Do it with intent

I get distracted easily. If a website takes a few seconds too long to load, I have already opened Facebook or Twitter on another tab. And the next fifteen minutes have disappeared into the endless news feed slot machine, before I realise I was supposed to be doing something else. (1)

I am also a pathological procrastinator. I get stuck in a loop where I first check email, then Slack, then calendar, then Evernote, and round it goes to email again. Evernote houses the things I should be doing, but to actually get started with them requires concentration. And if I could concentrate, I would not have been sucked into the loop in the first place.

Luckily I have found the closest thing to a solution so far. It struck me a few months ago as I was taking a walk outside. The key is to have intent, a purpose for the action. Stopping yourself in the middle of whatever you are doing and asking: “What is your intent?”

I am not saying you should stop using Facebook, and I certainly spend my fair share of time on Twitter. But whenever you use those services, ask yourself that question. Is there a purpose for checking them at the moment, or are you just escaping from whatever it is you should be doing? Are you resisting something?

This question can also be used outside work context. Have you ever seen someone channel-surf with intent? Probably not. It’s another kind of loop. You feel like you should be doing something else, but are lacking the energy or interest for it, so the loop draws you in. But if that is the case, then why not intentionally do something relaxing and enjoyable, instead of just procrastinating and feeling the worse for it?

Go outside. Play some games. Watch your favourite show.

We are not machines. Our energy level and mental capacity fluctuates. Trying to act like a machine does no good.

Footnotes:

1) You should really read this article: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds – from a Magician and Google’s Design Ethicist. It’s superb.

Positive psychology and public policy

In recent days there has been talk in Finland about whether or not the unemployed should be forced to take a 1.5 hour commute if that's what it takes to get a job. I find this to be a fantastic example of short-sightedness. It's hard to believe that those kinds of jobs would pay that well, which means that if this policy is adopted the resulting increase in GDP will be minuscule at best.

The article above highlights how much it would cost for a person to adopt that kind of commute; between 138-673 € a month in public transportation, depending on where you live. Assuming, of course, that public transportation is a viable option, which quite often might not be the case in such a vast and sparsely populated country. In the worst case you might end up with less money by having to carry the financial burdens of the long commute, than by staying at home and living on welfare.

And what about the secondary effects of long commutes? For example, there is ample evidence of the negative impact of a long commute when it comes to overall life satisfaction and well-being. We are not talking simply about the potential detrimental health effects of sitting in a car or train for 2-3 hours a day, but also the impact it has on psychological well-being. Assuming an 8-hour workday, 8 hours to get adequate sleep, and 3 hours a day spent commuting, it leaves 5 hours of time for oneself. 1-2 hours are easily spent in the morning routines and another hour for nighttime routines. That leaves 2-3 hours a day for hobbies, cooking, buying groceries, cleaning, spending time with the family etc., so is it a wonder that married couples in which one partner has a longer than 45 minute commute are 40% more likely to divorce?

Now imagine a family that also has small children. I seriously doubt that people who would be affected by this policy can afford a nanny, or a stay-at-home parent. So the end result would be a great number of children growing up mostly without their parents. Will a small increase in GDP be enough to cover the long term costs such a policy might create? There is enough talk about the alienation of the Finnish youth as it is, and this would simply create a new structure contributing to the problem.

So what has positive psychology to do with any of this?

In English the Scandinavian countries are called welfare states, but in the Finnish language we use the word hyvinvointi, which actually does not translate as welfare, but as well-being. The difference is profound. The idea of a welfare state is to provide basic necessities and opportunities for everyone, but a well-being state would ideally go deeper than that. Its guiding principle would be to increase the well-being of all the citizens of the nation.

Yet it seems to me that the way public policy is made in Finland is missing this point. The above example of long commutes is just one of many. It baffles me that despite there being extensive amounts of high-quality scientific research on human happiness and flourishing, it seems to be completely ignored by those responsible for creating policy.

Around 300 BC the Greek philosopher Epicurus proposed three items that form the basic conditions for a happy life: friendship, freedom, and thought. His argument was that if we have money without friends, freedom and an analysed life, we will never be truly happy. And if we have them, even though we are financially poor, we will never be truly unhappy. (1)

The importance of social relationships shows time and again in modern scientific studies. It has become a cliche that money does not buy happiness, and it seems that even in the case of extremely poor individuals having good relationships with friends, family, and romantic partners predicts greater life satisfaction. The capacity of money to bring happiness is present already in small salaries, and it will not rise with the largest. Having more money does not, of course, in itself make us less happy or satisfied with our lives, but neither does it increase our potential to a happier life. (1, 2)

Other factors that have been found important for overall life satisfaction and well-being are also not far off from Epicurean thinking. For example; working for one's  goals, having frequent positive experiences, experiencing mental pleasures, and being involved in "flow" activities. (3)

We have the knowledge to create better and more meaningful lives in large scale. We know what the building blocks are. It is simply a matter of asking "what kind of impact will this have on happiness and well-being of people" when making policy - not just focusing on financial metrics - and letting the principle of maximising the potential for happiness for as many citizens as possible to guide the decision-making. This is not important simply because it would lead towards a better society, but it would also help capitalise on the benefits to productivity, health, and creativity that happiness can bring. For example, reducing or eliminating VAT* and making it affordable to eat out in restaurants would likely increase happiness, as eating out is a social activity and would lead not just to more people eating out, but also to more frequent social interactions with their friends. (4)

*This, by the way, is another thing I do not understand: Why is there a value-added tax on food? Does that mean there is some added value in simply being able to survive? That the basic condition of a human being is death, or non-existence?

References:

(1) De Botton, Alain (2000). The Consolations of Philosophy. London: Penguin Books.

(2) Diener, M. L., & McGavran, M. B. D. (2008). What Makes People Happy?In: Eid, M., & Larsen R. J. (Eds.) The Science of Subjective Well-Being, Guilford Press, Ch. 17.

(3) Diener, Ed (2000). Subjective Well-Being: The Science of Happiness and a Proposal for a National Index. American Psychologist, Vol. 55, No. 1, 34-43.

(4) Achor, Shawn (2011). The Happiness Advantage. [Kindle Edition] Virgin Digital.

Happiness Now: Are successful people happier, or happy people more successful?

Money cannot buy happiness, says the old adage. Indeed, a study after another indicates that beyond a certain level of income, money stops being a predictor for happiness and overall well-being. What this means in practice is that money is something similar to a hygiene factor. After your basic monetary needs are met, the added value from having more money starts to diminish. Rapidly.

My fiancee feeding the deer in Nara, Japan. Guaranteed to make anyone happy.

Similar conclusions can be drawn from Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Money can be used to satisfy the physiological and safety needs, but the further up you go on the pyramid, the less benefit you get from having money. And if you think money will buy you, for example, the admiration of others, you clearly haven't been to Finland where most likely all you're going to get is envy and belittlement.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The basic premise of the hierarchy is that you need to first satisfy the lower level needs before moving up the pyramid.

You could argue that having a lot of money means you are successful in life, and being successful should at least make you confident. In a sense this holds true, but confidence is context-specific (1). Meaning that you might be highly confident, for example, as a salesman at work, but still utterly insecure about how you should go about raising your children or how to talk to the opposite sex. Money does not buy parenting skills.

There is a widespread myth in the western world that goes like this: If I'm successful then I'll be happy. The problem with this approach is that "every time your brain has a success, you just change the goalpost of what success looks like. You got good grades, now you have to get better grades, you got a good job, now you have to get a better job, you hit your sales target, we're going to change your sales target. And if happiness is on the opposite side of success, your brain never gets there. What we've done is we've pushed happiness over the cognitive horizon as a society." (2)

The obvious takeaway at this point is that if you want to pursue happiness, you need to focus on things, activities and people who actually make you happy. However, there's more to this, and after this quite long introduction we are starting to get to the real point: what if happiness is actually a cause of success?

There starts to be plenty of scientific literature supporting the notion that happy individuals are successful in multiple life domains, including work, marriage, friendship, income, performance, health, income level etc., but are they happy because they are successful in those domains, or are they successful because they are happy?

First of all, there is some evidence that positive emotions make us push our cognitive boundaries. In the absence of fear, stress, or anxiety it is easier and safer to go toward and beyond the limits of our comfort zones. For example, interest creates the urge to explore, joy creates the urge to play - to experiment new things - and confidence gives courage to undertake more difficult challenges. The result of these experiences is personal growth. An increase in your cognitive, emotional and physical resources. (3)

When engaged in play, one may be doing something physical, building motor skills, or maybe something creative that strengthens the ability to see multiple solutions to problems. Interest will expand one's general and specific knowledge. These resources are not fleeting, but build on top of each other and therefore continue expanding the self. However, if you are constantly stressed or anxious the last thing you probably want to do is try new things. To venture further outside your comfort zone.

Because happy people, by definition, experience frequent positive moods, they have a greater likelihood of working actively toward new goals while experiencing those moods. They are also in possession of past skills and resources, which have been built over time during previous pleasant moods. (4)

The important question still remains whether or not happiness actually precedes success, or have the happy individuals encountered first a period of successes which has then launched this upward spiral of happiness and the resulting expansion of personal resources?

Sonja Lyubomirsky of the University of California and her colleagues set out to analyze 225 different studies in order to find out which comes first: happiness or success. The longitudinal evidence supporting the notion that happiness indeed is a cause of success includes findings such as happy people getting consistently better evaluations at work from their supervisors and being more likely to increase their income over time, among others.

More experimental evidence where subjects have been primed to feel happy show that happiness makes them more sociable, better at collaborating with others, more helpful towards others, and perform better at complex tasks that require decision-making, attention, or are complex by nature. Happiness also increases confidence, perseverance in difficult tasks, and helps to restore willpower after being depleted by temptation. For a comprehensive review of the evidence I recommend reading the whole study. (4)

For me at least this is a game-changer. We as a society have been operating under the wrong paradigm. Instead of focusing on and worrying about success, achievement and competition, we should be thinking about how to increase the number of times we feel positive moods in our daily lives. Success and achievement seem to follow naturally.

However, does this mean then that those of us who are naturally more disposed to negative emotions are lost causes? That we are doomed for eternity to be in the shadow of the happy people? Fortunately not. If you read my previous article you should know that there are fairly simple methods to boosting happiness and inducing positive moods in the short term. For example, just watching this video will have a positive impact on your mood. Not a bad way to spend a minute, considering the benefits.

There is also long-term evidence that interventions such as writing down three good things one is grateful for every day and why those things have happened, have provided lasting increases in happiness (5). So has meditation, using one's character strengths in new ways, and displays of gratitude toward others.

References:

(1) Bandura, Albert (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, Vol. 84, No. 2, 191-215.

(2) Achor, Shawn (2011). The happy secret to better work. TEDxBloomington, [video online]. Available at: http://www.ted.com/talks/shawn_achor_the_happy_secret_to_better_work.html [Accessed 22 October 2012].

(3) Fredrickson, B. L. (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. American Psychologist, Vol. 56, No. 3, 218-226.

(4) Lyubomirsky, S., King, L., & Diener, E. (2005). The benefits of frequent positive affect: Does happiness lead to success? Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 131, No. 6, 803– 855.

(5) Seligman, M.E.P., Steen, T. A., Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2005). Positive Psychology Progress: Empirical Validation of Interventions. American Psychologist, Vol. 60, No. 5, 410– 421.

Managing stress... and sucking at it!

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
- Matthew 6:34

I am not a religious person. In fact I've been jokingly telling my friends that if I had a religion it would have to be Dudeism, and even that only so I would be able to marry couples. I think that would be cool.

Luckily you don't have to be religious to find wisdom in religious texts, and I think the quote above is a very important one to keep in mind. I am a worrier by nature. If I have many things that need to be done, they start to accumulate in my head and I find it more and more difficult to focus on actually doing them. I become stressful and I feel like I'm not getting anything done, even though in reality I am probably working harder than ever to meet my obligations.

I am good at dealing with stress. Or so it used to say in my CV. I actually thought it was true, but my current situation of working most of the week, dealing with university courses, and trying to keep my other commitments such as writing this blog have proved otherwise. I suck at dealing with stress. Having one or two big things to do is perfectly fine, but when the small ones start to accumulate on top of those, I am in trouble. I find it genuinely difficult to put them in order and deal with them without letting them gain power over me.

The problem is not so much that I wouldn't be able to deliver what I've committed to, but the process of doing it drains all the juice out of me and I end up feeling miserable until most of the things are out of the way.

People who know me tend to see me as someone who is very focused and constantly getting a lot of things done, but that's not the way I see myself. My attention is not on what I did, but what is still left to be done and that is a problem. Instead of stopping to celebrate the things I've accomplished I'm already striving towards the next thing on my list.

I could use some help here, and that's the main reason I'm writing this. I'm not a big fan of productivity systems that are complex and difficult to maintain, but I think I could use something to organize my thoughts and help me visually arrange the things I need to do. I have a tendency of committing myself into doing things even though I know I'm already busy with other stuff, so something that would help me see my current commitments and evaluate how much time it takes to do them would be perfect. If you have any ideas on this, I'd love hear them!

Now, I don't want this post to be all about bitching and whining, so here are couple things I've actually found very useful to make an active and busy life a lot more tolerable:

1. Write stuff down, even the small tasks.

If you try to keep everything in your head, these things will be popping up into your thoughts constantly to remind you that they need your attention. This will destroy focus, increase stress, and is just plain annoying.

2. Have an off-day once a week.

Doing this has worked great for me! Even with many things going on, forcing yourself to have one day a week when being productive and getting things done is banned from your vocabulary is a great stress relief. It might take a while to learn to do it as you need to consciously refuse to let your work and other commitments get inside your head. In long-term, though, this is very useful as it ensures that you have more focus and energy for the other six days.

3. Take care of eating, sleeping, and exercise.

Stress releases cortisol, which is a hormone that acts like insulin; driving glucose from blood into your cells to be used for energy or stored as fat. This is all fine and a natural survival mechanism as long as the cause of stress is short, but if you are experiencing chronic long-term stress you're in trouble. Sleep is important for stress release, and proper diet and exercise will improve your insulin sensitivity. These factors help you to maintain blood sugars at an optimum level, which brings numerous health benefits both physically and mentally.

I pretty much despise companies that track working hours of their employees and pay salary according to them. Counting time instead of actual results is a ghost of the industrial era and mass production. If the role of the employee is even a little more than that of an organic robot, time starts to lose its meaning.

If you're feeling stressed, low on energy, and lack focus, it might easily take 2-3 times longer to do a task than if you were super focused and completely immersed in it. Letting yourself take a day off and taking care of your health will help you reach that level of focus for the rest of the week. Even though you lose the hours of the off-day, you will end up getting more done in all the other days. And you are likely to feel better too.

On another note, I wrote an article for Lateral Action - one of my favorite blogs - about using your naturally occurring bodily rhythms to boost focus, energy levels, and consequently productivity. If the topic is of any interest to you, it's definitely worth checking out!

Why I don't follow news: Case H1N1

It's been about 6 months since I decided to stop watching news on TV, reading newspapers (except when stealing a glimpse of a headline at the grocery), and following most news sites on the Internet. Back in my high school days I took special pride in reading the morning paper and keeping track on world affairs. But for what purpose? Other than it making me feel smug and superior to those who weren't doing it, I'm not sure I have a good answer.

Photo by just.Luc (just.Censored)

Unless you've been living in a shed, you know as well as any man on the street that the past decade has affected tremendously the availability and amount of information. Even before the Internet, TV and newspapers took care that when something noteworthy happened in the world, it didn't take long for you to get a report. Then came the Internet and the quantity of available information just exploded.

Considering how long we've had TV, or even newspapers, do you think that the human species has had sufficient time to adjust to handle that kind of amount of information? I don't have an answer to this, but I can let you know how deliberately ignoring news has affected my life; I've become happier, and I have more time and energy to focus on things that really matter to me.

I think that the biggest problem with following news is, that considering the time invested in doing it, it doesn't really give you anything in return - except maybe something you can gossip about with your girlfriends. Really. Think about it. If you read about a plane crash, oil spill, or how some economist thinks that the downturn is predicted to end when the swallows migrate back, how is that information really going to affect your actions? What can you do about it? Or how will knowing that piece of news improve your quality of life?

Herbert Simon, who was the pioneer in Attention Economics, argues that the overload of information results in a decrease in human attention:

"...in an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it"

I have heard similar concepts elsewhere as well; that we have a limited amount of energy, willpower, or attention to use each day, and wasting that on useless pieces of information will decrease the amount available to really focus and put our hearts into things that matter, things that can have a positive impact on our quality of life.

Being able to focus is a gift. It's a unique ability we humans have that allows us to concentrate on specific things for long periods of time. If asked, productivity gurus and trainers would tell you to figure out what's important in your life, or what are the most important tasks you need to do, and then focus on one task at a time, while eliminating all the distractions that might make your attention to wander. They would probably also tell you to start working on those tasks first thing in the morning, for the simple reason that if you wait until the evening you have already filled your head with so much useless stuff that there's no willpower left to focus on anything.

I can hear you already arguing, that how can I then know what's going on, especially if it's something important like a nuclear meltdown or the death of Michael Jackson? I use my supreme powers of Internet wizardry to circumvent this problem, which pretty much comes down to two things: I'm on Twitter and Facebook. With those two tools alone I can very well see what people are talking about. It works like an automatic news filter. Only the really important news, something that people feel strongly about, or will actually affect their lives, are the ones that will get discussed and thus brought also to my attention. You wouldn't believe how well this actually works in practice. It's almost like having a personal staff, telling you only the things you might actually have to react to in some way, or have a strong interest in.

So, if I don't follow news I must be pretty ignorant then? Not quite. I would rather say that I'm selectively ignorant. Like I said, following the so-called world news doesn't really add much value to my life. I see it as time wasted and as a distraction. So instead, I put that time into reading books and blogs focusing on topics that I care deeply about. There are also a few science news sites that I check occasionally if I have time to procrastinate, as well as sites such as Digg, Mixx, and StumbleUpon, but even with these customizable and crowdsourced sites I find the real added-value very fleeting for my purposes. 

Finland and H1N1

A good case example about how not following news pays off was the H1N1 hysteria here in Finland. I started hearing about it first from my mom, then looked into it a bit on international health sites to discover that there was not really any reason to get worried about it - less chance of getting an H1N1 infection than the seasonal flu, and even in the worst cases it seemed easily treatable with modern medicine. At the same time, however, news outlets in Finland were using fear mongering tactics; pandemic, estimates of H1N1 death toll, how especially pregnant women were at risk etc. Now consider if that was your only source of information, like it was for many people, how would it have made you feel? Scared? Panicked?

Then Finland bought 5.3 million doses of Pandemrix vaccine from GlaxoSmithKline, as recommended by The National Institute for Health and Welfare. Hallelujah! And the scare tactics had worked, too. People were actually fighting to get vaccinated. The Institute continued its campaign of fear with the help of news outlets - as most of their information came from the Institute. Latest at this point, however, some people started to become skeptical: Finland has a population of about 5 million. Was it really expected that everyone would get vaccinated? Then the best part was discovered: The National Institute for Health and Welfare had received 6 million euros from GlaxoSmithKline for 'research', and the Institute did not ask for competing offers or from any other pharmaceutics companies, but went straight for GSK's Pandemrix vaccine. If this doesn't smell fishy, then I don't know what does.

Only when the complications and side-effects of the vaccine started to become too numerous to ignore, the voice of the mainstream media started to change somewhat. Yet during the whole ordeal, a non-profit citizen activist website had published H1N1 related information from numerous sources, national and international, and as a result got even accused by The National Institute for Health and Welfare for spreading misinformation. So no matter what was happening in the rest of the world, the Finnish people are apparently expected to have blind trust.

I do not want to keep beating this death horse any further, and I definitely want to avoid all the conspiracy theories surrounding World Health Organization, the corruption in Finnish national healthcare, or how BigPharma is pushing its own agenda in the Finnish parliamentary politics etc. What I want to say, however, is that in light of these events no matter what your source is, you can't be certain that the information you get is correct. It might also be wise to consider what motivation your source might have, or who is actually funding it. Can you trust them to offer a neutral, objective view on the topic?

Despite this 'trust no one' tone of voice, I want to believe that there is a better chance at finding more accurate and objective information from specialist sites such as The New England Journal of Medicine or Mercola.com, compared to the Finnish mainstream media that seems to get its information from the aforementioned biased and possibly corrupted sources.

In the end, if I had followed the news surrounding H1N1 in Finland, I'm almost certain I would have felt a lot more anxious and worried about how the situation would play itself out. At the same time there wasn't really much I could personally have done about it, yet it would have robbed me of some of my attention, willpower, or energy - whatever you want to call it - and hindered my ability to put my mind into more important things. That to me is worth much more than finding out who won the Big Brother this year or who is our prime minister dating this time.

3 simple things for happier life

I have been very hesitant about publishing this blog post. I started writing it couple weeks ago, only to stop after getting my main points down because I felt that this will put me in the same "faceless" group of hundreds or thousands of personal development bloggers out there. Not that there's anything wrong with writing about personal development, but I felt that I needed to approach these things from my own quirky semi-scientific point of view that I've been building.

What finally made me finish this article was, that the things I discuss here have had a positive impact on my own life. And by sharing this there is always a chance to influence others and help them achieve positive results as well. 

It's all in your head

This is a big one. By simply realizing and accepting that emotions exist entirely within you, can have a life-changing effect. Let me repeat that; what you feel is entirely a creation of your own mind. Whatever happens in your life outside your own body and mind is not the source of your feelings. If you can't grasp this, then read it again until you can. Or watch the Habits of Happiness talk by Matthieu Ricard who explains the concept in more detail.

So what if you crash your car? Surely there will be all kinds of feelings of anger, anxiety and regret stemming from that accident. But can you show me which aspects of a car crash cause the negative feelings? Can you show me, that when a car crash occurs these specific feelings get created, and start to inhabit the bodies of those involved? I doubt you can, because those feelings are entirely subjective experiences of the people involved, and they are entirely their own creation. Simply put; the car crash itself does not create those feelings.

A feeling is simply a creation of your brain as it reacts to external or internal events, such as car crashes or remembering the first time you held your first-born baby in your arms. This is important. You might even want to write it down. Whatever events take place, they are not directly making you feel anything. You feel something because your mind makes you feel it.

The reason I rant about this is, that realizing it has been a hugely liberating experience. It explains why money and new toys don't bring lasting happiness; far too many people try to change internal processes by focusing on external conditions. It also gives you a degree of control over what you feel. When you know that your feeling exists only within you, independent of external events, your whole perception of that feeling changes. You may start to wonder why your mind is making you feel something, what could be causing the feeling, and what is the feeling trying to tell you? This will help you tremendously to understand yourself better.

My own understanding and control of feelings was put to a test earlier this year, when purely out of my own fault I was caught speeding, received a huge fine, and lost my driver's licence for over two months. I had learned and accepted, that the external event of being stopped by the police was not responsible for what I feel, but that I am creating those feelings inside my own mind. The feelings I have are my responsibility. Even though this whole ordeal was a huge setback for me in multiple ways, I managed to stay positive during and after the whole event.

Now imagine how much easier it is to make yourself feel positive about small annoyances that you might let bother you, such as cleaning the bathroom or washing dishes. 

Talk to yourself

This is something we all do every single day. We look ourselves in the mirror after waking up and say "Dude, you're awesome! Another great day ahead!" Or at least that's what I do :) And that is one of the reasons I'm feeling good. We have this internal dialogue going on and on all the time, and it has a huge effect on how we feel.

Have you ever paid attention to how you are talking to yourself? We have a tendency to be extremely cruel to ourselves! The way most people talk inside their heads is so negative that they would never in their right mind use that kind of language when talking to other people. This internal dialogue actually has an effect on your subconscious mind, making you feel the way you talk.

To improve this, first start paying attention to these internal dialogues and the kind of language you use. Then start shaping the dialogue consciously. How would you like to feel? I'm sure everyone wants to be happy, confident and enthusiastic most of the time. Since you will feel good or bad based on how you talk to yourself, be mindful of the words you use and make a conscious effort to have only positive self-talk going in your head. Or as Tim from Real Social Dynamics puts is; talk to yourself like you're the pimp of the world.

You can even write down or memorize a commercial for yourself, as in the below example:

Tom Staley meet Tom Staley - an important, a really important person. Tom, you're big thinker, so think big. Think Big about Everything. You've got plenty of ability to do a first-class job so do a first-class job.
Tom, you believe in Happiness, Progress and Prosperity. So: talk only Happiness, talk only Progress, talk only Prosperity.
You have lots of drive, Tom, lots of drive. So put that drive to work. Nothing can stop you Tom, nothing.
Tom, you're enthusiastic. Let your enthusiasm show through.
You look good, Tom, and you feel good. Stay that way.
Tom Staley, you were a great fellow yesterday and you're going to be an even greater fellow today. Now go to it, Tom. Go forward.
- From The Magic of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz

How do you think the above person feels about himself, compared to someone whose internal dialogue consists of complaining how her dress looks too big on her, the shoes are wrong color, and that she should have done a much better job on that presentation for the marketing class? 

Language patterns

It is not only how we talk to ourselves, but how we talk to others that shapes our reality. If you tell someone that you're feeling a bit down, do you think that telling it will make you feel better? You're just simply giving yourself a permission to be stuck in that miserable feeling. On the other hand, even if you're feeling moody but you respond to someones "How are you?" that you feel awesome, you're actually taking a step towards feeling that way!

This is another example of how the subconscious mind is affected by the words we use. When you say - with proper tonality and enthusiasm, even if you're faking it - that you feel great, your mind starts to create that feeling. So if you want to feel more happy and content in your life, use words and phrases that carry a positive meaning.

One noteworthy thing to mention here is, that apparently our subconscious minds cannot make a difference between positive and negative phrases. So if you keep repeating in your head that "Don't feel bad, don't feel bad" your subconscious is actually registering "Feel bad, feel bad". Try to find alternative ways to say what you want without the use of negations.

I was telling a friend of mine that I have simply no talent at singing, and she actually scolded me for saying that. Our thoughts and the language we use shape our reality, so by saying that I have no talent at singing I'm actually creating a reality where I have an excuse, and I don't even need to consider ever becoming good at it. Instead, I should have said that I have a challenge in singing. Challenges can be overcome, and they can also be sources of strength.

My advice is; be mindful of the words and phrases you use, and think what kind of effect they might have on your subconscious mind. After all, you are the one creating those positive and negative feelings. No one else. So take responsibility.

A cynic might call me delusional for thinking in ways that I described, using these kinds of "tricks" and "techniques" to feel positive and happy, but guess which one of us is enjoying life more and having better time on this planet? :)

Other sides of ownership

I don't know about you, but I believe that people live their lives in pursuit of happiness. Whether or not they consciously realize this doesn't matter. I believe that whatever choice or action a person does, the underlying reason for that particular action relate to the assumption, that by acting the person will feel a little bit happier afterwards. In a bad situation this could also mean, that people will act based on what they believe will cause the least amount of unhappiness or discomfort.

I think that this pursuit of happiness is very much evident in our buying decisions. Why would you buy e.g. a particular car, a pair of jeans, a hi-fi system or a pet unless you expect your quality of life to take a turn to the positive with that purchase?

You may reason, that you need a car to get to work, but you still need to choose which car you want and here the "happiness factor" comes into play. Same goes for buying clothes; I've lost quite a bit of weight during the year, so most of my jeans are too big for me now, but the main reason I got a new pair was that I enjoy looking good. Pure and simple. I can still use the ones that are a bit oversized for me - and obviously I need to wear pants or I'd freeze - but the main factor for choosing this particular pair was the positive feeling I get when I know I look good wearing them. Happiness, again.

But what is happiness, really? I had never paid much attention to this before, but watching the brilliant TED talk Matthieu Ricard on the habits of happiness struck a chord in me. One part of the talk in particular, where he says that people are focusing their attention on the outside, the outer conditions, and concentrate on the things they feel they want or need to obtain in order to be happy. Or when something goes wrong people respond by trying to fix the outside. However, according to him our control of the outside is limited, temporary and often illusory. On the other hand, when focusing on the inside, isn't it the mind that translates the outer condition into happiness or suffering?

The impact of those words has echoed in my head since I first heard them. I felt enlightened. I felt that I found the map that will guide me to enjoy life more, and to be content with what I have. Simply by realizing, that no matter what the outer conditions are the feelings of happiness or anxiety are all in my head, I gained control over those emotions. If something annoying happens, let's say I drop a glass and break it, I get a rush of negative feelings, but now I am able to recognize them for what they are and in a way turn them off. I choose not to have those feelings take over me.

Strangely, this worked even when I was stopped on my motorcycle for speeding a few months ago, and lost my driver's licence as well as one months salary in fines. I chose not to let it get to me and whenever I started thinking "what if I had taken a different road?" or "why did I go so fast, stupid!" I stopped that line of thought immediately. Having those thoughts would not have changed the situation one bit, but they would have made me feel a lot more miserable about it.

So what does this have to do with owning stuff? First of all, when you realize that your mind translates ownership into happiness, you will start to evaluate every single purchase decision from a different point of view. You will also realize, that since happiness is all in your head, buying more stuff is not necessary in order to become happy. Furthermore, whatever you own will lose its appeal over time, sooner or later. This seems to apply also in extreme situations. According to Dan Gilbert, even lottery winners were not able to gain any long-term sustainable happiness although they were able to buy pretty much anything they wanted.

There is also the rarely considered darker side to owning things. This may not apply so much in clothes and other minor possessions, but I certainly felt it when I bought my first motorcycle a bit over a year ago. It was the single biggest purchase I had ever made, and I also needed to take a loan in order to be able to buy it. Now suddenly this vehicle that was meant to give me freedom was starting to take a huge space in my thoughts. I started to worry about crashing it, the increasing gas prices, high insurance costs, regular maintenance costs, where to put it for winter and so on. I did enjoy riding it, hugely, but I never anticipated to have all these other emotions. My dream came with unexpected mental baggage, and when I sold my bike couple months ago I felt relieved to lose that baggage.

In Fight Club, Brad Pitt's character hits straight to the point when he says that "The things you own end up owning you." I know that I will be worrying again in a year about where to store my furniture and other things if I'm going to leave Finland for a student exchange. At that time I will probably curse all the unnecessary stuff that I have accumulated. The less you possess the more you have freedom.

"Desire can't be satisfied by fulfilling. It grows more and more and there is no end of desires. If a person becomes a king of a country he desires other countries. But the one who doesn't want to possess any thing possesses everything. The desires can be given up by understanding desires."
-Sri Baba Hari Dass, 1973 (from the book Less Is More)