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Happiness is our basic state of being according to Robert Holden, founder of the Happiness Project. This article, taken from his talk at the The Spirit of Healing Conference at Findhorn, explains how his work is encouraging the men and women of the manic society to slow down and stop, to enquire more deeply, ‘what is happiness?’ Being British, a psychologist and trying to be happy is a big challenge. When I told my tutor that I wanted to do my doctorate on the psychology of happiness, he replied: “the biggest problem you face is finding two psychologists who know enough about happiness to mark your paper.” Psychology is a reining in of vision. I was not trained to look for happiness in people. I was not trained to see their wholeness. I was trained to see what was wrong with them. Be careful what you look for because you’ll find it. It’s just a basic principle of perception. The Oxford Companion to the Mind has 4,000 references in the index but none for happiness. In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, humour and altruism are described as defence mechanisms. Should we balance things a little bit and become aware of the need for more models to do with wholeness and those to do with love? In my work I create opportunities for people to move beyond the thin conversations of our everyday life so that we can explore what happiness is together. Every normal healthy parent wants their children to be happy and yet, when I ask them how much time they spend talking about happiness with their children, it is remarkably little. In relationships it is the same. Every normal healthy person wants their partner to be happy, but having a conversation about it is still a rare thing. Carl Jung said: “Most people suffer not from physical illness but from spiritual aimlessness. They have lost their aim. They have lost sight of who they really are and what is really valuable.” It’s easy to do in this day and age. Every year in a Western culture the average adult will be exposed to over a hundred thousand advertisements telling us what we should truly value. I believe our job, as friends to the world, is to distinguish between desire and truth. When we ask ourselves what happiness is, we are really asking what is real. As a director of the Happiness Project, I’m often asked to participate in national opinion surveys on this question for which the answers are often a shopping list. Happiness is winning the lottery, a new pair of shoes, a faster car, a bigger house or dark chocolate. One of the more shocking measures of our prosperity is the fact that the US spends more on trash bags than 90 other countries spend on everything. The receptacles of our waste cost more than all the goods consumed by nearly half of the world’s nations. The insanity of consumerism is that more people are spending more money they don’t have in order to feel more temporarily satisfied. We have to dig deeper. We’ve been look-ing for happiness in the wrong places. Since 1971 the World Values surveys have charted the relationship between wealth and happiness in 60 countries, representing 75 per cent of the world’s population. The surveys concluded that the early stages of economic development seemed to have a major impact on subjective well-being. Moving from starv-ation level to a reasonably comfortable existence makes a big difference but beyond a certain threshold the subjective pay-off from economic development ceases. Amongst advanced industrialised societies there is practically no relationship between income level and subjective well-being. Making more money, the aim of so many in the western world, does not breed bliss. We are better paid, fed, housed, educated and healthier than ever before with more human rights, faster communication and more convenient transportation than we have ever known and yet ironically, since the 70s, divorce rates have doubled, teenage suicides have tripled, the recorded violent crime rate has quadrupled and prison populations have quintupled. The World Bank and World Health Organisation have both published reports that we, the children of the golden era, are more susceptible to depression than our parents. According to the Oxford Dictionary, happiness is: lucky or fortunate. Another popular thought is that happiness is a destination. Some of the greatest teachers have told us over the centuries that it’s our state of mind that determines whether we are happy or not. There’s a new movement called Positive Psychology which encourages reflection on positive subjects such as the psychology of happiness, the psychology of forgive-ness and the psychology of altruism. We know that happiness is a state of mind, but I’m going to suggest to you it’s even more than that and this is the really good news. Fundamentally, my work is about help-ing people. Remember what Christians used to call your original innocence? What St. Francis of Assisi called your eternal loveliness or what Thomas Merton called your secret beauty? (Secret be-cause we forget.) Most often the process of happiness is somehow remembering again. The Taoists referred to the uncarved block; the Buddhists, the original face; the Hindus, the bliss consciousness; the alchemists, the inner gold. My work refers to what I call the unconditioned self. Here is the bold assertion of the Happiness Project. You are happy 100 per cent of the time. Truly! Unfortunately we’re not always aware of this, yet I believe it to be the truth. The reason happiness is so important to us is not because it’s just a pleasurable emotion or a state of mind. In true happiness we rediscover something about our true self. It’s like the stories of the prodigal son or stories about characters who have forgotten the truth of who they really are. I became interested in the Happiness Project because I wanted to remember the truth of who I am and to be able to support others in that. That’s what being a true friend to the world really is; helping to heal people’s forgetfulness, to heal the amnesia which says that somehow who I am isn’t about happiness. But it is. It’s what we are. Wholeness is not some-thing you travel to. It’s something you carry within you. Krishnamurti said: “truth is a pathless land.” There’s no path, only acceptance that we are ‘it’ already. When we lose sight of our innate happiness we then
begin to create what I call believable stories. We begin to tell
ourselves that there is something wrong with us and that we’re not good
enough. These believable stories cause havoc with our lives. The goal of
therapy is to teach each other that there’s nothing wrong with us other
than the stories we make up about ourselves. God knows, they’re
compelling and believable but they are just stories. According to psychology we have to deserve and work for happiness. If you’ve been brought up in any culture with a strong work ethic you’ll have been taught that happiness requires work. You can’t just accept it. It takes more effort than that. Or, if you’ve grown up in a culture where there’s a strong struggle ethic, where we champion people who struggle and are mildly offended by those who have it easy, we teach each other that you can’t just enjoy happiness, you have to pay for it. There will always be an invoice somewhere waiting for you if you choose to accept some of the happiness quota now and not save it up for later. In fact, with the martyr ethic we’re often afraid that we will have to sacrifice things of value in order to be happy. What we find at the Happiness Project is that although it does require some sacrifice it’s only of the things that have no value. It’s a goal of the project to encourage an appreciation of true happiness and this is tricky. We were given so little information about happiness when I was training as a psychologist. Worse still, we were even taught that, not only is happiness somewhat irrelevant in this world, it actually has no value and could even be slightly dangerous. An article in a journal of medical ethics in 1992, written by a professor at Liverpool University, proposed that happiness be classified as a psychiatric disorder and be included in future editions of the major diagnostic manuals under the new name major effective disorder – pleasant type. In a review of the relevant literature it is shown that happiness is statistically abnormal, consists of a discreet cluster of symptoms, is associated with a range of cognitive abnormalities and probably reflects the abnormal functioning of the central nervous system. Any objection to this proposal would be dismissed as scientifically irrelevant. I think happiness was missed because it was considered to only have entertainment value. Other states such as fear and anxiety were believed to have survival value and were therefore seen as more important. However, it is more than just a pleasurable emotion. It is a creative power that helps us to evolve. Happiness is a compass. It helps you to see that you are on track with your purpose and your values. So, if you don’t feel happy, get curious and let your happiness teach you how you can show up in the world and be who you really are. The Project believes that happiness isn’t the absence of sadness, but it is actually the capacity to heal your sadness. It is the ability to be truthful about your unhappiness, enquire, learn about it and to use the experience to evolve you. It’s really an emotional healing project. Embracing our happiness teaches us to let go of our past. Anybody who has made it to the age of 30 already has enough reasons to be miserable for the rest of their life but happiness teaches you to let go because fundamentally you can’t be happy and be a victim to your past. That’s the gift of happiness. It’s about finding the now, finding your now. Your now is in the timeless values you carry with you. It’s in the constant principles that inspire your actions and the inner wisdom that coaches your every moment. Your now is the portal to grace and inspiration. You find what’s valuable to you wherever you are. Happiness is the realisation that ultimately the whole of your life is right here, right now. So, commit to it. Get your heart wide open, just jump in and give it everything you have. Contact: The Happiness Project, |
