The Happiness Challenge
March 5, 2009
Back in the good old days, when we all didn’t know we were rich and back before my hips crashed meaning pre-pain, I used to feel my best when decked out in the latest yoga clothing line, say, Athleta, with a fresh mani-pedi, on a state-of-the-art spin bike, in our newly renovated spinning theatre, nestled into a spacious corner of my boss’s high-end health club. Look up How to be Happy in Greenwich and there’d be my picture.
Could trappings buy happiness? My American Express card and I were determined to find out. That was back in the day.
Then the great Swami called PAIN arrived for my first lesson on re-defining Happiness. With my hips rusting out (otherwise known as oxidative stress and arthritis), I started to rethink what “feeling my best” meant.
Funny that no matter how shiny my toenails were in yoga class, if I didn’t feel good (as in out of pain) what I looked like counted for crap.
It slowly dawned on me how insignificant the outer layer was compared to how I felt inside. I was awake now. My standards were much higher in some ways. For example, I really, really had to love someone to go to their party and stand on my aching hips for three hours and yet my standards were much lower in other ways, like if I had dog hairs on my lower pants leg and couldn’t get down there to brush them off, who cared. Plus pain killers were involved, I think.
My capacity for self-delusion back then shouldn’t be underestimated. And because of my lesson from Swami Pain, I now feel somewhat equipped to face this next higher calling that we are all facing, what with this no money hoopla that isn’t actually hoopla at all, but an actual no money thing.
The Swami No Money has arrived and we are now going to find out exactly how happy we can be with less of everything.
I’ve dubbed it the Happiness Challenge. It may sound similar to my previous Fitness Challenges but this may be much harder than losing those last five pounds ever was.
This past weekend my husband and I picked up our first hitch-hiker in two, make that three decades. He was a divorced dad who’s car had broken down and he wanted to make it to his kid’s house to take them sled-riding. Funny, I guess he had no back up car.
We also volunteered, as we like to do (meaning I make my kids go by holding an Xbox to their heads), at our local homeless shelter where we usually serve the Mother Theresa crowd, meaning the high-need, really destitute people. Not this week. I saw a few faces that, take away the blonde highlights and the fancy merrills, looked a bit too much like my own for comfort. To cap it off, we also gave an old bike to a friend who’s fallen from his financial mountaintop, who’s temporarily living up in a cheap hotel basement apartment and no car.
Old Greenwich? Welcome to New Greenwich, Folks.
So, just like people who live with chronic pain and have to reset their “I’m comfortable” meter, we all are now challenged to reset our “I’m Happy” meter.
I’ve just finished reading The Geography of Bliss, One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Place on Earth and in all of Eric Weiner’s romps to find the happiest place on earth, he uncovered a few tidbits that most of us already know.
It makes sense that more money does not necessariy mean more happiness.
Another interesting fact is that healthy people are happier, which makes me wonder which one comes first, the health or the happiness? When you are happy you may tend to take care of yourself and be healthier or is it the other way around, that people that take care of themselves are happier to begin with? It’s the old which came first, the chicken or the egg paradox.
It doesn’t matter to me. If you need to get happier and have less “things” to be happy about, get healthier. Exercise, ALWAYS, can only help. It de-stresses you, it releases feel-good hormones, it improves your self-esteem and self image. Since we all may not be able to retire at the age we thought we might, if we throw in the living younger for longer, it is certainly a motivator. We need to stay as young as we can, as long as we can for newer, more serious reasons. Because we gotta.
Think of exercise as the scaffolding for your Happiness Challenge.
I haven’t thought of this for a long time but I worked my entire way through college and paid for it myself. I’m very proud of that. Waitressing, which by the way, gave me many life lessons that have served me throughout middle age, taught me to be a better person. Moonlighting in general and waitressing in particular cultivated discipline and honed my people-radar. (It also taught me to always leave a good tip).
So why am I so heart-broken that my kids might have to do something remotely as rigorous to get a college degree?
I’m making my mind up right now to challenge myself to NOT worry and to BE happy. How hard is that? Hard, I tell you.
So I have a plan, think of it as criteria for my own happiness challenge
-To be as healthy as possible, for my kids and husband to be as healthy as possible.
-To pay my bills- and if I can’t, to get rid of stuff until I can.
-To live somewhere with heat, shelter, food and most importantly, that allows dogs
What does that look like on a daily basis?
-I’ll exercise most days
-I’ll add some type of mind-body technique, like meditation or yoga, especially on days I feel more stressed.
-I’ll enjoy my food, every bite of it and stop when I’m full.
-I’ll hug my kids and husband every opportunity.
-I’ll laugh as often as possible.
-I’ll get outside and feel the simple miracle of a sunset, a flock of birds or a sudden snow storm.
-I’ll lay on the floor and pet my dog.
I think if I can incorporate all of these things into every day, then my world, that feels like it has less wiggle room on the surface, can interiorly be more expansive than the life of a master of the universe, or the person I was five years ago.
I recommend you try it too.
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You forgot “Still meet with your friends for coffee…..even if it turns out to be a walk at the beach instead!”
As bad as the financial crisis is, I can’t help thinking we’ll come out better for it in the end. As a nation, we lost our way in the junkyard of consumerism. Who’s idea was it anyway that houses had to look like palaces and cars like military transport vehicles? Did we learn nothing from the excesses of the French aristocracy except how to sauté hummingbird eggs?
It took a seismic shift, or as Penny says a visit from Swami No Money, to wake us up. I am grateful for the roof over my head, my second hand car, and my mental health. Especially, when I drive by boarded up McMansions and ghostly housing developments.
The dark night of the American soul is over, and for that we can thank Swami No Money. Live simply so that others may live is not a bad mantra for these lean times.
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