A Chic Paris Lockdown – Day 16 – Choose Happy
May 5, 2020
In 30 More Chic Days, Fiona Ferris titles Day 16 “Be the Happiest Person You Know.” She encourages us to consciously adopt a positive, optimistic outlook on life. This “Day” is all about what is going on inside our heads. This has nothing to do with winning the lottery or discovering the cure for cancer. It’s all about how we want to feel deep down inside, right here and now. Fiona writes that given a choice between being around someone who is smiling and happy to share a new interest with you or being around someone who is all “gloom and doom”, “the world is going to heck in a handbasket” (or even worse, the perpetual “angry victim”, mistreated every day by someone or something), who would you rather hang out with?
We would certainly choose to spend time with someone who is laughing and upbeat and brings a smile to our faces rather than the moaning and groaning “Debbie Downers” of the world. But what about inside us? When we are with ourselves, are we positive and excited about life or are we habitually negative and pessimistic? We can always walk away from negative people. What if, inside our own mind, we’re one of those negative, pessimistic, “the world is (always) going to end because of this, that or the other” types? Do we want to choose joy over anxiety? Do we even think it’s possible? Let’s just stop beating around the bush – what is the magic to-do list that will help take us from being closer to the negative, cynical, worry-wart end of the mental mood continuum and move us closer to the joyful Pollyanna end?
Fiona offers a few things to try. Chief on her list is to always have something interesting going on in our mental life. Whether it’s trying a new recipe, reading a favorite book or planning a fun weekend trip – whatever activity or hobby brings us joy, keep a project going on the side just for fun. This way, we have something fun to think about and do in our spare time which automatically keeps us from getting stuck in a cycle of boredom-induced negativity. Another benefit of this nice habit is that we are interesting and upbeat to ourselves and to the people around us.
Chade-Meng Tan, author of Joy on Demand, The Art of Discovering The Happiness Within, advises us to make a habit of noticing “thin” slices of happiness all during our day. An example would be that first wonderful sniff of fresh-brewed coffee or the beauty of a beam of glowing sunlight on a tree. These are just “thin slices” of happiness and appreciation, ” that give us a lift for a moment or two. However, when we consciously look for and notice such moments, we feel that spark of joy each time throughout our day. Even more importantly, we train our minds to notice all the many, many “thin” slices of joy that go on all around us. Hey – that’s an easy, “no-brainer” – it doesn’t take much effort and we start a habit that generates a nice return.
Gretchen Rubin, in her book The Happiness Project, learned that just the act of physically smiling can raise our mood. Chade-Meng Tan notes that even putting on a half-smile can have an uplifting effect. Fiona also mentions this trick. What if we could somehow train our facial muscles to unconsciously default to a slight half-smile? What a great a two-fer – avoid frown lines and keep a steady stream of physiological input towards happiness! The real take-away from the physical expression-to-mood link is that we have a small thing that we can actually do that we know will have a positive effect on our mood.
KJ Dell’Antonia, of How To Be A Happier Parent, Raising a Family, Having a Life and Loving (Almost) Every Minute, zeroed in on the stories that we tell ourselves about our lives. She found that how we talk to ourselves about our experiences has an enormous impact on how happy (or not) we feel. Okay, now we are on to something big. Can we catch our self-talk when it starts heading downhill and somehow refocus our perspective on whatever is the topic? I suspect a lot of us have some “lockdown” inner-dialogue going on these past several months. I’ve experimented with my own self-talk since March. I’ve consciously chosen (most of the time) to think and verbalize positive things such as “I am so happy that we found our terrific apartment – doubly so since lockdown means we are spending so much time in it.” Another sentence (borrowed from my dad) that my children have said they like hearing is “I don’t have all the answers right this very minute but I know we’ll figure it out as we get there.” The real gold nugget from this finding is that we can, with some effort, change a negative internal dynamic into a positive trick. Heck, we can even write down a couple of positively focused sentences about a situation that usually sends us into a negative spin and practice speaking them to ourselves (with a half-smile) whenever the need arises.
Fiona approaches self-talk from a slightly different direction. She advises us to be our own cheerleader. Say to ourselves the same encouragement that we would say to a close friend like “Well done!”, “Good choice,” or “Way to knock that task out.” The secret ingredient is that just as we build up our friends with encouraging and appreciative words, we build up ourselves.
The shortlist above references actions that we can start doing right now. No one action is going to always raise our mood to complete bliss. And we do know that life has ups and downs. We will experience the full range of emotions that all humans have. The list does give us a tool suite of behaviors that will help us move (and protect) our own inner setting closer to the baseline of happy. With the combination of actions, taken every day, over time, we are steadily building a positive, upbeat personal culture – starting from the inside out.
Paul Brodie sums it up for us. In his book, The Pursuit of Happiness, Ten Ways to Increase Your Happiness, he writes that happiness is a choice – and we train our minds to make that choice every day.
“Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” (Abraham Lincoln)
