Afflatus

happiness

2008-01-06T22:13:00.001-08:00

Joy, How to Make it Last
By Siri Carpenter, Prevention
Prevention

Rose Theis is the consummate amateur athlete. Some might call her a machine. At age 46, she is an Ironman triathlete, an experienced marathoner, and a year-round bicyclist—a notable feat for a resident of Madison, WI, where the winters are no joke.

In the summer, she thinks nothing of awakening before dawn for a swim in the cool waters of Madison's Lake Monona. She isn't stopped by minor pains or by driving rains. But a school of muskies jumping upstream to spawn...a clump of magnolias spreading their flowering arms... a hot pink sunrise looming over a glassy lake—those are pleasures worth stopping for.

Theis understands implicitly what Loyola University Chicago social psychologist Fred B. Bryant, PhD, wishes he could impart to all of us: Finding joy means opening yourself up to it. The value of taking time to appreciate positive experiences seems obvious—trite, even. Yet it's a skill that few people have mastered. The reason is simple: We're busy, and we have a lot on our minds. There'll always be other sunrises, we say to ourselves, but if we don't hit the shower soon, we'll never beat the traffic to work. Under the weight of our daily responsibilities and worries, we reflexively tune out the fleeting, spontaneous events that can happen at any time and that, if we let them, could bring us deeper joy and greater health.

For more than 20 years, Bryant has worked to understand what he terms mindful savoring: the things we think and do to intensify or prolong positive feelings. "We all know people who are like this," Bryant says. "They're the life of the party, and they're the first people you want to turn to when something good happens. What is their gift?" Across the different cultures that Bryant has studied, women tend to possess this skill more often than do men.

Mindful savoring doesn't only enhance our feeling of well-being, Bryant notes. It may also improve health. A substantial body of related research indicates that people with a sunnier outlook about growing older recover more quickly from illness and live longer—7 1/2 years on average, according to a large Yale University study—than people who have bleaker views. People who scored highest on a test Bryant designed that measures savoring ability also reported fewer illnesses.

Needless to say, it's easiest to appreciate the good when fortune leans in our favor. But when we're ill or anxious or beset by tragedy, savoring positive events is all the more important. Happiness, Bryant says, broadens our perspective and helps us recognize ways to cope with adversity. "Bad things will come—we can't avoid them," he says. As many a poet has written, joy is fleeting, and elusive. "But if you know how, you can go hunting for it, and you can make it last."

Here are 10 surefire strategies that Bryant says everyone can use to discover pleasure and satisfaction in everyday moments:

1. Share positive feelings

Let your children know how great it feels to spend time with them. Tell your spouse about the compliment your boss paid you. E-mail your best friend to tell her how fondly you remember the camping trip you took last year, and include a silly picture. Sharing happy memories and experiences with others—or even simply anticipating doing so—is one of the most powerful and effective ways to prolong and magnify joy, Bryant's research shows. "It helps sustain emotions that would otherwise fade," he says. Affirming connections with others, he adds, is "the glue that holds people together."

2. Build memories

Take mental photographs of memorable moments that you can draw on later. Recall vivid, specific events, and pinpoint what brought you joy. Do you love your red wool scarf because it's stylish and warm, or because its smell reminds you of your childhood romps in the snow? Just be careful not to overanalyze and lose the wonder of the moment. What you want, says University of Virginia social psychologist Timothy D. Wilson, PhD, is to dissect your experiences just enough to appreciate how they've helped form you and then get back to simply living them. Interjecting mystery into happy moments—reflecting on what's surprising or hard to understand about them, for example—can strengthen their power. "If you analyze special times in a way that makes them seem ordinary or predictable, then you don't necessarily get as much benefit," Wilson says.

3. Congratulate yourself

Take pride in a hard won accomplishment. If you spent a year sweating at the gym to reach a fitness goal, bask in your success—and share it with others. Self-congratulation doesn't come easily to everyone. "A lot of people have trouble basking in an accomplishment because they feel that they shouldn't toot their own horns or rest on their laurels," Bryant says. It's a fine line between joyous self-congratulation and shameless self-promotion, but don't worry: You'll know if you're crossing it.

4. Fine tune your senses

Close your eyes while you roll a square of dark chocolate over your tongue or fill your lungs with salty sea air or eavesdrop on your grandchildren's play and laughter. Shutting out some sensory stimuli while concentrating on others can heighten your enjoyment of positive experiences—particularly those that are short-lived.

5. Compare downward

Comparing upward makes us feel deprived, but comparing downward can heighten enjoyment. Think about how things could be worse—or how things used to be worse. Just keep it light—you don't have to relive your cancer diagnosis or revel in a neighbor's misfortune. Simply take note: Is today sunnier than promised? Are you fitter than you were a year ago?

6. Get absorbed

Some joyful moments seem to call for conscious reflection and dissection. At other times, we savor best when we simply immerse ourselves in the present moment, without deliberate analysis or judgment. Listen to your favorite music with headphones in a dark room. Lose yourself in a novel. Set aside enough time on the weekend for your favorite hobby so you can attain a level of absorption known as the "flow" state.

7. Fake it till you make it

Putting on a happy face—even if you don't feel like it—actually induces greater happiness, says Bryant. So be exuberant. Don't just eat the best peach of the season—luxuriate in every lip smacking mouthful. Laugh aloud at the movies. Smile at yourself in the mirror. After all, he says, "a surefire way to kill joy is to suppress it."

8. Seize the moment

Some positive events come and go quickly—a surprise toast to your accomplishments at work, your daughter's sweet 16 party. It seems obvious that the more quickly a positive experience evaporates, the more difficult it is to savor. Yet paradoxically, Bryant has found, reminding ourselves that time is fleeting and joy transitory prompts us to seize positive moments while they last.

9. Avoid killjoy thinking

The world has enough pessimists. Short circuit negative thoughts that can only dampen enjoyment, such as self recriminations or worries about others' perceptions. When you find yourself awash in happiness, give it space to grow—don't ruminate about why you don't deserve this good thing, what could go wrong, how things could be better. Consciously make the decision to embrace joy.

10. Say thank you

Cultivate an "attitude of gratitude," Bryant says. Pinpoint what you're happy about—a party invitation, a patch of shade—and acknowledge its source. It's not always necessary to outwardly express gratitude, Bryant notes, but saying "thank you" to a friend, a stranger, or the universe deepens our happiness by making us more aware of it.

Provided by Prevention

Story based on dream

2006-02-27T10:22:00.000-08:00

So, had this very powerful dream. May not sound so interesting to the consious mind, but here goeS:

Boat. Family. Brianna
Julie.

Metal, rust

Blood splattered typewriter. Chinese characters. Large foriegn black man typing. he's been beaten. Or did he beat someone else? self flagellation?

Investigation.

Boat hits something, boat sinking. Not panic for me, but for Brianna. Where is she, who is with her?

Relying on the others to take care of Brianna. We have to get off the ship. I will find her.

A Reasonable View Of Evolution

2005-08-28T17:30:00.001-07:00

CHAPTER FOUR:

Why Do Fundamentalists Reject Darwin?

Now, at last, we can approach our final question, Why do fundamentalist Christians have trouble with Darwin's theory of evolution? Why did the Southern Baptist Church refuse to accept the Reconciliation Thesis that I had offered them?

According to Richard Dawkins, there is a simple explanation-fundamentalist Christians are ignorant boobs. But this explanation, as tempting as it may be to some, simply won't do. Catholics, according to Dawkins, are also ignorant boobs, and yet they have never had much trouble accepting Darwin's theory of evolution. John Henry Newman, arguably the greatest Catholic thinker of the nineteenth century, remarked that if evolution was the method by which God decided to organize the details of creation, then Darwin's theory, far from casting doubt on God's existence, merely demonstrated the perfection of his providence. Or to use his words:

"It does not seem to me to follow that creation is denied because the Creator, millions of year ago, gave laws to matter."

Rather than micro-managing the adaptations of each organism, God had simply established certain fundamental laws by which these adaptations could be produced-all according to plan, needless to say, but in this case, a plan that was laid at the very foundations of the universe.

The great seventeenth century French philosopher and Catholic priest, Pierre Malebranche, believed that it was unseemly to suppose that God worried overmuch about the minutiae of the world's day-to-day operation. Better to conceive of God as establishing, by an unchangeable and eternal decree, a set of general laws in accordance with which all the actual events of our world would be regulated-so perfectly regulated that Malebranche even ruled out the possibility of miracles. God had decreed that gravity should swiftly move objects towards the center of the earth-hence, when a three year old child fell off a balcony eleven stories high, how absurd to expect God to overturn his immutable decree by permitting the child to survive his crash into the pavement below.

Many Christians of Darwin's time also felt the same way. Henry Ward Beecher preached that "Design by wholesale is grander than design by detail," and the leading American biologist Asa Gray accepted the Darwinian principle of natural selection, but interpreted it as the method God had chosen to implement his eternal design. According to this lofty point of view, God is no humble craftsman forced to carve, piece by piece, each and every specimen of life with his own two hands and by the sweat of his brow-a mortifying role for the supreme deity, considering the fact that even Santa Claus can avail himself of an army of industrious elves to do all the boring and tedious work for him. Rather, thanks to Darwin's theory of evolution, God was no longer seen as a lowly artisan, laboriously crafting each species; instead, he was the grand architect who worked from a set of elegant and simple principles-namely, those discovered and set forth by Charles Darwin in The Origins of Species.

But if a man can accept the theory of evolution and believe in intelligent design without any logical inconsistency, what can explain the failure of Christian fundamentalists to jump on the same bandwagon that has been graced with the presence of men like John Henry Newman, Henry Ward Beecher, Asa Gray, and, today, nearly all Catholics, not to mention the more intellectually respectable denominations of Protestants? Do Southern Baptists, and such, just have lower IQ? Or is there a deeper reason for the fact that Christian fundamentalists remain opposed to Darwin's theory of evolution?

I would like to suggest that there is a deeper reason than stupidity or ignorance. Furthermore, I want to argue that it is the same deeper reason that led Darwin to reject the efforts to reconcile the belief in intelligent design with the theory of evolution that he had developed.

http://www.techcentralstation.com/081905B.html

Vision

2005-08-28T17:30:00.000-07:00

"The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
- Bertrand Russell"

I saw two baby bunnies today. I am thankful for that vision. God opens and closes doors and has HIS own will toward the future. His path is the primary path for us providing we are following His guidence.

2005-07-18T09:17:00.000-07:00

This sounds like a good beginning of a story:

"Most pundits and philosophers say that no matter what happens, no matter how terrible some event is to a person, a city, or a country, that one thing stands true. Time moves on. That there is a tomorrow, and somehow we forget things, that pain receds and we always find our smiles and relative happiness in the future. Yet pundits are famously absent often from great calamity. Intelligensia tends to avoid such things as earthquakes, tornados, or bombs. Most people who speak of such things as closure and moving on have never felt the pain of which they speak.

No one who lived through what I lived through today would submit the tonic of "there will be a tomorrow..." For does tomorrow matter if there is no one to observe it? Is tomorrow to stand for that next potential for goodness and life, or will it now be seen as another tick of the clock off of the quickly ending story of humanity? Will we now simply dread the next days as a cancer patient who is dying, slowly, in pain? If so, what good is tomorrow? If the only thing on Earth to enjoy the next days sun is the plants and bugs, does the Sun matter?

But I must get to the business of recording what I'm talking about to you, before my tomorrow ends me, and potentially us all.

boogle.com - google search engine with quotes

2005-06-13T08:21:00.000-07:00

boogle.com - google search engine with quotes: "A good manager is best when people barely know that he exists. Not so good when people obey and acclaim him. Worse when they despise him.

LaoTzu"

Grandmother stuck in bathtub for five days - Aging - MSNBC.com

2005-04-20T10:44:00.000-07:00

Common, really.....

Grandmother stuck in bathtub for five days - Aging - MSNBC.com

and file under horrendous ways to go...

"Griffith, 73, had been recuperating from surgery at the Atlantic Shores nursing home for a month when ants swarmed the retired postal worker’s bed and bit him during the early hours of July 26, 2001. Forty hours later, Griffith died of shock from the amount of ant poison in his body, the medical examiner’s report said. His back, arms, chest, neck, head and shoulders were covered in bites."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7159305/

Home Schooling --- Learning When It Feels Right

2005-03-31T08:47:00.000-08:00

"Be still. Take a moment. Be thankful for everything in life… even trials. What are we supposed to learn from the hard stuff? Just look at all the good things in life. I am so grateful to be with my children, to feel their warmth against me as we lie on the bed and have school. I smell my son's breathe as he reads aloud. I think about how his breathe smells… like "puppy-breath"... all sweet and innocent."

Soup14

Yoga Journal : Poses

2005-03-30T15:09:00.000-08:00

Thats right 'yall. I'm getting into Yoga!

Yoga Journal : Poses

Wired News: Fiona Apple Is Cookin' on the Net

2005-03-18T08:21:00.000-08:00

I wondered what happend to ol ms. Apple. I figured since she freaked out on the MTV music awards ( or was that the emmy's? ) that they gave here professional concrete boots....but she rises again!

Wired News: Fiona Apple Is Cookin' on the Net

Welcome to Coffee And Cake!

2005-03-16T20:22:00.000-08:00

Eventually, if this turns out to be fun, i'll make this a separate domain. But for now, we'll see how it goes on Blogger. I've been enjoying blogger services for years, and no reason to change now.

Myself, Fec, and my sisters, who will join the conversation, plus perhaps other memebers of my weird family.

Enjoy, have some coffee, cake, and relax. Smell the flowers before they die.

:)