On the road to happiness
Experts share the secrets to enjoying life. And surprise, one of the truths is that we need to embrace the sad days
Somewhere on the road to happiness, many people get lost.
They take a winding, bumpy detour through sorrow, stress, chaos and anger, and get stuck there.
That’s why being happy today is such a holy grail, an aspirational goal right up there with sailing around the world or winning the lottery. Instagram and Pinterest community accounts are bursting with posts about the sunny side of life, with sayings like, “Happiness is a goodnight text” or “Do more of what makes you happy.”
The social-media messages that being happy is within our grasp if only we change are thoughts clog our daily feeds and serve as a constant reminder that either we’re on the right track or may never get there at all. In recent years, there has been a growing number of websites with Instagram communities that offer daily doses of feel-good messages, like the North Car-
olina-based Power of Positivity with its 2.6 million Instagram followers. Oprah Winfrey also helped jump-start the happy movement when she launched “Super Soul Sunday” in 2011 as a way for viewers to explore spirituality and self-improvement. And there is a plethora of motivational best-selling books to help readers do everything from lose weight to make more money.
Certainly, money helps with happiness, but up to a point. Research by the Nobel laureate psychologist and economist Daniel Kahneman showed that money increases happiness until about $75,000 annually, and, after that, money does nothing for our happiness.
So how can you find happiness in a not-so-happy world?
Marianne Williamson, the New York Times best-selling author, spiritual teacher and Houston native, encourages people to look beyond the positive sayings and smiley-face emojis.
“We took a cheap, yellow smiley face and put it on top of everything as though we’re all supposed to walk around with this ‘Stepford’ (fake) smile all the time,” she said. “In fact, heartbreak is part of the spectrum of normal human experience, and despair is not something we can always avoid, but we can develop the emotional musculature to endure it and to navigate it and to transform it.
“A happy life does not mean you never have a sad day. These are very sobering times and sometimes the fact that we are sad about something is actually a sign of mental health, period.”
In her latest book, “Tears to Triumph,” Williamson argues the desire to avoid pain in an effort to be happy is actually hurting our chances of ever getting there. It also prevents people from connecting emotionally. She writes that working through the sad moments is a big part of the journey to happiness.
“It’s very unhealthy how we have madebeing sad wrong over the last few years,” she said. “It weakens us as people, the way we fear sadness and seek to avoid it so much in our society. It weakens our children when we always seek to shield them from theirs. The reason there is such a prevalence of unhappiness in our society is because we have strayed from a deeper consensus that love is what’s most important. Happiness comes from love. Love that we give and love that we receive. ”
Tia Norman, who lives in Missouri City, found herself straying from happiness a few years ago, while working in a highly stressful sales job. She’d come home to her children and her mother, who lives with her, and prepare dinner, only to spend the time at the table complaining about workplace headaches and rush-hour traffic.
Family dinners were never meant to be a gripe session, but Norman said they had turned into one, leaving her even more drained and unhappy long after the meal.
In late 2017, Norman made a resolution, which she never does, to do better and vowed to spend the next 40 days doing only things that added to her happiness. That meant dinner conversations had to change. So she took some note cards and had each family member write a note about something they were happy for. They put the notes into a large mason jar, and this became their dinner ritual and a way to focus on the positive.
Norman eventually sewed a table runner and place mats with pockets to hold the cards so that they didn’t get soiled at the dinner table. That led to her launching a business, Joy to the Table, which includes a “joy” jar ($39.99 at joytothetable.com) with four placements or a 70inch table runner and 50 “Count the Happies” cards.
“I believe we need bigger tables, not higher walls,” said Norman, who also is the author of “Giving Up Mediocrity: A 40-Day Fast Toward Living a Crazy Fulfilled Life.” “We need to shift the conversation and make happiness a practice. By focusing on the things that make you happy and bring you joy, there is a path that will unfold that you can never imagine.”
Norman’s path now means she only does work that brings joy, like running her new business and serving as pastor at the Awakenings Movement church. She’s also more focused on living in the moment.
“This morning I got to watch my daughter (Kennedy, 7) sleep, and that made me very happy. We have to take time to pause and reflect on the happy. Eventually with practice, it becomes habit.”
Practicing happiness is what drove the husband and wife team of Marc and Angel Chernoff to pen their New York Times bestseller, “Getting Back To Happy,” with a foreword by actress Alyssa Milano. The couple gained social-media fame with their blog, “Marc and Angel Life Hack,” which they started in 2006 after the death of a close friend from an asthma attack, Angel’s brother who died by suicide and her lay-off from a corporate job.
The couple sank into depression and even withdrew from family and friends.
“We would be in the house for days on end and not talking with each,” Marc said. “It began to take a toll on our marriage. We needed to get out of the house, so we created this ritual that every day we would leave the house at the same time and walk to a nearby green space just to get some sunshine.”
After a month of their daily walks, the couple started bringing self-help books by renowned authors like Wayne Dyer and Eckart Tolle along. They would read separately, then discuss together what they learned.
That’s how their “Life Hack” blog started, as a way keep them on the happy track.
“It was just for us at first,” Marc said about the blog. “Social media wasn’t what it is today 10 years ago. People found and started sharing it. Suddenly we were getting messages saying how people were resonating with our story.”
The couple now travels the country speaking and leading workshops on how to live a happier life.
“I think happiness is acceptance and appreciation of life,” Angel said. “Sometimes we think it’s so unachievable because we think we have to be happy 24-7. None of us are happy 24-7. When you think of happiness as simple, as the acceptance of life, it makes you just thrilled that you woke up today.”
Williamson said a daily practice (as little as five minutes) of prayerful or meditative reflection is a powerful tool to a happy life.
“When we wake up in the morning and surrender our lives to love, to the god of our understanding, to the power of goodness, truth and light or to whatever higher power we relate to, it lifts us emotionally and physically above the turmoil of the world,” she said.
Now, what about that ubiquitous question: “What makes you happy?”
“That question suggests that the key to happiness is different for everyone and at the fundamental level, it is not,” Williamson said. “It is the love we give and the love we receive, no matter who we are and what circumstances are. That is the key to happy life.”