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The ways of happiness

Posted by Chris Morris on 14th October 2009

I’m in the middle of Robert Holden‘s 8-week happiness course – a series of meditations on joy and happiness.

It’s wonderful. Robert is one of the most authentically happy people I’ve ever met, as well as being a great teacher and facilitator.

I love having conversations about happiness. From children to great grandparents, I think we can learn about happiness from everyone.

One of the most interesting things is what we call paradigms of happiness. How do people think about happiness?

Most people seem to think about it as something that has to be earned or deserved. If I work hard, then I can enjoy the weekend. If my kids are happy, then I’ll be happy. (Otherwise I suck and must be miserable.)

Others think about it as something they (can) achieve. They seek bigger experiences, wilder adventures, more stuff, better stuff. If I seduce a supermodel and go on a road trip across America, then I’ll be happy. (Otherwise I suck and must be miserable.)

Some people see happiness as something they already have. It’s like a possession. The trouble with a possession is someone might take it away, so these people tend to guard their happiness and insure against its loss.

If you’ve ever been to a self-improvement event, you’ll have met people for whom happiness has become a journey or even a quest. If they could just find the right map and ignore the distractions, eventually they’d get there. But who has the right map? You can almost hear these people shouting inside their head ‘JUST TELL ME WHERE THE DAMN HAPPINESS IS AND THEN I’LL GO THERE’. Usually they’re looking for the latest sat nav gadget, in whatever form that takes – another book, another workshop… they are usually less and less happy as they learn more and more ways to become happy.

A few people think about happiness as a choice. They decide to be happy. They might take practical steps too – learning techniques to focus their mind; eating in ways that give them constant energy; avoiding people who bring them down, etc. – and if they do, by aligning their attention and intention, they will probably feel good more often than not. This pretty much works; a lot of happy people do it this way.

But the paradigm I like best is the most simple of all. It’s the genuine realisation that you are happy. It’s the knowledge that happiness is your essence; your core. And when you pay attention to your essence rather than the distractions of everyday life, happiness is always there, because you are happy.

Michael Neill has a lovely story about a bowl of cloudy water, kinda muddy water. How would you make it clear? Shake it? Boil it? Sieve it? Add chemicals? None of them really work that great. The best way we’ve found is to let the bowl settle. Let the water stand for a while. And what you’ll notice is the gunk starts to separate itself, because the natural state of water is clear. And the natural state of you is happy.

Beautiful.

It’s too easy though, right? So we go back on the journey, back to earning our happiness, back to defending it.

And yet every authentically happy person I’ve ever met has had the same message: you can’t become happy, you can only be happy.

Have a great day!



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16 responses:

Katie Abbott

14th October 2009 (1:08 pm)

I found this section of Bob Dylan’s autobiography on the internet and I think it relates to what you are saying in some ways Chris:

He wrote: “I looked at the menu, then I looked at my wife. The one thing about her that I always loved was that she was never one of those people who thinks that someone else is the answer to their happiness. Me or anybody else. She’s always had her own built-in happiness.”

We all have our own built in happiness! xx


Carol

14th October 2009 (3:11 pm)

You write beautifully, I never cease to be impressed by how simple you make these things.


Neil

14th October 2009 (5:36 pm)

Happiness is a place to come from to not to get to. However is it okay to feel great when some extra money comes along? I know I do. Or do you think that I musn’t ‘feel’ this way because it’s just money and it can go again? Once the core of happiness is discovered, will it be ‘Okay’ or possible to look forward to things, get excited (I know this is maybe is not true happiness, and more like pleasure, maybe), but I think that bad stuff does happen and as humans we have a full range of emotions, fluctuating all the time, ranging from happy to sad to inbetween etc. What about people who ‘suffer’ from depression or bouts of depression or have what doctors see as chemical unbalance. Just curious. Great article though Chris, and thanks for it.


Alan L

14th October 2009 (10:38 pm)

Hmm. I know what happiness feels like. I know what joy and delight and satisfaction and contentment and euphoria feel like to. I also know when I am not feeling these things.

I am not closed to the idea that I can feel more of a certain feeling just by thinking about feeling that way or, alternatively, that a substantial barrier to feeling in certain ways is a self-imposed denial of licence.

But, I have to say, these things are much easier said than done. (Or else Bobby McFerrin would long ago have achieved living sainthood).

I can see that part of being happy is making a choice. But I am not convinced that is by any means the entirety of it. After all, opening the door and walking through it are not the same.

At present I am reading a book called “The How of Happiness” by Sonja Lyubomirsky in which the author sets out to defend her thesis that, while all adults start from different “base-lines”, an individual has the power to influence up to 40% of how happy they feel.


Clint

15th October 2009 (4:40 pm)

I am a very happy person and I think my key to this is that i don’t look to other people to get my happiness. I can find it in a thousand small things in a day and I never feel bad or embarrassed that a sunset has made me happy or a silly coincidence makes me smile.

The other key thing is learning not to care. I genuinely think this is a great talent. I dont mean not caring about other people, but understanding what is genuinely important to you and forgetting the rest. If you don’t like your job leave it at work when you leave for the day, stop trying to conform to other peoples expectations and live for your own. Also, take your joy and hold onto it.

I was at Blackfriars station the other night and there was the most glorious sunset above the Thames, gods, purples, pinks utterly beautiful and nobody was looking at it everyone was looking at the floor, their phones, books, information boards and I just felt sad that they were missing out.


Clint

15th October 2009 (4:41 pm)

Oh my god I sound like a total hippy. But I don’t care!


Rob

16th October 2009 (12:40 pm)

Thank you for sharing your happiness with me (us).. has made my day just that little bit nicer. Something we all can do I guess.


Steven B

16th October 2009 (4:01 pm)

Chris, nice article and well written… I am curious about something though… I’d like to hear more about your thoughts on the difference between viewing happiness as a choice and the realization that happiness is at your core…

I’ve got to admit that, for the last 6 or 7 years or so i’ve been a bit of an NLP happiness technique junky!

However the more i use the techniques, the state building exercises, the belief changes etc…the more i’m coming to the conclusion that they are all just ways to let go of the ‘nonsense’ and allow something amazingly beautiful, that’s always been there, to become more and more apparent…

So the question that’s been on my mind is this?

By using all the NLP stuff, the hypnosis, the meditaion, the personal development…are we really growing, developing, improving?…or are we just getting closer and closer to something beautiful that’s always been there?

My hunch is…it’s probably a combination of the both…:-)

Be interested to hear your thoughts…


Steven B

16th October 2009 (4:25 pm)

ohh..and one other thing…you mentioned ‘paying attention to your essence rather than the distractions of everyday life’ so i suppose the key question is:

‘How do we actually do that?’

And is this just not another ‘learning technique’ or ‘practical step’ that you mentioned in the ‘choice’ approach? It is after all a ‘choice’ to recognise the happiness that’s already there?…and surely we ‘decide’ to let this inner beauty that’s already there become more and more apparent?

Or is the realisation of this paradigm enough to allow your inner happiness to just be there?

I’m really curious about this as i’ve just recently started investigating Michael Neills work…


Chris Morris

17th October 2009 (12:20 pm)

Nice questions Steven.

So let me ask you this: what is happiness, to you?

I think most people really want to be happy and 99.999% don’t have a working definition. We usually have a few notions of smiling more, having a spring in our step and feeling jolly… but what is happiness, and what is true happiness?

Each time I sit with those questions, my answer evolves.

You say: “It is after all a ‘choice’ to recognise the happiness that’s already there?”.

And I think that’s the limitation of the Choice paradigm. By making “the happiness” a thing, and having it be “there” (where?), you’re externalising and characterising happiness as something that’s separate from yourself. I’d say you are happy. My opinion is that happiness isn’t something you feel or experience or choose to recognise… you are happy. Happy is you.

Most NLP techniques are reductionist and treat happiness as a state. Is happiness a state? I don’t think so; not for me anyway. It depends on your own definition but, for me, techniques got in the way, massively – they pushed me towards the paradigms of Journey (it’s more profitable for teachers to push you there) and Earning. “If I do my meditations/affirmations/techniques every day, then I’ll be happy. (If not…)”

Then – eventually – I realised I am happy. Happy is me. They’re almost two words for the same thing. And when that isn’t my current experience, that’s because something is getting in the way. It’s like a cloud blocking out the sunlight. The sun is still there somewhere, we know that – and we also know that something is getting in the way of us feeling its brightness.

Techniques can remove the distractions that get in the way (quieten internal dialog, etc.) but just as often they become extra layers themselves. (I have to do X to be happy.)

Remember, the sun is always shining. When you’re not feeling it, let the water settle. Because the natural state of the water is clear. And the natural state of you is happy.


Steven B

18th October 2009 (8:59 pm)

Hmm…Interesting…I think i get a sense of where your coming from…by adopting an approach where you feel you have to ‘get into state’ each day or for a particular event you are essentially presuposing that it’s not there in the first place. Even though you maybe consciously know that the feelings are coming from within, by operating through this mental frame you are buying into a subtle but definite belief that being happy (or however it is described) is something that must be created and is something that isn’t within every cell of our body.

When I think back to when I was very young (about 4 or 5) my recollection is that bliss was just there…as a natural way of being…I didn’t have to ‘get into state’ or force it in any way it was just there…it was hard-wired in…
Then, as what happens to most people…life, distractions and other nonsense get’s in the way of you experiencing the natural bliss that’s comes with being human…

I initially saw NLP as a means to getting back to that way of being but i suppose even by using the terms ‘getting back to that’ had a subtle implication that it is gone! lol

Being happy for me is a way of being… a sense of existing in the world which is increasing in intensity through time the more i use NLP…I’m not sure if this is something i’ve created externally or whether it’s hard wired in. I think it’s a combination of both.
Personally i’m not keen on pigeon holing it into a single paradigm. I like the view that it is coming from lots of different paradigms so why discount or waste any of them.

When i look at the different paradigms you described above i like them all…

By making happiness a thing it externalizes it but I think it’s a bit of an assumption to say that using the term ‘there’ externalizes it. Maybe for some people but by using the term ‘there’ i meant that it is coded in every cell of your body…It’s hard-wired in…

So i’m even more curious…Now that you have had the realisation that ‘you are happy’ where do you go from here? Do get even more happier as you create stuff in the world? and how does it fit in with the huge spectrum of human emotion?


Tania

21st October 2009 (5:12 pm)

That is a cool way to think about it, thanks a lot.


Margaret Johnson

22nd October 2009 (11:10 am)

Mmmm, the sun is always shining that’s a fact. Just not on all the earth at once, or on all the people. And a good thing too. I wonder how much more desert there would be if it were.
Happiness a natural state. So is hunger: Seasonal affective disorder; and myopia. Pain is also a natural state given certain circumstances.
I would have described happiness as a state of mind: your article seems to imply that happiness is dependant on mind over matter. Is this what you are saying Chris or do you acknowledge at all that circumstances affect happiness and all other states of mind. The value we place on various circumstances and physical /material assets affects happiness and that other peoples attitudes toward us can affect our state of mind? I am not saying that I believe there is nothing one can do about those things. Unless of course you are a small child or imprisoned and have your life totally controlled by someone else.
My point is if we are happy no matter what our circumstances is that good or even OK. for the human race ? Does it benefit us to disassociate from adverse circumstances and pretend/claim that everything is OK and we are happy, rather than move away from them or make efforts to change them? In my view the human state of mind is what drives the human race to do things that make a material difference to our lives and our happiness.


aanteladda

5th November 2009 (3:14 pm)

Happiness for me just is..beyond joy, laughter, sorrow, annoyance, anything. It is deeper than these surface emotions that come and go, but none of these have the power to touch the core. It is a bit like a joyous kid saying, “Cant catch me!” and one takes a few years to realise that one doesnt have to chase the child for it to belong. Can it be shaken? Of course – but trust it, it belongs.

But sometimes I wonder, being simply happy..does it make me too simple? Not willing to engage when I should or could?


pleasureprinciple

22nd November 2009 (10:25 pm)

chris,
I think similar to you on happinness. i have just started my journey with the practisioner course but appreciate happinness is already there within me. Being piscean I have spent a lifetime tuning in to what my natural state is. Thank you for articulating inner core so well
Des


Michael

30th July 2010 (6:16 am)

Chris,

I am wondering if you know the exact source of that Michael Neill story you mentioned. Did you find it on a website somewhere, or in a book? I’m doing some research work and would like to use it, but I need to know how to properly cite it.

Thanks!


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