwise (which can be never in such cases). This can be a huge burden for a person. Person2 will never know how much of a burden he/she places upon other people simply because they are different people.

I have personally used an approach for dealing with persons I don’t like based upon first impression. I smile and tries to meet them without any preconceptions. What I have experienced on several occasions is that they seek me out and likes me better than I apparently like them.

So:

1. Try to leave preconceptions when dealing with other people
2. When something seems negative, ask if your understanding of the situation is correct, but leave your negative imprints out of the question.

By doing so, you might improve the life of others (and your own).