::: THE HAPPINESS PRACTICE SERIES ::: PART 1
::: PART 1: The Arc of Your Life :::
Before I first started learning about happiness, I used to think that we're either happy, or we're not. I wondered if people fall in two categories - some that tend to be happy, and others that tend to be unhappy. I also intuitively knew that happiness is a more complex concept. Sometimes I felt happy, such as when taking our then baby and toddler to the children's park, or when we had friends over, or when we went on a hike. I often felt down, mainly dissatisfied with my career. I felt frustrated with my boss, with spending too much time in meetings where I felt my time was simply lost in something that didn't teach me anything new, interesting, or useful. I was hopeless when I talked to my colleagues, and saw that others felt the same, although in those times I also felt a sense of reassurance that I'm not alone. I was frustrated and puzzled as to why we all were unable to find a solution to improve our lives.
We all had mortgages and bills to pay, and we all were frustrated with the way things were ran, some because they thought they could do them better if they were in charge, or others, because they felt unmotivated to do the work. Since we were lacking motivation to work hard, the question then became, what *would* truly motivate us to work or create? If money wasn't an issue, if I won the lottery tomorrow, tomorrow, I thought, as low as the chances of that happening, what would I do? I would travel, I thought. I would satisfy my hunger to travel.
And eventually, that's what I ended up doing. We travelled as a family for a year, back to Romania. Once there, everything I had dreamed of for years, became reality. In my unstructured days I was able to be spontaneous, free to choose, with no bosses, no schedules, no commitments, no obligations to do anything or see anyone. Instead of being away at work till about 6PM, I was around my kids full time, and needless to say it wasn't all happy happy joy joy. But it was enormously fulfilling and deeply joyful.
Before we had left on our year away, I longed to spend more time with the girls. I wanted to take a break from the rat race, from working full time, to have time to read, to slow down, to enjoy life, to travel. Within a couple of weeks of our time away, I noticed physical improvements pretty immediately - for instance, the stiffness and numb pain that I had felt in the back of my neck every day for a long time, was gone. In time, I felt my soul defreeze. I felt increasingly more peaceful, and somehow fuller inside. I started journaling.
On our regular evening walks on the fields outside the village we lived in, I sometimes told the girls stories about what it was like growing up there, I slowly began to make sense of my life. I thought about times when I had summoned resources and strengths I didn't know lied inside me, such as when I left Romania and arrived in New York City, in a new culture that was in many ways quite different than the one I was used to. I thought about times when I coped with loneliness, pain of rejection from jobs I had applied for, or from failed relationships, to the devastating tragedy of losing my younger sister to a car accident. I reflected on how I have grown not just despite, but because of all those events that happened to me.
During that year away I learned about myself, I got to understand myself and my decisions better. As I looked at the major choices I had made, I reflected on how some of those were in some way dictated by society's standards and expectations, and how others came from directly from my heart, true to my real nature. A few months after returning back home, my purpose, my jewel, the thing I felt I would do even if I didn’t get paid, the think that would make me wake up happy in the morning, the thing that I’d do for a lifetime, finally came into focus. I wanted to write and help others be happier.
WEEK 1 - EXERCISE
Reflect on the arc of your life, on your own personal story up to now. Reflect on the present, and what would you like to change, or evolve. I recommend that you write by hand, in your personal journal.
- What are the major events that dotted your life so far?
- What are the big decisions you've made so far? Which of those decisions came from your own heart vs. from society's expectations?
- What does your heart tell you to do next? If money wasn’t an issue, what would you do? Given your current situation, what would you love to change, to focus more on?
WHY THIS EXERCISE
Because becoming aware of who we are at the core and how we got here is the first step in waking up, in building up the foundation of our personal happiness.
Because it's important to stop, and disrupt our own life once in a while. Do a little shakeup, and pay attention to the quality of our inner life. As Abraham Maslow said, a person "cannot choose wisely for a life unless he dares to listen to himself, his own self, at each moment in life."
