Why does happiness seem so fleeting? Why does the immediate satisfaction of a fun night out, a shopping spree, or getting more likes on that recent Facebook post never seem to last?
We can get a short term rush out of social validation and material gain but if they don’t fulfill some fundamental criteria for happiness then the joy will always be hollow and fleeting. If you’re not feeling like you used to, it’s okay — many of us go through ups and downs. It’s part of being human. The good news is that happiness has been studied for many years and researchers have discovered what you really need to be happy. To be honest, the word happy is being used here as it’s easiest for people to relate, but truly, this is more about achieving lasting peace as opposed to an ever fleeting emotion. Want to know how to create lasting happiness for yourself? Here’s your recipe, and it only has five ingredients. For an awesome book on this topic check outThe Way Of The Peaceful Warrior.
Health and Energy
There’s nothing that will suck the happy right out of your day like being sick or injured. Health and lasting energy are the foundation for a happy life. It’s funny though — many of us don’t really take meaningful action to improve our health until we’re in desperate need of it. This is called a ‘deficiency need.’ The best example of this is dental health. You didn’t think flossing was so necessary until you had a massive toothache, did you?
If you want to have a fulfilling life then taking small measures every day to improve your health will be the first place to start. Action step: Start with a small health habit that you know you could do. Eating a healthy breakfast, eating out less, or taking an extra walk each day are great places to start. Nail your first habit then keep building from there.
Relationships
Aristotle once said, “Man is a social animal.” For you to be happy you need to feel like you are part of a tribe; like people have your back and you have theirs. Maintaining high quality relationships in your life will make the worst of times manageable and the best of times even more amazing. These people don’t need to be around you every day, you just have to know that they are there.
Action step: Make a habit of calling someone you haven’t spoken to in a while each day. Make sure to focus the conversation around the other person. Find out what’s really going on in their life so you can connect on a deep level again. You will be amazed by how happy this will make the both of you and how much more prideful, comforted, and secure you will feel.
Meaningful Work
People are only happy when they feel they are making a contribution of some kind, meaning they are putting in more than they take out. There are three things in your work that you will need in order to feel fulfilled.
It must be challenging and interesting.
It must offer opportunities for growth and advancement.
You like and/or respect your coworkers.
Action Step: If your current work isn’t doing this for you, maybe something else will. Or you can make the best of your situation by looking to make work more fun by challenging yourself to accomplish more, look to impress those up the chain, and be more social with your coworkers. A lot of people are passive in their work life, but if you’re the one who takes charge to be awesome then most people will join you in making work more fun and engaging.
Financial Independence
Making a ton of money isn’t necessary for happiness, but being broke can be a real drain on it. To be happy you just need to be in a place where you’re not worried about money all the time. Action step: Do more with less. The best things in life are free. Spend more time outside with the people you love and less time chasing fleeting happiness, which is almost always more expensive. I suggest doing a purge of all of your clothing and belongings, getting rid of everything you don’t use on a weekly basis. You’ll be surprised to see how little you really need, and be comforted knowing that you don’t need a lot of stuff to get by each day.
Self Actualization
You are self-actualizing when you are Becoming who you were meant to be. You reach peak happiness when you feel like you are becoming something better each day. We all have dreams that we yearn to make real and none of them are going to be accomplished overnight. What will make you truly happy is moving toward that goal, even by a little each day.
Action Step: choose just one thing you would like to do, but have written off. Reignite that fire in your life by deciding firmly that you are going to do it, no matter how long it takes, and begin immediately to take steps towards accomplishing it each day. Even if you only work towards this goal for 15 minutes each day you are still closer than you were yesterday, and that is something to be excited about! So there you have it, the five essential ingredients for living a happy and fulfilled life. Getting started on just one of the actions steps written out here will begin to make your life more meaningful and enjoyable. The more of these ingredients that you can bring in to your life, the happier you will be. It’s that simple. So what are you waiting for? Get cooking!
If you're like most people, you were fed fairy tales during your childhood and romantic comedies as you grew into adulthood.
These romantic comedies followed the same basic premise: There’s a damsel in distress, she’s in distress because some evil, powerful female figure betrayed or neglected her in some way, and the only person who can save her is a prince on a white horse. Culturally, we are taught that happiness lies outside of us. We will be happy when we lose 10 pounds, find the perfect job, live in a huge house, drive a fast car, and meet the person who's going to "complete" us. So, how is all that working out for you? For me, I bought into that myth for most of my childhood and well into my young adulthood. I was a little confounded because my dad seemed to need the attention of many damsels, and my mom was not waiting in a tower for someone to save us. Nonetheless, I believed happiness was something I could attain, as if it were a place where I could sink my flag, if only I worked hard enough and made myself worthy enough to get there. The reality is, true love and true happiness have to be discovered within us before we can find those people and interests around us that enhance and enrich our joy and before we can offer up the best of ourselves to those we love and to the world at large. When we head into relationships of any kind without a clear sense of who we are, what scares us, where we may have healing to do, and what it is we want to offer this world, we are almost sure to encounter disappointment and confusion.
Of course, we don't control timing and circumstance, and you may find you've met someone amazing before you find that amazingness within yourself. But when at all possible, the best way to avoid the most common trap in any romantic relationship is to work on the one you're having with yourself first. Here's how you can do that — and how yoga can help.
1. Don't look to anyone else to complete you.
Want someone to complete you? Look in the mirror. In yoga, we have the Yama and Niyama, and they comprise the first and second of the eight limbs of yoga (Yama, Niyama, Asana, Pranayama, Pratyahara, Dharana, Dhyana, Samadhi). Svadhyaya is part of the Niyama, and it means "self-study." Knowing yourself is the key to your inner peace and your greatest joy. Culturally, we are encouraged to edit our uncomfortable feelings. For example, the princess should not be enraged, and the prince should not be scared. That's not how it works, though. We are all going to feel everything, whether you're a princess who likes other princesses, a prince who likes other princes, or any combination thereof. We are all going to feel it all. A lot of the time, people develop coping mechanisms as they grow, and there are three main ones — repression, denial, and numbing out. When we push down our pain, run from it, pretend it doesn't exist, or try to blur the edges with drugs, alcohol, binge-watching Netflix, and even relationships, it doesn't magically disintegrate. In fact, it comes up harder and will keep biting us in the ass until we deal with it. Yoga and seated meditation give us the tools to breathe through intense sensation. Emotion creates sensation. If you're enraged, you will notice sensation flooding your body — you might feel your blood pressure going up as you become "hotheaded" or notice your jaw is clenching, your heart is racing, or your breath is shallow. All sensations, right? So if you learn to breathe through the intense sensation that arises in your quadriceps when you hold a lunge for 12 breaths, you are training your nervous system and your mind to stay calm as you feel challenged, to stay curious about your experience so it doesn't send you spinning.
When you're on your meditation cushion, you learn to witness your thoughts without identifying with them so strongly. You don't have to believe everything you think, as the saying goes. Yoga practice gives us the tools to lean in when we might rather take off and to know ourselves well and deeply. Not knowing yourself is the loneliest thing there is.
2. Don't assume.
Some of our biggest difficulties in any relationship come from our assumptions and projections. We all have our frames of reference, which are shaped by our experiences and the lessons we've gleaned along the way. There's this idea that we're "on the outside looking in," but I think that's backward — we are on the inside, looking out. We are constantly processing data and moving it through our "Information center" (frame of reference) to decipher our experience and categorize it. We tend to think that what is obvious to us will be obvious to everyone else. We assume if we know something is hurtful, other people should also know that. The thing is, sometimes our frames are really bent, or the window through which we're looking is distorted or foggy. You might have learned from your experience, for example, that "everyone leaves," or "everyone cheats," or "you can't count on anyone," and your frame of reference is hinged on those ideas. Sometimes our work is to unlearn things we've learned along the way. Sometimes we're taught that our feelings don't matter and don't have an impact on the people or the world around us. Sometimes we're taught that love is conditional and will be withdrawn if we fail to be perfect. Sometimes we're taught that our value is measured by what we can do for others. Those are just some possibilities, but if you learned any of those lessons, you'll have to unlearn them if you want to see clearly and love deeply and fully. In yoga, we have a practice of discernment, called Viveka. We use our mind to distinguish what is real from what is not real. Am I in a 90-degree bend with my front leg, or do I just think I am? We also look to work through the obstacle of Avidya, which translates to "ignorance about ourselves and the world at large," so we can come to a place of vidya or "clear-seeing." A lot of the yoga practice is about peeling away the layers of ideas we've taken on that aren't ours, or aren't real, so we can discover what is real for us. In the first three months of a relationship, it's hard not to get swept away in the lust and dust.
When the smoke clears, though, reality emerges. Maybe this person you're so enamored with is exactly like the list you made on your vision board, and you really did manifest him or her. But probably not. It is more likely that this person has his or her own history, tendencies, ideas, and beliefs that shape the way he or she moves through the world. It takes time to really get to know a person, and we get ourselves into a lot of trouble when we decide six weeks into a relationship "This is it!"
Try to stay curious about people and allow situations to unfold instead of gripping to an outcome you've written too soon.
3. Don't confuse love with control.
Sometimes when we say "I love you," what we're really saying is, "I love you when you do what I want you to do, feel how I want you to feel, or want what I want you to want." You may have heard the term "radical acceptance" along your travels, and that's a lot closer to my definition of loving myself, and loving other people. When we reject essential parts of who we are, or who others are, we create a state of dis-ease within us and around us. If you want people to relax and invite you into their interior worlds, you have to create a safe environment. If you want to be at ease in your own skin, you have to integrate it all. That doesn't mean we don't all have work to do, places where we could step up and be more accountable or pay more attention to our weaknesses so we can strengthen. It just means that if you start with a rigid idea of what is acceptable and what is not, you close the door for real understanding and intimacy, with yourself, and all the people closest to you. Sometimes life will break your heart; there's no doubt about that. But a lot of the time, our suffering is coming from our own thinking, and our attachment to a picture of "how things should be." The greater the distance between that picture and our reality, the more we suffer. If we feel powerless to change things, we get depressed or anxious, but a better alternative is to open to circumstances and people, as they are, and to choose the thoughts that are going to strengthen rather than weaken us. In yogic philosophy, there are five Kleshas or poisons that prevent us from being free, and one of them is Raga, or attachment.
Attachment leads to suffering. Of course we are going to be attached to our loved ones and their well-being; this is part of the human condition. When you love people, there's an implicit understanding that heartbreak is inevitable because we don't last forever in these bodies. People leave because of all kinds of factors, or they leave because they're taken from us, or we leave because we grow in a different direction, or we stay and develop deep and lasting bonds. Regardless, at some point, we will all leave this earth and everyone we know and love, and that is a painful reality. Sometimes in an effort to feel secure in an insecure world, we try to pin things down, or pin people down, but people are not possessions, and we don't write the story, we just co-create it based on how we respond to what we're given. Yoga practice gives us the tools to stay present and face reality as it is, which is not always as we'd like it to be. It shows us how to come back to love, even if, and maybe especially if, our hearts are broken.
If you're stuck in a tower and looking for the way down so you can join the world and live life in a way that feels good to you, yoga practice gives you the tools to build the rope, climb down, slay the dragons, and open your heart. You're the hero you've been waiting for. Source: by Ally Hamilton
Relationship researchers (and married couple!) John Gottman and Julie Gottman break down what's myth and what's real in a marriage.
Analytics and data don’t sound like a formula for romance, but John Gottman, PhD, has devoted 40 years to figuring out the math that makes relationships work. In his “Love Lab” at the University of Washington, he has analyzed how couples communicate verbally and nonverbally and followed them for years to find out if the relationships survive. More than 200 published articles later, he claims to be able to predict the outcome of a relationship with up to 94 percent accuracy. Dubbed “the Einstein of Love” by Psychology Today, Gottman—along with his wife and research partner, Julie Gottman—now teaches other marriage therapists the most common misunderstandings about love based on observations from the Love Lab. Myth: Marriage should be fair. Couples who engage in quid pro quo thinking—if I scratch your back, you should scratch mine— are usually in serious trouble, John Gottman says: “We become emotional accountants only when there’s something wrong with the relationship.” He cites a 1977 study by Bernard Murstein as the first to find that quid pro quo thinking was a characteristic of ailing relationships rather than happy ones. “We’ve found in our research that the best marriages are the ones in which you are really invested in your partner’s interests, as opposed to your own,” Julie Gottman says. The happiest couples have a high level of trust, which lets them give without expecting anything in return because they know their partner has their back. Myth:Your partner isn’t a mind reader, so you should tell him or her exactly what you want. Make no mistake: Open communication is an essential tool for a happy relationship. But the Gottmans have found that successful couples also understand each other’s feelings and needs without having to be told all the time. One of John Gottman’s studies found a link between satisfied marriages and a husband’s ability to interpret his wife’s nonverbal cues. Myth: Couples who have screaming fights are headed for divorce. “Volatiles” have been flagged by the Gottmans as one of three types of “happy-stable” relationships. (The other two, if you’re curious, are “validaters” and “avoiders.”)
In fact, the average happy volatile couple has at least a five-to-one positive-to-negative ratio during conflict—meaning they have five times more positive interactions than negative ones—which John Gottman has found to be the marker of a healthy relationship. In contrast, couples who end up headed for divorce have a ratio of 0.8 to one. The key is that even though happy volatile couples can have intense fights, they still balance arguments with kindness and attentiveness. John Gottman notes that each style has its pros and cons. “Conflict avoiders have a very peaceful life, but on the other hand, they can wind up leading parallel lives in which they’re very distant,” he says. “The very passionate couples who argue a lot—they run the risk of devolving into constant bickering.” Myth: Talk things out until you agree with each other. Sixty-nine percent of marriage problems are managed rather than solved, according to John Gottman’s research. “The common lore is that conflict avoidance is a bad thing, but it really works for a lot of people to just ‘agree to disagree,’?” he says.
The key is to avoid a “gridlocked conflict,” in which you can’t make headway in a recurring fight. At the bottom of these issues, the Gottmans have found, are core-value differences that take couples by surprise. For instance, a fight about finances isn’t just about the cash but about the meaning of money, power, freedom, and security. You might not be able to find the perfect compromise, but by creating an open dialogue, you can discuss the issue without hurting feelings.
Myth: Gender differences are behind your mega fights. Men aren’t from Mars, and women aren’t from Venus; we’re all just from Earth. As it turns out, “men are just as in touch with their emotions as women,” Julie Gottman says. “On the other hand, some women are very reluctant to express their negative emotions. So it balances out. There are more similarities than the culture generally believes.” A study in Cognition and Emotion found that when women thought long term about their lives, they reported themselves as more emotional than men. But when participants rated their emotions on a moment-to-moment basis, the gender differences disappeared. Your cultural upbringing and family environment have a much bigger influence on your willingness to express your emotions than your X or Y chromosome, the Gottmans say. Myth: You repeat your parents’ relationship problems. How you carry your childhood baggage is more important than the fact that you have any. “Nobody escapes childhood without some crazy buttons and triggers, but it doesn’t mean you can’t have a great relationship,” John Gottman says. Tom Bradbury, PhD, a psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, coined the phrase “enduring vulnerabilities” for these historical triggers. Certain words and actions might dig up old feelings and provoke a reaction. Make sure you and your partner understand what sets the other off, and avoid those weaknesses.
Circumstances from your past could also prompt what psychologists call projective identification—an example is taking something you resent from your childhood and applying it to your partner. If you had a distant, cold parent, for instance, you might assume your partner is being distant and cold too. Instead of blaming your partner’s character, explain how the actions make you feel and what he or she can do to help you feel better. You can have a happy, stable relationship despite any emotional baggage.
Myth: Opposites attract. The idea that one partner’s strengths compensate for the other’s weaknesses and vice versa sounds good at first, but the Gottmans say that their research provides no support for this. You can be opposites on some smaller subjects (you’re on the sand reading a book; he’s hitting the waves), but when it comes down to the core issues, it’s best to be similar. “The major incompatibility that we’ve found that is really predictive of divorce is how people feel about expressing emotion,” John Gottman says. For instance, if one person wants to talk about anger and sadness while the other thinks you should keep negative feelings to yourself, each partner will start to resent the other. Source: By Charlotte Hilton Andersen http://www.rd.com/advice/relationships/science-happy-relationships/
If you were to review your current relationship, when would you say you were the happiest?
Was it back in the early days when you first met and were swept up in a haze of excitement and first dates? That "honeymoon period" where you hung on each other's every word and your time spent together was predominantly positive. And if you were to consider your relationship now, how often do those positive moments occur compared to the negative ones? According to marriage expert John Gottman, there is an exact ratio of positive to negative interactions between a couple that signals a happy, successful relationship. The magic ratio: 5 to 1, meaning stable, happy couples will experience five positive interactions for every negative one. Gottman, who has studied the habits of healthy couples, has also identified a ratio of positive to negative interactions between divorced couples, finding just 0.8 happy encounters existed for every unhappy one.
Gottman's findings are backed by numerous other studies which show happiness in a marriage increases in the first two years but will likely return to the levels experienced pre-marriage. The reason for this? Failure to uphold the 5 to 1 ratio. Easier said than done, so how does a couple work to maintain this magic balance? Happiness expert and speaker Dr Bruce Wells has shared five tips with news.com.au to assist in cultivating positive interactions on a daily basis.
1. Show them affection
Wells recommends employing a variety of ways to show your affection to your partner. Small gestures such as holding hands and spontaneous kisses make the greatest contribution.
Actions speak louder than words when it comes to showing your partner you love and care for them.
2. Spend quality time together
Experts say this is one of the key aspects of a successful marriage, and the happiest couples spend more than five hours a week simply talking and enjoying each others company. Each day, set aside at least 15 minutes for a meaningful conversation to take place, where you and your partner talk about goals, feelings and challenges, says Wells. This doesn't need to be a confined to a rigid timeslot at home, you can talk while walking, meet up for a drink, or chat over a meal.
3. Show your appreciation and gratitude
Showing your partner you appreciate them is one of the easiest ways to boost your relationship, yet it's one of the first things to fall by the wayside. "When couples stop expressing gratitude towards their partners, they start taking each other for granted," says Wells. It's as simple as letting your partner know how much you appreciated the meal they prepared, how you were grateful when they fixed the loose door handle in the laundry, or how much you valued their attempts to cheer you up when you missed out on a job promotion. But its not just talk. Show your gratitude as well with simple gestures like cooking a meal for your partner when you know they are tired, or leaving a love note for them on the kitchen bench.
4. Celebrate good news and show admiration
A sign of a strong relationship is when couples are enthusiastic about each other's good news. In fact, how we respond to our partner's good news is more important for the longevity of our relationship than how we react to their bad news, says Wells. Show your interest in your partner's news by listening attentively, asking questions and showing admiration. When partners celebrate each other's triumphs, the relationship receives a boost in trust and intimacy. It also contributes to what has been called the Michelangelo Effect, where partners bring out the best in each other, which in turn helps them to become more of their ideal selves.
5. Manage conflict nicely
While all couples have disagreements, what differentiates happy relationships from unhappy ones is how partners fight, rather than how often. Gottman's research shows unhappy couples criticise by attacking their partner's personality, stoop to eye rolling and sarcasm during a conflict, and become defensive and deny any responsibility for the situation. Happy couples tend to fight differently. They try to diffuse tension by showing humour and expressing affection, they concede on certain points, and validate their partner's concerns by saying things like "I can see you're upset with me because..." Source: http://m.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=11678064
