Spontaneous Happiness (Part 2)

This is the second part of Spontaneous Happiness. If you’ve landed here without reading the first part, I’d recommend starting with Spontaneous Happiness (Part 1)—not mandatory, but it may add helpful context.

In Part 1, we briefly explored what happiness means. Here, we’ll go a little deeper.

The word happy comes from an Old Norse root meaning chance or luck. When we contrast this origin with our modern desire to be happy all the time, an interesting dichotomy emerges—between what happiness originally implied and what we now expect it to be.

The Swedish word lagom (pronounced lah-gom) means “not too little, not too much—just right.” Perhaps this idea of balance is part of the secret behind why Scandinavian countries often rank among the happiest in the world.

So, how do we take our personal definition of happiness and keep moving on our journey towards sustaining it. As Andrew Weil highlights in the book Spontaneous Happiness:

If you cultivate emotional resilience, you don't have to resist feeling appropriate sadness; you learn that your moods are dynamic and flexible and that they return to a neutral balance point, the zone of contentment, comfort and serenity..... "Name and Tame" the thoughts rather than being overwhelmed by them.

Think of an elastic band - it stretches but returns to its neutral state. In the same way, life events, work, and relationships stretch us. If you see yourself being stretched, all you have to do is acknowledge it and find your path to your neutral state. Of course, this is easier said than done. This is where Joseph Nguyen's PAUSE framework is useful (Book: Don't believe everything you think):

P - Pause and take deep breaths A - Ask yourself, is this helping me? U - Understand that you have a choice S - Say to yourself, thinking is the root cause of suffering E - Experience your emotions fully without judgment (i.e., don't think, just feel)

This framework helps you observe yourself and prevents over-thinking which is often the root cause of anxiety which leads to the stretch of the elastic band.

If you'd like to find a path to return to your neutral balance, I'd be glad to walk alongside you.

Athma

coach@athma.ca

Life coach, Toronto, Canada