The brain works on a use-it-or-lose-it basis. Happiness is no exception.
“I’ve forgotten how to be happy.”
She said it like it was meant to be a joke, but she wasn’t laughing. And it wasn’t really funny. It kind of gave me chills.
I kinda got the joke she was trying to make. “I’m so tough and hardened that I’ve forgotten how to be happy, even though happiness isn’t something you do, like driving a car, and is therefore not something that you can ‘forget’.”
Boom tish.
Only thing was it kinda was like she had forgotten how to be happy. She had one of those mouths that seemed to have hardened into a frown. Like how some models have what they call “resting bitch face”. She had ‘resting general disaffection with life face.’
And she was very slow to crack a smile. In fact, the only time I remember her smiling or laughing, it was at the misfortune of others. If something went wrong for someone – or if something embarrassing happened to them – then it was like this wave of relief washed over her and she broke into laughter.
Actually it was more like a cackle.
And look, I don’t want to be mean. I know where her outlook came from. She hadn’t had the easiest life, and she’d never had a lot of self-confidence. So I can understand. I can empathise.
But it just struck me because I really think she had forgotten how to be happy. Happiness had become such an alien state of being to her, that she had lost the map to get back there.
And again, I think there’s this misperception about where emotions come from. We tend to think that our emotions are naturally set to neutral, and then we swing from happiness to sadness depending on what happens to us.
Like, you’re in a room having a rest. Your emotions are at neutral. Then someone comes in and gives you a foot rub for 5 minutes. You emotion-metre swings over to happiness. After they leave, and after a while, your emotions return to their neutral setting.
It’s like a pot of water. The water is at room temperature. Add heat and the water gets hot. And cold and the water gets colder. But take heat and cold away and the water naturally returns to room temperature.
This really isn’t the right way to think about it when it comes to happiness, and this framework gives away a lot of our power.
There is no neutral emotional state. Sure, there is something that is neither happy nor sad, but this isn’t like room-temperature. You don’t revert to it. It just happens to lie in the middle.
You’re natural tendency is just where you happen to spend the most time. We are creatures of habit. If you’re happy a lot, you tend to be happy. If you’re sad a lot you tend to be sad.
And what the whole theory of neuro-plasticity tells us is, that if you’re not using certain parts of your brain, those parts will be co-opted to serve other functions. It’s an efficiency thing.
So if you’re not using the part of the brain that is happiness, that part will be asked to chip in elsewhere – probably towards feeling more nuanced sadness if that’s where you spend all your time.
After a while, after your happiness cortex is subsumed by your sadness cortex (not actually things), it is actually very difficult to feel happiness at all.
You can, literally, forget how to be happy.
But if it is possible to forget, then it is also possible to remember.
And so at the risk of making every blog about radical self-reliance, there’s a lesson here.
Happiness is not a reaction to the outside world. Don’t think of it like that. Rather, think of it like a skill. It is something you do, like driving a car, and it is something you get better at with practice.
And if you’re serious about being happy, then put the time into it. Make space in your life and in your mind to feel happiness. Work on getting better at feeling happy. Come up with exercises for yourself to do. I don’t know, something like:
- List ten things that make you happy.
- What was the happiest moment in you life? What did it feel like?
- Who makes you happiest? What does it feel like to be with them?
- What are the physical sensations associated with happiness?
- Fake it. Let me know, non-verbally, that you’re the happiest person alive. What is you’re body doing? Give it permission to do more of that.
I’m sure I could come up with more but I don’t think I need to. You know yourself best. You know what will work for you.
Now I know this might all sound a little twee and silly. And it totally is. If I went back 20,000 years and told my ancestors cuddling with their family around a fire, eating mammoth steaks and singing songs, that they should practice being happy, they would think I was an idiot.
But the reality is that we live in an era where our problem-solving minds are constantly being challenged. We can end up stuck in problem-mode. And this crowds out the space for being happy.
So we can forget how to be happy, not because we spend all our time being sad, but simply because we spend all our time being busy.
(How do you look in that mirror?)
So we could all use some happiness training. I might open a dojo.
Whatever you want from life – whether it’s happiness, love, awe, gratitude, laughter, success, whatever – it’s yours for the taking.
You’ve only got to put in the time.
How great is that?
Now give me twenty happy push-ups.
What exercises would you bring to your happiness dojo?
Macca says
So true Jon. We fill our lives with so much activity and striving, and stress, that it’s really tough to sometimes remember how good you’ve got it. It skews things in weird ways; for example I love seeing my kids play football on the weekend, school, club – I live for it. But when the weekend games are rained off, and I can unexpectedly just veg at home, I end up happy (and feeling a bit guilty about it). It’s just having time that I wasn’t expecting, to do whatever I want, or need to do. It’s bliss! By Sunday evening I realise I’ve actually relaxed. By just doing not much ! I can spend an hour just thinking, getting all kinds of things straight in my head. So I guess for me, happiness is time and tranquillity. Obviously I’m desperate to have the football back on the next weekend though!!
Tom says
If you want to be happy, don’t think of yourself – make someone else happy.
KatM says
Bouncing on a trampoline, dancing, singing, rolling down a grassy knoll (in white clothes), bombies into a dive pool, walking in rain without an umbrella, jumping into muddy puddles… Think like a child to remain happy.
Jon, I think neutral means contentment and finding your “flow” state of consciousness. This could be as simple as handwashing the dishes, knitting, or even driving down a freeway with not much traffic around.
John Boy says
“You’ve only got to put in the time.”
Yeah, that’ll make you happy. Just add it into your “To Do” list. Make it another chore. That’ll cheer you right up.
Not!
Happiness is a natural, normal state of being. Most creatures are born with it. It’s not some reading on a scale. It used to come naturally.
Just watch lambs frolicking in the field, kittens chasing a piece of paper on a string, puppies rolling over one another in play fight. Even adult dogs like to run to fetch sticks and jump high to catch a thrown ball. They love it. Excitement, action, challenge, testing oneself, being part of something with others.. Listen to the birds singing. Ever noticed that they DON’T sing when there’s a cat wandering about – then, they squawk warnings to one another.
Closer to home, stand outside the high Keep Out fence of a modern school ground at lunchtime, and listen to the kids playing.Shrieking, laughing, yelling, making lots of noise, with lots of action.
Then look at the adults…
Loss of happiness seems to parallel loss of freedom of some kind.
Your lady friend had probably gotten herself trapped in some unsatisfactory situation, and couldn’t see it, or how to get out of it. Sometimes, that’s a marriage, a job, or career, even a social paradigm.
That’s the funny thing about liberated women, feminists and the like. Most of them look like those “resting bitch face” models, only they are not attractive to make up for it. I think it’s funny anyway. Maybe that’s just me.
In order to be happy, Ya Gotta Be Yourself. That’s their problem, they are trying to be “better than men” or something like it. Of course, they never stop trying to be better than each other, so it’s a real double whammy.
Funny eh?
Well, I’m smiling, so maybe I’m happy.
If you’re doing what you love, won’t you be happy?
Like the birds, kittens, puppies, dogs, children…
So, why are you doing what you don’t love? Nothing to do with “making time to be happy”?
Break out of the trap, go do what you are happy doing! When reality hits later, you’ll find a new happy thing to do. Maybe even working in a job!
Andrew says
Standing at the Keep Out fence of the school yard for too long will get you arrested…!!
Glyn says
Unfortunately some people have lost there mojo due to stress and what ever else due to the rat race we are in. It seems there is always doom and gloom out there. Everyone with power wants to keep you down and stressed (when have you heard of a government saying we’ve done pretty good this year). Sometimes things are out of your control. Only you can control if you WANT to be happy and friends and family can help you be happy. There are always a lot of people worse than you and they are still happy.
ron goddard says
hi jonno,
i want to know; do you spend lotsa time writing this stuff or does it just flow. lets look at the words which make me curious(being a big dummy) : subsumed, mojo and reaction. i have never, ever come across a subsumed anything. perhaps you could explain in your next diatribe.
i know that any modern person knows what a ‘mojo’ is..but it escapes me. reaction…is something that happens when you take a shot of medicine that goes wrong..like he has had a reaction, but now he has responded to a different med. so that reaction to me is a negative and response is a positive. so a positive response might bring happiness, not a reaction. don’t you agree? exercise to me is a negative. but if you have a penchant for being healthy yes respond to your urges and exercise. i would rather go for a long walk and see things and talk to people wherever and whenever i can. maybe it has taken 20,000 years for people to stop doing this: walking a long way in a long time and chatting along the way.
anyway in a funny way being happy and living in a happy state is sublime, for happiness comes from within. things don’t make you happy..you make you happy. the secret maybe is not to expect too much from life and give more.
you give of your time jonno, writing to us mere mortals and we respond by commenting in our manifold ways. so good luck with your present state and think of other peoples’ battle with life. i never stop being amazed at the many people who do volunteer work. i wonder what kind of people we would attract to politics if we didn’t pay them anything? 🙂 cheers, ron
Alan Maurice says
THank you
Mary Leong says
Thank you sensai just what I needed to hear!