Are you happy?

Sometimes things can be really simple. I don't think much needs to be added to this:

PS: If anyone knows who should get credit for this picture, please let me know...

Why I am against "goal setting"; and my personal "general direction" statement

One of the recommendations that keeps appearing in success, happiness, motivation... self-help liturature is to set goals. Well I have to say that after seven years of studying happiness I have come to the conclusion that goal setting is counter-productive to living a life with more happiness and joy. Does nature set goals? I make this point about nature because

In all the studies of happiness, the planet’s happiest people always turn out to be the people living in the way closest to that of wild ancestral humans - modern day hunter-gatherers, living contented lives on islands, fishing and lounging about. The most miserable people on Earth appear to be the Japanese, and it is surely no coincidence that their way of life is the furthest removed from nature.

I paradoxically took this quote from an essay called "Why we can't find lasting happiness", which you can read here. (And yes, even though it is a very interesting essay, I do disagree with its main claims :-)

But returning to why I am against goal-setting. In my opinion goal-setting leads to too much focus on the goals themselves, judging success based on whether the goal is attained or not, and missing other opportunities that arise -- but we don't see -- while we're pursuing the set goals. In short, goal-setting takes us away from "flowing along with the natural tides of life, actively adapting where necessary or creating where we want to...", which I find to be the best way to live (if we make the conscious decision to live a happier life with more joy...).

Instead of goals, I prefer having a "general direction" or "general directions" in life. For example, one of my general directions is to "inspire people in western civilization to do less and enjoy more", or, to borrow from Jon Kabat Zinn, "inspire people to actually be more like human 'beings', instead of human 'doings'". I will write more about this at some point in 2010...

It's Friday, so it's time for a... Positive Pause

I came across this site about ten years ago and I still occassionaly go there if I need to take a five minute relaxation break:

Positive Pause

Enjoy!

Allowing human nature to work successfully - Jean Liedloff and The Continuum Concept

During the holidays I finally had a chance to slowly read two articles about Jean Liedloff and her Continuum Concept that I had been meaning to read for a  long time. For those that do not know her work, Jean spent a lot of time with indigenous people in South America and based on her observations developed fascinating theories about human nature and raising of children, which she summarized in her book "the Continuum Concept".

After reading both of the articles about five times, I have to say that I have rarely come across words with which I have agreed so completely. It's like she's explaining things about happiness that I have intuited for a long time, yet couldn't express. So I highly, highly recommend everybody to read the articles, which are available here and here. But for those that would like a little sneak peak before heading over to the Continuum Concept website, here are a few highlights:

• We use the word normal as though it were a synonym for natural, which it is not.
• We act as though human nature were something to be afraid of, to constrain, modify or fight...
• We mistrust human nature itself
• Learning occurs naturally, but teaching isn't natural at all.
• And much, much more fascinating stuff

In addition to the "my gosh, she's hitting the nail right on the head" feeling I had as I was reading the articles, I also noticed an amazing consistency of what she was saying with Albert Pesso's and Diane Boyden's PBSP theory and method (about which I have written here a couple of times already). Two of the most striking similarities, IMHO, are these:

• a root cause of unhappiness (and other problems) is frequently "positive experiences that we expected as small children but did not get" (these can include touches, looks, reactions, words, and many others). PBSP works with the concept of five needs (place, nurture, support, protection, limits) that each baby expects it will have met.
• another root cause of unhappiness is that sometimes children grow up subconsciously believing that their role is to provide their parents with emotional support (yet no matter how hard they try to fulfill their parent's needs, they always fail). PBSP calls this "holes in roles".

I firmly believef that anyone interested in living a happier and more satisfying life would benefit tremendously from doing some work on these two issues. And perhaps reading the two articles linked above would be a good start.

I wish everyone a most natural 2010!

Living from happiness instead of for happiness

A few days ago, while using my favorite online service -- philosophersnotes.com (more on them in another post) -- I came across the summary of a book called "Happy for no reason" (written by Marci Shimoff with Carol Kline). There is one sentence in that book that absolutely perfectly describes what I believe to be the best philosophy on life:

Living from happiness instead of for happiness

That right there is what I believe our planet needs the most - more people living from happiness instead of for happiness. And combining that with my favorite quote from the Dalai Lama

The meaning of life is to be happy and to be useful

gives the recipe for a fantastic life. I firmly believe that it's no accident the Dalai Lama puts 'happy' before 'useful' and I also firmly believe that he means 'be useful from happiness' (and not for happiness.)

And how can we become happier so that we truly start living from happiness? Well, reading Marci Shimoff's book is probably a very good way to start.

Although I disagree slightly with one fundamental assumption she works with. She says something like that 50% of our happiness set-point is genetic and cannot be changed, 10% comes from external circumstances that are hard to change (and that most people spend most of their energy on trying to change), and 40% comes from what we do and think (our habits, thoughts, actions...). I fully agree with the 10+40% assumptions and she gives fantastic advice on how to improve our happiness set-point by working with the habits and actions 40%.

But I humbly disagree that 50% of our happiness set-point is genetic and cannot be changed. While some of our happiness set-point may be genetic and unchangeable, I believe that it is possible to go deep into our subconscious minds and do a great deal of healing work there that will impact this part of the happiness set-point. And I actually believe that this is by far the most important part of working on increasing our happiness because it is this work that provides a strong yet flexible foundation for all the other work (i.e., the aforementioned 40%). Over the past seven years I've seen this change occur in myself as well as dozens of other people to know that this is true.

So what are actually the methods or techniques for impacting this part of the happiness set-point? I have personally used a combination of holotropic breathwork and PBSP to make these changes (you can see my earlier posts on these methods). I am sure there are other methods as well. But the reason that HB and PBSP are so good is because they are the most effective methods I know of that can effectively deal with what I believe are the biggest causes of unhappiness in adult life that has no apparent cause: A) a glitch in the birth process, and B) so called 'traumas of omission' very early in life (i.e., first few seconds, minutes, hours after being born, all the way to the first one to three years of our life). I'll write about more about these two causes, which mainstream psychology / psychotherapy absolutely underestimates IMHO, in a later post.

But for now I'd like to encourage you to start living from happiness instead of for happiness and start working on ways of increasing your happiness set-point. And for those that are eager to either continue with or get going on the "useful" aspect, I'll end today with the best quote I've ever heard on finding one's calling in life:

Our true calling is where our joy meets the needs of the world

(Barbara Ernest)

2012 - Apocalypse or New Sun? - Shift of the Ages film project

There is too much nonsense being spread throughout the world by the Hollywood 2012 movie. Here's another movie, with a different point of view - one that I like much better...



Check out http://www.shiftoftheages.com/ for more.

Demystifying holotropic breathwork

In the past week I spent two days assisting with holotropic breathwork sessions. These sessions enabled me to observe how incredibly powerful this healing method is. Yet at the same time, some negative articles have appeared in the press at around the same time regarding this technique. So the following blog entry is dedicated to demystifying some of the fiction that seems to be surrounding holotropic breathwork (HB):

Expectations: There seem to be overblown expectations of what HB is and what it can do. Some people expect that they'll be taken on a wild trip into the transpersonal realm of the human psyche, full of colourful images, meetings with God and answers to all questions. Others expect that one HB session will cure their addictions, neuroses or whatever problem they are dealing with. While all of this can happen, it is generally not the case. And it virtually never happens in the first session. My advice -- as someone that has "breathed" at HB sessions at least 20x (over the course of seven years) and that has assisted at several sessions as well -- would be to try to have no expectations and use the first session as a "getting-to-know altered states of consciousness" session. I also like the advice that it's good to experience at least 3 sessions before making up one's mind about HB, because each session is so different - all of my 20 sessions have certainly been different.

Session leader: This is probably the most important point and I can't stress this enough. Only attend and breathe at sessions that are lead by highly experienced pracitioners that have been certified by the Grof Transpersonal Training Program! There are too many people out there that attended a couple sessions and then began leading their own sessions. This is dangerous as these people are not trained to properly handle all of the situations that can occur. Officialy trained practioners are obligated to provide a 3-4 hour presentation about HB, which must be attended by all persons before they are allowed to "breathe" at a session. My advice would be to definitely attend this initial presentation and only proceed with attendance at the actual breathing session if you have a good feeling about the practitioner based on the initial presentation. And if no such initial presentation is offered, run far away! :-)

At the end of this post I would like to express my opinion that when lead by the right people, holotropic breathwork is a perfectly safe and wonderful method of self-discovery. It makes it possible to put aside our usual assumptions, habits, roles and social masks, explore our psyche, discover new parts of us and integrate these parts into our lives. This makes us more complete as human beings and in turn more happy, which brings to mind Carl Jung's famous quote: "strive not to be perfect, strive to be complete!"

For more information about Holotropic Breathwork, please visit its official website.