Little Reminders of Happiness

Maybe I watched the movie Pollyanna too much when I was growing up. Or maybe it was too many musicals. Maybe I sing too much and maybe my blog is sometimes too 'lovey-dovey'. But I'm not going to apologize for it. If you read my blog, you are going to hopefully be encouraged, uplifted, and happier than you left. The way I see it, life is not perfect... there is suffering and there are things we don't understand - but I also believe that life is what you make of it and it is beautiful if you look at each moment as a miracle.

via A Whole Lotta Quotes

Happy Thursday!

A Whole Lotta Love,

Adrienne

A Warm Beverage and a Cookie Splash

Don't you just love a good, warm beverage in the winter? I'm always drinking something warm, whether it be my favorite apple blueberry or rooibos tea, hot apple cider, spiced chai, hot cocoa with marshmallows, or of course, my morning coffee (with a little eggnog or maple syrup at this time of year I might add). 

According to a Yale University study, clutching a steaming beverage can elicit a flood of positive feelings and possibly make you feel happier. This may be because people associate physical warmth with emotional warmth. Study subjects held cups of either hot or iced coffee; those gripping warm mugs were more appreciative of friendliness in others and also felt more generous and trusting themselves. 

And with my warm beverage, I also like to accompany it with a nice little cookie or biscotti. But have you ever spilled your coffee or accidentally dipped your cookie in too long and it fell apart? Happens to me all the time (I have very sensitive cookies that I brought home with me from Italy). Anyway, today, I am absolutely loving these awesome cookie splash photos by Siebe Warmoeskerken.

So if, in the future, you ever spill your coffee, don't think of it as ruining your day. Think of it as making a splash!

A Whole Lotta Love,

Adrienne

Happiness and the Friendship of Books

Last week I was at a bookstore and picked up a book titled, The Quest of Happiness by Newell Dwight Hillis. I opened the cover and saw that the bookstore owner had written a price of $Free. Enjoy! What a great thing to find that the quest of happiness is free! The title is from 1902, but there are still so many things that are relevant to today. If many people like this idea, I may decide to occasionally share some gems and insights or quotes from the book, as it is not under copyright. When I was at the bookstore, the first chapter I happened to open up to was entitled, "Happiness and the Friendship of Books". As I am a lover of books, I knew this free little book was meant to be mine. Here is a bit from that chapter. I hope you enjoy!

AMONG a man's most helpful friends let us make a large place for books. They are the tools of the mind. Their function is increase the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. In the very highest sense they are the true labor saving devices. What the loom does for the fingers what the engine does for the feet what the telescope does for the eye that and more books do for reason and for memory. They hasten man's intellectual steps they push back the intellectual horizon they increase the range of his vision they sow intellectual harvests otherwise impossible and reap treasures quite beyond the reach of the unaided reason. In the physical realm tools have created more wealth in the past half century than the world had accumulated in the previous eighteen centuries. And it is not too much to say that those intellectual tools named books have increased the sum of knowledge gathered in the past century to an even greater degree than the increase in physical treasure. Strip man of his tools and he becomes a savage. Take away his reaper and he be comes a hunter of game. Take away his looms and he stands forth clothed with a coat of skins. Take away his engine and his ship and he is an ignorant peasant. Take away his gunpowder and he becomes a serf owned by the baron. Nor is it otherwise in the realm of wisdom. Strip man of his books and his papers and he becomes a mere slave ignorant of his own resources ignorant of his own rights and opportunities. The difference between the free citizen of to day and the savage of yesterday is almost entirely a thing of books. 

Plato was indeed a scholar despite the fact that he had to gain his knowledge by observation conversation and listening to speakers as he asked and answered questions but the world has had only one Plato. The man who dislikes books can never be entirely happy and he who loves a good book can never be wholly miserable. If we would understand what those intellectual tools named books have really done for man we must imagine some youth entering this earthly scene and left to find out everything for himself. Let the youth be an Apollo in his health and beauty with a vigorous and hungry mind and with untiring ambition. Nevertheless he can do but very little without books. His eyes can see but to a little distance for that curtain named the horizon shuts down at a distance of only nine miles. 

Yet the earth is 25,000 miles around some 24,991 miles entirely out of the of his observation. Even when he begins observe and his knowledge goes beyond limit of the nine miles his threescore years and ten soon prove to be all too short. If he begins to study the crystals and the handwriting on the rocks he will find that the writing is in letters so fine and intricate that it has taken thousands of men living as long as he to search out the key of the mystery and to decipher the pages. While the knowledge of the stars would mean thousands of years of life for an astronomer to master all the facts for himself. Indeed one great mind must give itself to the study of the butterflies and another to the birds one to the rose one to the apple one to the grape one to intellect another to emotion and another to will and so of the innumerable objects for observation. Before the youth has even begun his task old age will be upon him. And even though personal observation and experience do enable the youth to map out but a small portion of the earth's surface conversation can do but little more. In the first place the youth will have time to see but a few people each day and there are hundreds of millions to be seen. Also perhaps his community will hold only a few really great men and they will be so busy that the youth will be fortunate if he can see them one or two evenings in the week. 

How infinitely rich our world. Man live he ever so long will have time to break off only one bough from an infinite orchard. Unaided he sits in his little hut and starves to death. Then come the great men of the world bringing their books for guidance and instruction In the Middle Ages there was one strong man in the community named the baron in his castle. Now this baron was strong because of helpers. That he might be free to think and study one servant brought him wood another went forth to sow and reap the wheat another brought in the wheat converted it into bread one cared for his horses another servant cared for his flocks and when a thousand men had toiled to fill the castle with instruments of use and beauty the baron's life became strong and happy. And so it is in the realm of knowledge. 

Every youth is a kind of intellectual prince who is waited upon by those noble servants named books and their authors. When the youth sits down by the winter's fire one writer says 'Here is the sum of my fifty years study of beetles and birds'. And another 'Here is the record of my travels in the arctics'. And another, 'Here is the story of fifty years in the tropic forests' And another 'Here is the full record of a lifetime of examination of the Pyramids with the Egyptian tombs and temples'. Only instead of this intellectual prince having a hundred friends and servants each one of whom has toiled a lifetime in his chosen department the youth finds himself surrounded by perhaps ten thousand friends and helpers. Little wonder that rapidly his knowledge is up. His mental riches grow by leaps and bounds. These intellectual tools change boy into a mental giant. His culture and character take on strange solidity and size. The coral reefs grow cell by cell. Each little deposit means the life of the being that has sacrificed itself. Character also is the sum of many littles and grows by accumulation. 

The books of great men enter into civilization and the very structure of society. Now for these reasons the history of human is largely the history of books. Indeed during those long dark centuries before printing press was discovered the world forward so slowly that we may say there no progress but only stagnation. The era began when the printing press came its stranger incitements. Just why the could not advance without the book a problem easy to be understood. Consider a book makes it possible for one generation to begin where another leaves off. Of necessity the father no matter what wisdom he had accumulated through travel and study dying left his knowledge behind him. No Herodotus travelling in foreign lands can return home to bequeath the results of his travel and studies to his infant child. Solomon ranges the world for wisdom. And yet this wisest of men in death knows that his little child must begin just where his father the great king began. ... And yet consider that until books came no matter how far into the forests the father blazed the pathway and marked out the points of danger when he fell in the forest his little babe at home grew up to begin just where his father began therefore there was no social advance. Little wonder that the pathway was strewn with wrecks. Little wonder that the son's craft struck the same rock that his father's craft had foundered on. The son standing beside the dying father was conscious of a deep longing to find out some way by which a father could gather up what accumulated knowledge he has concerning rocks and beasts and savage men and poisons and foods and place that knowledge in the hand of his child as a guide book to the pathway of life. Therefore it is impossible to overestimate the gains for the individual in the registration of experience in books. 

...From this view point the book represents the greatest intellectual possession which man has ever achieved. It is God's richest gift to His earthly children. The book as a tool for the intellect does not stand upon the same level as the tool for the hands and the feet. It is not a star shining amid the other stars; it is a sun eclipsing the other stars by very excess of light.

If you would like to read more from this book or to finish this wonderful chapter, you can do so here. I left off on page 256. Isn't it amazing as well that books like these have been made available to read for free right here on the internet, thus greatly increasing our access to knowledge? Obviously I am a proponent of the physical page and still love to feel the pages of the book in my hand, but when that is not available, this is the next best thing.

I love this...

Choosing Happiness...

Choice. We all want more of it, don't we? We think if we just have more choice than of course we will choose the thing that makes us happy. Right? Well... its not that easy. Oftentimes having more choices overwhelms us and so we end up making no choice, a bad choice, or having regrets about  a choice that we made even if it was a fine choice to make.

And why would we regret a choice we made even if its a good one. Well, its simple: We're all wanting optimal happiness and we feel badly (make ourselves feel UN-happy) if we somehow missed out on that happiness. Wait. What? Why do we do these things?

Why do we delay our current happiness for some future happiness? When asked, so many people say in life that they want to just be happy. Or oftentimes our goals are for some outside 'objective' thing or idea: money, power, love, prestige. Buy why do we often want these things ultimately? So we can be happy. So, why can't we just be happy?

If you have time (or can at least bookmark it for later), take a moment to listen to one or all of the following TED videos relating to choice, how we choose, and its impact on our happiness. I think you'll be happy you did :)

Dan Gilbert: Synthesizing Happiness

Barry Schwartz: The Paradox of Choice

Sheena Iyengar: The Art of Choice

Malcolm Gladwell: What we can learn from spaghetti sauce.

Dan Gilbert: Our Mistaken Expectations


Matthieu Ricard on the habits of happiness

Create Happiness

“Create all the happiness you are able to create; remove all the misery you are able to remove. Every day will allow you to add something to the pleasure or others, or diminish something of their pains. And for every grain of enjoyment you sow in the bosom of another, you shall find a harvest in your own bosom, while every sorrow which you pluck out from the thoughts and feelings of a fellow creature shall be replaced by beautiful peace and joy in the sanctuary of your soul.” - Jeremy Bentham

"Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom." - Marcel Proust

The Pursuit of Happiness

One of my favorite books is The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. Even if you haven't read anything by him, you may be familiar with his idea about 'following your bliss'.

By following your bliss, he is not referring to living a life of hedonism or doing whatever you want without regard to others, but he is speaking of doing whatever it is that is the 'thing' that really makes you feel fulfilled and alive. Our lives are so short and if we're not waking up in the morning with that excited expectation of doing something we really love, life can definitely be a struggle. Obviously, even when we are doing something we love or serving people we love, it can sometimes be difficult. No one ever said life would be easy, but I think that when we follow our bliss or what we feel is our 'purpose in life', then the struggles don't feel like struggles but more like opportunities to grow and learn.

Some other Campbell quotes I like are:

“The way to find out about happiness is to keep your mind on those moments when you feel most happy, when you are really happy — not excited, not just thrilled, but deeply happy. This requires a little bit of self-analysis. What is it that makes you happy? Stay with it, no matter what people tell you. This is what is called following your bliss.”

“The adventure of the hero is the adventure of being alive”

“Your life is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself.”

“The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.”

“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.”

I was thinking about this last quote (about how to 'let go' and 'accept' and the same time) when I decided to wander over again to The Happiness Project. One of Gretchen's articles was talking about embracing many of life's paradoxes.

She gives a quote by Vikram Chandra in his novel Sacred Games:
“Sartaj was thinking about how uncanny an animal this life was, that you had to seize it and let go of it at the same time, that you had to enjoy but also plan, live every minute and die every moment.”


She then goes on to list some more of life's paradoxes:

I want to Be Gretchen and accept myself, but I also want to perfect my nature (as this entire project demonstrates). I want to think about myself so I can forget myself. I want to work on my own happiness so I can make other people happier.

I want to lighten up and not take myself so seriously — but I also want to take myself more seriously.

I want to spend my time efficiently and not waste it, but I also want to wander, to play, to fail, to read at whim. I want to keep an empty shelf, and also keep a junk drawer.

I want to be free from envy and fear of the future, and live fully in the present moment -- but not to lose my ambition.

Control and mastery are key elements of happiness; so are novelty and challenge.

Everything matters, and nothing matters. As Samuel Butler wrote in his Notebooks, “Everything matters more than we think it does, and, at the same time, nothing matters so much as we think it does. The merest spark may set all Europe in a blaze, but though all Europe be set in a blaze twenty times over, the world will wag itself right again.”

So in this world of paradoxes, how does one pursue happiness? You don't. Like the elusive bluebird of happiness, its usually found when you stop looking for it.

Some Happiness quotes I like:

The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase: if you pursue happiness you'll never find it. ~C.P. Snow

If you want to be happy, be. ~Leo Tolstoy

Happiness is never stopping to think if you are. ~Palmer Sondreal

Most people would rather be certain they're miserable, than risk being happy. ~Robert Anthony

If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time. ~Edith Wharton

Nobody really cares if you're miserable, so you might as well be happy. ~Cynthia Nelms

Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness. ~Robertson Davies

Those who can laugh without cause have either found the true meaning of happiness or have gone stark raving mad. ~Norm Papernick

Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it. ~Fyodor Dostoevsky

What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner. ~Colette

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet. ~James Openheim

Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn't know you left open. ~John Barrymore

People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they're not on your road doesn't mean they've gotten lost. ~H. Jackson Browne

Often people attempt to live their lives backwards; they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want. ~Margaret Young

Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne

We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have. ~Frederick Keonig

Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product. ~Eleanor Roosevelt

Happiness is a direction, not a place. ~Sydney J. Harris

A great obstacle to happiness is to expect too much happiness. ~Bernard de Fontenelle

Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for. ~Joseph Addison

Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. ~Samuel Johnson

Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

Some pursue happiness, others create it. ~Author Unknown

If you ever find happiness by hunting for it, you will find it, as the old woman did her lost spectacles, safe on her own nose all the time. ~Josh Billings

Plenty of people miss their share of happiness, not because they never found it, but because they didn't stop to enjoy it. ~William Feather

Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response. ~Mildred Barthel

Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling. ~Margaret Lee Runbeck

Happiness is found where you are...

Rules to Live By

I wasn't actually feeling very loving last night. I'm not sure why. I stumbled upon the following 'rules to live by' though and thought I'd share them. We can all get in a funk sometimes, but I think its important when that happens to put things in perspective and remember that the only person that can make you happy or sad is you. So here's a little more love today...

12 Rules to Live By
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

-Make up your mind to be happy. Learn to find pleasure in simple things.
-Make the best of circumstances. No one has everything and everyone has something of sorrow.
-Don't take yourself too seriously.
-Don't let criticism worry you. You can't please everybody.
-Don't let your neighbors set your standards; be yourself.
-Do things you enjoy doing but stay out of debt.
-Don't borrow trouble. Imaginary things are harder to bear than actual ones.
-Since hate poisons the soul, do not cherish enmities and grudges. Avoid people who make you unhappy.
-Have many interests. If you can't travel, read about places.
-Don't hold post-mortems or spend time brooding over sorrows and mistakes.
-Do what you can for those less fortunate than yourself.
-Keep busy at something. A very busy person never has time to be unhappy.