Category: Happiness

Unclenching

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

It was a yoga teacher who first pointed out to me that, even in a strenuous pose, there was no need to furrow my brow and clench my jaw. This is because, as it turns out, neither my jaw nor my forehead is connected to my thighs, hips, back, or hamstrings.

Of course this applies, like all things, beyond the yoga mat. Take running, which has returned as a major part of my life thanks to social distancing. I’ve logged my two longest runs ever in the last two weeks (just under 9 miles) since…what else is there to do?!

Mostly, I enjoy it, but I’m also having to unlearn the always-struggle, always-push mindset that I employed when I last ran regularly, in my teens and 20s.

I’m trying to remember to relax my face while I run. I’ve noticed that my forehead, the space between my eyebrows and my jaw are perpetually clenched when I run. This helps with absolutely nothing.

Clenching is a natural reaction to stress, but it doesn’t make sense. It provides no protection or safety. It wards off nothing.

Needless to say, stress is everywhere these days. We can trick ourselves into believing that clenching, both physical (in our jaw and forehead) and psychological (in our minds as we scroll through screen after screen of frustrating, worrying news) equates to “doing something.” We can pretend that worrying about what’s going on helps in some way.

The fact is, adding strain and suffering to something that is already strenuous is completely optional. There’s enough that’s hard already, why should we be adding more?

Here’s how to practice unclenching.

Find a spot in your body where you hold tension. For me, this is the left side of my jaw, which I often clench when awake and asleep.

Consciously unclench it. Breathe. Breathe again.

Now pay attention to other things that are clenched.

Let them relax too. Breathe. Breathe again.

Repeat as necessary.

Not happiness, meaning

~ Sasha ~ 6 Comments

A colleague of mine shared this recent article from The Atlantic titled “There’s More to Life than Being Happy” by Emily Esfahani Smith.  The article describes recent research on the difference between living a life in pursuit of happiness and living a life of meaning.

I’d have loosely assumed that the pursuit of meaning has as its outgrowth a high degree of happiness or, putting a finer point on it, of satisfaction.  Which would mean that happiness and meaning are pretty highly correlated.

The researchers came to a different conclusion.  They found that “a meaningful life and happy life overlap in certain ways, but are ultimately very different.  Leading a happy life, the psychologists found, is associated with being a “taker” while leading a meaningful life corresponds with being a ‘giver.’”

The counter-intuitive piece of the research, for me, is around what a happy life devoid of meaning looks like, and how a life of meaning can sometimes have low degrees of happiness:

Happiness without meaning characterizes a relatively shallow, self-absorbed or even selfish life, in which things go well, needs and desire are easily satisfied, and difficult or taxing entanglements are avoided… In the meaningful life ‘you use your highest strengths and talents to belong to and serve something you believe is larger than the self.’  For instance, having more meaning in one’s life was associated with activities like buying presents for others, taking care of kids, and arguing.

Put another way, the pursuit of meaning isn’t always a bed of roses.  It can involve higher degrees of stress and anxiety, it’s characterized by more thinking about the past and the future, rather than the present.  It’s hard work.

And yet it is this work that makes us human.  Smith refers back to the wisdom of psychologist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankel’s 1946 book Man’s Search for Meaning:

Being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself – be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself – by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love – the more human he is… A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the “why” for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any “how.”

The people I see making real and lasting change in the world distinguish themselves with their grit and resilience.  And while I believe that the foundation of grit and resilience is character and values, it makes sense that it is also a sense of meaning, of purpose, of “why” that gives people the strength to bear almost any “how.”

Emily Smith’s full article is definitely worth the read.

An “intangible” dividend?

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

So here’s a curious narrative: in the early 1990s, 4,600 poor families in LA, New York, Chicago and Boston were moved from very poor neighborhoods (more than half the residents living in poverty) to wealthier (less than a third of the residents living in poverty).  The hope was this would result in better jobs, higher incomes, and better educational outcomes.

After rigorous, scientific testing, the initiative failed to deliver the desired results.

And yet, in what was described as an “intangible dividend” by the NY times, the recipients ended up significantly, quantifiably happier.  “The improvement [in happiness] was equal to the level of life satisfaction of someone whose annual income was $13,000 more a year.”

This is the dividend that’s called intangible.  Happiness.

Of course it’s hard to measure, of course it is squishy and self-reported, but if we’re ever going to get anywhere we have to have the comfort and confidence to say out loud that things like human dignity, pride, and yes happiness are the whole point, the only point really, and that everything we’re doing is aimed at loose proxies to those results – what could be more real or concrete than that?

Just think how much we’ve punted on this issue, if we’re really honest with ourselves.  We’ve come to a point where we’re saying with a straight face that if we put a lot of money into the impact investing sector and that money realizes a healthy level of financial return then we’ve had success.  That puts us about seven degrees removed from actually understanding if anyone is better off, happier, freer, more proud or connected or more able to realize their potential, if someone is more likely to realize justice if they’re wronged or less likely to fall back into poverty if they get sick.

As a sector we have to have the courage to say out loud that happiness is not an “intangible” dividend, it’s not a silver lining in a program that otherwise failed to raise people’s incomes.

Would that we lived in a world in which the NY Times headline could have been: “large-scale government program a huge success, making 4,600 families happier, healthier, even without increasing incomes.”

It feels like looking at the sun, saying out loud that the whole point is happiness or pride or dignity.  It’s so much easier and safer to look away.

I am the decisive element

~ Sasha ~ 3 Comments

My wife reminded me of this powerful quote from Goethe, via Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project blog.  It’s worth returning to daily.

I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides…

Happy Friday.