Savouring Life's Joys - Shoes...

On April 2, I took the time to savour life's joy. Me and two of my favourite female friends trundled off to the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto.  Great fun - the Queen Mother had gorgeous shoes that would still be in style today! But this little outing really started with a bit of a journey...

I finally finished Sonja Lyubomirsky's The How of Happiness.  Although this book didn't strike the same chord with me as Jonathan Haidt's The Happiness Hypothesis, I certainly have taken away a few gems from Lyubomirsky.

The first is her great blog.  This is where I found out why being a parent doesn't always make us happy, or the answer to this question: "what is the optimal level of happiness?"

"So the optimal level of happiness turns out to be "as high as possible" when it comes to relationships but "moderately high" when it comes to work. Being deliriously happy all the time at the office may not serve our productivity very well (and might drive our colleagues to avoid us). However, apparently, we prefer our friends and spouses to be extremely happy. A line of research on idealization in relationships is consistent with this view, showing that the most satisfied couples are those whose members see one another more positively than they really are."

The second take-away is that Lyubomirsky's book is extremely practical.  It includes self assessment tests that help to determine your congenital happiness set point - mine was a little below average - that old "Wednesday's Child" tenet haunts me still...It also includes a self assessment of what happiness areas you may want to focus on. 

Both Lyubomirsky and Haidt discuss the fact that we tend to want to improve ourselves by working on our faults.  Is there a woman out there who hasn't tried that approach - if I just lose weight, colour my hair, get a tummy tuck, whiten my teeth, buy sexier shoes I will be darn near perfect.  This, of course, is a ridiculous fallacy.  We are each of us so much more than a wrapper!  In the How of Happiness, I learned that the best kind of self-improvement has as its foundation, the things that I am already good at.

I was quite unexpectedly discussing this notion with a colleague.  He actually drew me a diagram of how he thinks this concept works for him (honestly, until I went public with my happiness quest, I had no idea how many others were on the same journey!) This picture at right is basically what he drew for me.  He puts negative stuff that he can't fix into the little circle in the middle - for him these are both internal and external factors.  Then he works to increase the internal and external aspects of his life that are positive or strengths.  This is exactly the advice given by Lyubomirsky (the difference being of course that I paid money to learn it from her!).  Over time the size of the positives/strengths circle continues to grow, dwarfing the negatives trapped in the little circle in the middle.

When I completed the self-assessment to determine my areas of strength I moved on to the part of The How of Happiness that provides actual happiness enhancement strategies (this is the "How" part).  Keeping in mind that these are areas in which I already have strength, I am setting out to increase my enjoyment of things I am already pretty good at - acts of kindness, finding flow, practicing faith, savouring joy and achieving goals. 

Love this quote from Lyubomirsky's book:

"If we observe genuinely happy people, we shall find that they do not just sit around being contented. They pursue new understandings, seek new achievements, and control their thoughts and feelings...In a nutshell, the fountain of happiness can be found in how you behave, what you think, and what goals you set every day of your life. There is no happiness without action."

As our Bata Shoe Museum trip came to an end, my wonderful friends gave me a book they managed to buy at the Museum gift shop without me noticing (they rock!).  It's called "It's all about Shoes" - whimsical tales about the role that shoes play in our lives.  Here's a sample:  "People - like shoes - come in different styles".