Could You Be Happier If You Tried?

How happy are you?  Could you be happier if you tried?

Is it selfish to want to try?

While on vacation in the happiest country on earth, I read Gretchen Rubin's thoroughly absorbing (and now bestselling) meditation on these questions, The Happiness Project. Armed with research that about about 30-40% of our happiness is actually within our control (50% of happiness is pre-determined by genetics, another 10 - 20% by life circumstance) Rubin takes us along, month-by-month, on her one year quest to maximize her own sense of well-being.

The book is fun to read; it's also a treasure chest of useful tips, ideas, and frameworks for thinking about one's own happiness.  Rubin's articulation of the four stages of happiness - anticipate, savor, express, reflect - resonated as spot-on as I happily splashed about in the Pacific Ocean.  Her experiment with enacting a "week of extreme nice" is particularly amusing, if daunting.  Throughout, as she tries on the advice of philosophers, parenting experts, and self-help gurus (often to comic effect), Rubin's cardinal rule, "Be Gretchen," ensures that she remains grounded in what she knows to be true about herself.

But isn't all this focus on personal happiness kind of... selfish? Rubin addresses this question at length, and points to research that indicates that happier people are more likely to engage with the world and help others.  In Rubin's words,

"One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy; One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself."

I would go further and say that personal happiness is key to our ability to make change in the world.  For folks who feel called to create a more happy, sustainable, and balanced world, ignoring your own personal happiness, sustainability, and balance will limit your ability to act as effectively as you could.

Happy, self-aware change leaders create healthier organizations and more thoughtful social change movements. When we fail to pay attention to our own happiness -- an all too common phenomenon in the social justice field -- the results are burnout, frustration, and  organizational dysfunction.

Gretchen Rubin's book is a great reminder that in order to change the world, we must change ourselves first. How many unhappy leaders do you know, and how much more powerfully could they lead if they were leading from a happier place?

The Journey to Productivity Starts with 10,000 Steps

How many steps do you take a day?  Inspired by a recommendation by Dr. Oz, I bought a $23 pedometer and have started tracking my steps.  Dr. Oz recommends taking 10,000 steps a day as a good aim for a healthy, active lifestyle. Yesterday I just hit 10,000 by doing a day's worth of errands, laundry, and housecleaning.  I know not every day is so active for me -- many much less so.  My goal is to hit 10,000 steps a day, 4 days a week for the next month.

Tracking my steps is a fitness project and a mindfulness project, but it is also is a productivity project.

On days I work from home, I am much more productive if I start my morning with even a short walk outside the house.  Getting out of the house and taking a walk first-thing wakes me up and focuses my mind.  Mid-day, walking can take me from a dull, foggy work slump to a sharp and alert state of mind in five minutes.    It can also give my mood a significant boost.

Have you noticed that you are more productive when you shift your physical state?

Mindfulness on Vacation

I am on my first vacation out of the country in a number of years, and am remembering how international travel forces me into a more mindful state. With so much new information to process -- from the sound of the language to the songs of the birds in the trees to the texture of sugar cane between my teeth -- my propensity to notice what I am experiencing in real time is exponentially heightened.  This is the phenomenon that at its most overwhelming can become culture shock; but in small, manageable doses, it provides for a cascade of pleasantly challenging experiences.

Vacations alter our daily routines just enough that even the things we experience at home can take on new meaning.  Trying to photograph the sun setting over the Pacific Ocean the other night, I couldn't believe how quickly the sun was disappearing below the horizon. I barely caught it before it disappeared altogether.  I found myself thinking, does the sun always set this quickly?  Does it move this quickly across the sky all day, even in New York City?  How could I never have noticed this before?

That the sun sets rapidly is hardly a revolutionary discovery. It's a  useful reminder though that there is rich, meaningful information surrounding us every day -- information that  whether by necessity, obliviousness or choice, we have trained ourselves to ignore.

We can't tap into all of this information all the time, or we would find ourselves in a immobilizing state of sensory overload.  Still, it is important to create opportunities for our minds to have to process new information, or to be able to process old information in new ways.

Training Your Brain to Stop Putting Off That Vacation

The New York Times ran an interesting piece yesterday about pleasure procrastination: our tendency to put off things we actually want to do. Researchers have found that there are a couple of reasons we don't redeem gift cards or use our frequent flier miles. First, we mistakenly believe that we are too busy to engage in pleasurable activities now and that we will have more time to do so in the future.  Second, we don't want to settle for a good experience now when we imagine that we can create a perfect experience in the future. The problem comes when we habitually deny ourselves fun in the present moment because we are holding out for tomorrow. At best, we wind up with a drawer full of unused gift cards and Banana Republic winds up a little richer.  At worst, we wind up with a severely out-of-balance life, unable to allow ourselves (and probably those who are unfortunate enough to work for us) the "luxury" of a long vacation, a long weekend, or a long lunch.

I would argue that in order to stop pushing pleasure off into the future, we need to practice being present. Just as practicing scales is the foundation of mastering the piano, regular mindfulness meditation is practice for being present in daily life.

Mindfulness meditation is as simple as sitting for 5 minutes and focusing on your own breathing. Each time your mind drifts toward "what's for dinner tonight?" or "did I pay that bill?" gently bring your attention back to your breath. That's it. This is the "practice" in meditation: returning your attention to the present moment again, and again, and again.

Neuroscience confirms what meditators have long experienced: the more you practice meditation, the more easily you will be able to shift your awareness from the stories in your head to the present moment before you.  David Rock explains how mindfulness meditation retrains the circuitry networks in our brains so that we can be less caught up in narrative and more attune to the present moment.  He writes that over time,

You perceive more information about events occurring around you, as well as more accurate information about these events. Noticing more real-time information makes you more flexible in how you respond to the world. You also become less imprisoned by the past, your habits, expectations or assumptions, and more able to respond to events as they unfold.

That story that you've been telling yourself about the much-delayed vacation you'll take once everything is perfectly under control at work?  Much less convincing, when you are attuned to the reality of your present experience.

Does the concept of pleasure procrastination resonate with you?  What do you do to curb it?

What Matters Now

Seth Godin asked 70 "big thinkers" from business, social innovation, and technology to answer the question, "What Matters Now?"  Their answers - one page essays on topics like fear, generosity, gumption, sleep, and willpower - are available in a free e-book. You can get the free e-book here.