Don't Worry, Be Happy

It was a catchy little tune, but I thought the premise of that song was rather simple and naive.

Turns out I was wrong.

Ellen Langer, a social psychologist and professor at Harvard has studied mindfulness for decades and believes we should feel happy ALL of the time; it is not momentary.

Sure, if you don't worry, who couldn't be happy, but how do we not worry?

Well,  that is a little more difficult, but Langer says you can't give up today worrying about tomorrow. Almost all worrying is about tomorrow and you can't predict what tomorrow will bring. And if you stop and think when you are in the worry mode, all those times in the past you worried, did it happen they way you were predicting? Probably not.

She also declares we spend way too much energy believing that whatever is happening at this moment, our life depends on it. RARELY does our life depend on any particular action.

People live their life as if it is ongoing but you need to treat the moment as the only opportunity you are ever going to have.

In other words, BE PRESENT.

And in her mind it differs from meditation and yoga, although those are wonderfully positive experiences. She believes the mindful approach is to ask these two questions:

How is it this way?

How is it not this way?

In other words you need to examine the moment and find some positive even in the negative. Don't make it personal. Her definition of stress is the PRESUMPTION of what is going to happen.

Oh, truer words were never spoken.

One activity she suggests to create mindfulness is to look at a person and try to find five NEW things about that person. It will cause you to look at that person in a new light and appreciate her/his traits. Because in a mindless frame of mind you label a person and it's almost impossible to break away from that.

Also don't worry about the fact that you are not doing something well. Just DO something. If you are walking, running, eating right, etc for your health. If you truly believe it, then you will be healthy.

In childhood we are led to believe there is a single way of viewing things. We learn to acknowledge there are other ways of looking at things, but we go through our lives from a single perspective. OMG, isn't this so true? How many times have you had your own thoughts questioned and in reflection gone, Bam, why didn't I think of that? Or when you meet someone so rigid in their thinking: it is always this way. Nope, there is always another way.

Oh, she has so many nuggets of information. You can read her books or listen to her interview on On Being.

I want to be a Harvard psychology student. I can't even imagine the wealth of information to be tapped.

So today, don't worry. Just be happy!