Building Capacity for Happiness

Hi

It's been a while since I sent out the last issue of Transform. I've been busy with new developments in the Melbourne West Business Learning Network, an initiative for employers and mature age work seekers that I've been facilitating since the Network started in 2005.

This year we held a series of six lunches for local businesses and work seekers using the conversational process, Open Space. We called them MALTs (Mature Age Lunch Talks). You can read the MALT story here.

I'm now putting out a weekly newsletter for this group. You can sign up here and take a look if you are interested.

Now to this month's topic: How do we build our capacity for happiness?

The inspiration for this title came from surfing the website of the Australian Centre for Grief and Bereavement, the largest provider of grief and bereavement education in Australia.

Why was I looking at a site dedicated to grief and bereavement you may be wondering, when my tagline is 'Inviting happiness ... '? Well, when we get down to the nitty gritty, happiness is not all beer and skittles as they say.

The capacity for happiness is a bit like a tree. It starts as a tiny shoot and eventually provides shade for many people. Happiness has to be nurtured. We need to tend and grow our capacity if we are serious about having more happiness in our lives.

Facilitating the Business Learning Network has been a challenge to my thinking about happiness. As you would imagine many of the work seekers are far from happy and some are down right angry - with good reason. It's no fun to lose your job in midlife from downsizing or outsourcing. It's an enormous loss with huge repercussions.

The mission of the Australian Centre for Grief and Bereavement is to build the capacity of individuals, organisations and communities in order to enhance well-being following adverse life events.

There's that phrase, 'build the capacity'. Life happens. Bad things happen to good people. We all have our ups and downs, whoever we are, wherever we are. We can't prevent 'adverse life events', as the Centre so diplomatically refers to the many human disasters that can befall us, but we can build our capacity to deal with them so that when they do occur, we can find a way to cope and have the resilience to go on and be open to new opportunities - however unlikely that may feel at the time.

Coincidentally, I've been reading the book, 'How we choose to be happy - the 9 Choices of Extremely Happy People - their Secrets, Their Stories'. (ISBN 0-399-52990-X) This is the outcome of the research of Rick Foster & Greg Hicks over more than a decade. I recommend it.

Foster and Hicks interviewed people from all walks of life who were recognized by others as well as themselves as being 'extremely happy'. What they found was that these extremely happy people consistently followed their hearts and minds in making choices. The choices fell into nine categories. Each of the choices was important in its own right but together they worked synergistically to create 'deep, long term happiness' (p 9-10).

So what were the choices?

1. Intention - they consciously chose to be happy.
2. Accountability - they assumed personal responsibility for whatever happened to them and refused to view themselves as a victim of circumstances.
3. Identification - they continually looked within themselves to find out what made them uniquely happy rather than what others said should make them happy.
4. Centrality - they regarded as non-negotiable that focusing on what brought them happiness was central to their lives
5. Recasting - they used the process of recasting to transform stressful problems and traumas into meaningful events that gave them emotional energy.
6. Options - they approached life in a flexible way, being open to new possibilities and creating multiple scenarios.
7. Appreciation - they consciously practiced deep appreciation of their lives and the people in it. This enabled them to 'stay in the present' and experience each moment as precious.
8. Giving - they chose to share themselves freely with the world at large without expecting a 'return'.
9. Truthfulness - they chose to be honest with themselves and others and 'not allow societal, workplace, or family demands to violate (their) internal contract'.

Happiness IS a choice. What are you doing that makes you uniquely happy and how can you invite more of that into your life?

The end of the year is coming, a notoriously difficult time for many people. Perhaps we can start to nurture our capacity for happiness now in preparation for dealing with any 'adverse life events' that we may encounter in the months ahead.

Choose happiness,

Justus Click here to contact me.

Transformasia Pty Ltd
ACN 097 139 725
PO Box 1037, Caulfield Nth, Vic 3161
Tel: +61 0400 156 069
Skype: justusl
www.transformasia.com.au