The Happiness Blog

Happiness, tranquillity and acceptance

Copyright © Dr Jim Byrne, 29^th January 2012

Introduction

I'm sorry this blog is two days late.  (I know some of you sit up all night waiting for it to appear! )  The cause of the delay was a nasty cough which I caught because of foolishly discarding my winter overcoat on Weds when the weather was allegedly ‘milder'.  That will teach me to be more prudent!

Earlier today I posted this quotation on the internet:

"There are seasons in your life, as in nature: Bountiful and barren seasons; warm and cold seasons; and becoming and declining seasons. Face them all bravely".  Trungpa

In case it's not obvious what Trungpa is saying, his statement is reminiscent of Dr Albert Ellis's statement:

"Life is tough for dolls like us".

Except Trungpa spells out the need to face up to life's suffering, bravely.  To bravely face up to life's difficulties, you do not need to be fearless.  You need, as Susan Jeffers emphasized, to feel the fear and do it anyway.  Feel the fear and digest your disappointments.  Feel the pain and walk on!

The Paradox of Seeking Happiness

Life is in some respects stranger than fiction.

If you are unhappy, and you strongly desire that you be happier, at this moment, then you will feel even more misery than before.

If you are unhappy, and you accept that ‘this unhappiness does not seem to be under my control at the moment', and you give up trying to get rid of it, then you will feel less misery than you did before.

However, if you are too accepting, and you stay in miserable situations for too long, then you will be in the domain of ‘long suffering'.

If you want to shorten your suffering, then the general guidelines that I would advance are these:

1. Begin by accepting reality as it is at the moment.  (If that's the way it is, then that's the way it is!)

2. Be willing to ‘complete your experience' of whatever the problem or source of pain happens to be.  Face up to the problem; feel the pain.  Do not try to run away from the pain.  (See my paper on Completion).***

3. In the process of ‘completing your experience', also seek new ways of framing your problem or source of pain, so it shows up in a less problematical way. (See the Six Windows Model for advice and guidance on reframing your problems).***

4. Set goals for making progress away from difficult situations, and towards less difficult situations.  But when you fail to achieve those goals, do not ‘catastrophize' about that failure.  Simply reassert your goal, and try, try, and try again, until you succeed.  (Or until you collect evidence that this particular pathway is not open to you, and try a new pathway away from the painful situation).

Escapism is the worst way to respond at this time.  Escaping into alcohol and drug stupors are forms of self-destructive enstupidization!  If you cannot easily solve your problems with your present level of knowledge, intelligence, skill and wisdom, how to you expect that becoming more stupid is going to help?

Happiness is a relative state of mind.  Instead of seeking euphoric happiness and great success, seek instead to live a calm, serene life of tranquillity, based on being a good human being, a good neighbour, a good friend, a good family member, and a modest human being on a difficult journey from birth to death.  Give up trying to be famous or wealthy.  Wealthy and famous materialists are just as miserable and unhappy as poverty stricken materialists!

Accept the things you cannot change, and change the things you can!

That's all for this week.  I will return to William Irvine on Stoicism next week (hopefully).

Best wishes,

The Happiness Blog

Happiness, friendship and work relationships

Copyright (c) Dr Jim Byrne, 20^th January 2012

Introduction

If you want to be happy, focus your mind on those things for which you can be grateful.

If you want to be happy, then practice kindness.

If you want to be happy, avoid evil acts and focus more and more on becoming a moral individual.  The more virtuous you can become, the happier you will feel.

Happiness is ‘an inside job'.  It does not depend, essentially, on external factors.

~~~

Stoicism and Happiness

Over recent weeks and months, I have written about the Stoic approach to social relationships.  In particular, I mentioned the statement from Marcus Aurelius's ‘Meditations' to this effect: Every morning, before setting out to take up your social role, you should remind yourself that today you will meet with all kinds of frustrations and difficulties at the hands of your fellow humans.

Marcus and other Stoic philosophers do not consider that this reality - of how difficult our fellow humans tend to be - allows us to opt out of our social responsibilities.  They believe we have a duty to cooperate with our fellow humans for the common good.  I added that, in order to deal with these difficulties of social relationships, you should study assertiveness training and Transactional Analysis, as well as Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy, to help you to deal effectively with the difficulties that your fellow humans will throw at you on a daily basis.

I also pointed out that the Stoics distinguish between your social relationships with are based on social duty, and your friendships.  With regard to friendships, they say you can indeed be highly selective as to who you choose, and how you relate to them.  You don't have a duty to have friends, or to indulge them if you do.  In particular, the Stoics warn us of two things:

1. We need to maintain our tranquillity, as that is a big part of the basis of our happiness (eudaimonia).  Therefore, we should avoid loud and aggressive persons, and whiners and moaners.

2. We also need to preserve our moral character, as that is the biggest part of the basis of our happiness (eudaimonia).  Therefore, we should not form friendships with people who are morally degenerate, decadent or evil, as moral degeneracy is like a disease which is passed along by contact.

So, let us go back to those occasions when we are doing our duty, and have to associate with people who threaten to spoil our tranquillity.  I have already suggested that TA, REBT and Assertiveness Training have strategies for dealing with those kinds of situations.  But what did the Stoics suggest?  According to Professor William, they had various strategies, and I will mention just three here:

1. When somebody behaves in an annoying manner with you, remind yourself that many people may also be annoyed by some of your own values, attitudes or behaviours.  This should teach you tolerance and acceptance of their way of being, for the duration of that time when you have to associate with them.  And we can also remind ourselves that if we allow ourselves to be annoyed by him or her, then we are allowing our tranquillity to be spoiled.  This could help us to feel detached from the annoyance.

2. The second thing that Marcus recommends is that we give up the habit of speculating about what those difficult people are doing, thinking, saying or planning.  We should also hunt down and eliminate any emotions of jealousy or envy, or paranoid suspicions, etc.  This should enhance our sense of detachment from those difficult people with who we must associate for the social good.

3. The third point made by Marcus is that impudent and ignorant individuals exist; and we cannot ‘un-exist them'.  They are part of the natural order of life.  To expect that annoying people will not annoy us is like expecting that the sun will always shine, and the rain will stay away, because we find it so difficult.  Life does not work like that.  Into every life a little rain must fall.  And into every social life, a little annoyance and irritation and frustration and difficulty must also fall.  We should, in short, expect boorish people to behave boorishly.  This should help us to be more accepting of the difficulties and frustrations of working and cooperating with others for the greater social good.

That's all for this week.

Best wishes,

The Happiness Blog:

Windows on the question of happiness...

Copyright (c) Jim Byrne, Friday 13th January 2012
Prologue
This weekend is very busy for me, and so I cannot do Part 2 of last week's blog.  That will have to wait until next week.  Therefore, i am going to re-present a previous post.  This blog post was originally presented in July 2011.

1. Introduction

Let me begin, once again, with a quote:

"Even if you are right, there is nothing to be gained from letting yourself become adversarial with your loves ones.  Remember how much more important these people are to you than is the issue you are talking about".  From Niven (2000), page 47[1].

This is what we mean, in CENT***, when we say: "Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy.  Choose!"

If you insist upon being right all the time, then you are in real danger of "making your partner wrong"! Or creating the impression that you are Right and s/he is Wrong!  This is like pouring nitric acid into the inner workings of your relationships.  You will destroy them, very quickly.

As Werner Erhard said: "If you want to have a really powerful relationship with somebody, you have got to stop ‘making them wrong'!"  They are not wrong!  There is more than one way of looking at most situations.

Or, as O'Connor (1995) said: "Prevalent criticism within relationships reduces happiness by up to one-third".  (Quoted in Niven, 2000, page 48).

2. Breaking up your unhappiness

In CENT we say that if you are unhappy right now, then the source of your unhappiness is that you are looking at some aspect of your life through an ‘unhelpful window', or frame or lens, in the ‘basement' of your mind. 

We can never find out, reliably, what that window or lens happens to be.  But CENT has developed a technique to break up that lens, which dissolves your unhappiness in the process.  That technique is this:

Give up assuming there is only one way to look at life.  Teach yourself to look at life from many different angles.

For example, if you are unhappy with some aspect of your work life - which we will call your ‘work problem' - then you need to look at it in many different ways, to break up the idea that it has to be seen in the miserable, unhelpful, unhappy way that you are looking at it today.

Towards this end we have developed the Six Windows Model[2].  The way to use the model is this.  Look at the six windows in the table that follows.  Imagine that the statement above each window is actually a slogan written around the window frame, so that, as you look through each window at your ‘work problem', you see it *through* the interpretation of that slogan.  Assume that each slogan is true for the moment.

Window No.1: Life is difficult and frustrating, and involves some suffering for all human beings much of the time (regardless of wealth, fame, gender, race, age, etc).	Window No.2: Life is without difficulty, provided you refrain from picking and choosing. (Choosing what does not exist causes most difficulties in life!)
Window No.3: Life is BOTH difficult and non-difficult (so remember to include the non-difficult bits in your picture of your life!)	Window No.4: Life could always be more difficult than it is (so stop awfulizing about it!)  Don't make the mistake of thinking it's 100% bad when it's actually 10% bad!
Window No.5: There are certain things about life that we can control, and curtain things we cannot control.  (Accept the things you cannot change, and change the rest).	Window No.6: If life was a school, what positive lesson could you learn from your present frustrations, difficulties and suffering?

Now, look at your ‘work problem' - or some other problem with which you are grappling at the moment - and ask yourself this question each time:

"As I look through this window at my work problem, while assuming that this interpreting slogan is true, how does this change my problem?  Does it seem even slightly better?"

Do not expect total change in your feelings about your work problem straightaway.  Change tends to build up slowly, as exposure to these six different ways of looking at your problem - as if each was true - begins to disintegrate the original frame or lens in the basement of your mind.

Try it and see.  I use this with my own clients and I get great results for them as a result.  They normally walk away much happier about their problems when they have view them through the six windows.

~~~

3. Joining the CENT revolution

CENT is a modern therapeutic revolution.  It takes forward about 80% of REBT, 50% of TA, 30% of Freud and the post-Freudians, 90% of Attachment theory: all combined with substantial elements of Zen Buddhist philosophy, Moral philosophy, Stoic philosophy, Critical Thinking skills, and other counselling and therapy ideas.

If you want to be associated with this revolution, and you are a counsellor, psychotherapist, counselling psychologist, social worker, youth worker, or student or active supporter of any of these disciplines, then you can now show your support for, and connection with the CENT revolution, by becoming a Member of the Institute for CENT (MI-CENT)***.

~~~

4. The final part of Dale Carnegies ‘Just for Today' program

Three weeks ago I posted the first three elements from a ten-element list of advice on how to be happy from Dale Carnegie's book on Worry[3].  Then last week, I posted items 4-6.  Today I am posting the final four items in this list:

"7. Just for today I will try to live through this day only, not to tackle my whole life problem at once.  I can do things for twelve hours that would appal me if I had to keep them up for a lifetime.

"8. Just for today I will have a program.  I will write down what I expect to do every hour.  I may not follow it exactly, but I will have it.  It will eliminate two pests, hurrying and indecision.

"9. Just for today I will have a quiet half-hour all by myself and relax.  In this half-hour sometimes I will think of God (or nature, or eternity, or my own spiritual or uplifting perspective - JWB) so as to get a little more perspective into my life.

"10. Just for today I will be unafraid, especially I will not be afraid to be happy, to enjoy what is beautiful, to love, and to believe that those I love, love me".

And here is Dale Carnegie's final comment at the end of that list: "If you want to develop a mental attitude that will bring us peace and happiness, here is Rule 1:

Think and act cheerfully, and you will feel cheerful.

~~~

5. Keep your expectations in line with reality

I had hoped to review the opening of Book II of the Meditations[4] of Marcus Aurelius this week, but it is quite a complex piece of writing and reflecting work.

By way of introducing this topic, which I hope to complete for next week, let me just say this:

When you head out to work each day, or to meet with family members, or to enter your community, keep you expectations in line with reality.  It is not going to be a bed of roses, given that the humans you will meet have a Good Wolf side and a Bad Wolf side.  It will be a decidedly mixed experience, so expect to have some interpersonal problems, and forearm yourself for dealing with them.

...More next week...

~~~

That's all for this week.

Best wishes, and keep smiling! :-)

Jim

[1] Niven, D. (2000) The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People: What scientists have learned and how you can use it.  San Francisco: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

[2] In my paper on CENT, I acknowledge that we could equally have developed a 66 Windows Model, or a 666 Windows Model. The number is arbitrary.  In face, as I am working on the writing of my new CENT book on Anger Management, I have developed at least three different 6 Windows Models, which are now called the Brown Windows Model, the Blue Windows Model, and the Red Windows Model.

[3] Carnegie, D. (1984) How to Stop Worrying and Start Living.  New York: Simon and Schuster.

[4] Aurelius, M. (1946/1992) Meditations. Trans. A.S.L. Farquharson.  London: Everyman's Library.

The Happiness Blog

Happiness, friendship and work relationships - (1)

Copyright (c) Dr Jim Byrne, 6^th January 2012

Introduction

The Winter Holidays have come and gone, and most of us have survived! 

Some of us may have been happier than others, not because we got a lot, but because we kept our expectations in line with reality.

During the past week I have been busy with a number of projects, including a new paper on health counselling: this time on the impact of a positive mental attitude on physical health and mental wellbeing.  That should be finished in about one week.

Today I want to write about the role of relationships in making people happy (and/or unhappy!)

Friendship and happiness

Many theorists have argued that having a few good relationships is of central importance in maintaining your happiness level.  David Niven (2000) considers relationships to be so important that he advises rekindling past relationships and building up a friendship base among your neighbours[1]. Why?  Because, he argues, "People need to feel that they are a part of something bigger, that they care about others and are cared about by others in return". (Page 11).

He goes on to cite some research results from Magen, Birenbaum and Pery (1996)[2] to the effect that: "Close relationships, more than personal satisfaction or one's view of the world as a whole, are the most meaningful factors in happiness.  If you feel close to other people, you are four times as likely to feel good about yourself than if you do not feel close to anyone". (Niven, page 12).

Tal Ben-Shahar's (2007) book devotes a chapter to the subject of relationships and their contribution to human happiness.  It opens like this:

"Ed Diener and Martin Seligman, two of the leading positive psychologists, studied ‘very happy people' and compared them to those who were less happy.  The only external factor that distinguished the two groups was the presence of ‘rich and satisfying social relationships'.  Spending meaningful time with friends, family, or romantic partners was necessary (though not by itself sufficient) for happiness".  (Ben-Shahar, 2007, page 111)[3].

Stoicism and the downside of friendship and social contact

William Irvine's (2009) book also has a chapter on social relations, and their link to the good life[4].  I reviewed the opening of this chapter last July (19^th), and repeated some of those points before Christmas.  Let me highlight a few key points here:

Stoics believe they have a social duty to cooperate with their fellow humans to get things done, even though associating with unpleasant people can spoil their tranquillity.  (Isn't it interesting that the Stoics speak of the positive and negative aspects of relationship, and many modern philosophers and psychologists only mention the positive!) However, the Stoics do believe it is okay to be very picky about choosing friends, not only because they can spoil your tranquillity (especially by being whiny and complaining) but also because they could corrupt your values!

Carl Rogers thought we should offer Unconditional Positive Regard to everybody; and Albert Ellis thought we should Unconditionally Accept Others exactly the way they are, and never blame anybody for anything.  In CENT we say it is a good idea to accept other people one-conditionally, that is to say, on the condition that they are committed to being moral people.

Immorality is contagious and therefore we should protect ourselves from contagion.  As William Irvine says, quoting Seneca, "...Vices ... spread, quickly and unnoticed, from those who have them to those with whom they come into contact.  Epictetus echoes this warning: Spend time with an unclean person, and we will become unclean as well.  In particular, if we associate with people who have unwholesome desires, there is a very real danger that we will soon discover similar desires in ourselves, and our tranquillity will thereby be disrupted.  Thus, when it is possible to do so, we should avoid associating with people whose values have been corrupted, the way we would avoid, say, kissing somehow who obviously has the flu". (Page 135).

So by all means seek out new friendships, in order to promote your happiness, but make sure they are not with whiny people, or immoral people.  In particular, try to befriend individuals who are wiser than you are, and try to learn from them.  Forget about indiscriminate socializing, or unconditionally regarding or accepting other people.  Use your moral intuitions to choose your friends, and your place of work.  Do not associate with people who may spoil your tranquillity or corrupt your moral values.

If your choice is between no friends, on the one hand, or a group of whiners and moral degenerates, on the other, choose to be friendless.  You will be much happier in the long run.

That's all for this week.

Best wishes,

[1] Niven, David (2000) The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People: What scientists have learned and how you can use it.  New York: HarperSanFrancisco.

[2] Magen, Z., Birenbaum, M. and Pery, D. (1996) Experiencing joy and sorrow.  International Forum for Logotherapy, 19:45.

[3] Ben-Shahar, Tal (2007) Happier: Learn the secrets to daily joy and lasting fulfilment.  New York: McGraw-Hill.

[4] Irvine, W.B. (2009) A Guide to the Good Life: The ancient art of stoic joy.  Oxford: Oxford University Press.