Happiness starts with...

My son has been at summer programs in Chicago for the past three weeks. When I take him, I usually spend most of my time working in the atrium of the Field Museum because it inspires me so much and always takes me back to my childhood memories of visiting the Natural History Museum in London.

Going there also forces me to stop and actually stop long enough to look around at ‘the world’. And I see plenty that troubles me: never-ending busyness; obesity and weight gain (now the norm not the exception); congested traffic; alarming climate change; public figures saying and doing anything for attention; the tolerance of greedy world powers who want to take more natural resources from smaller countries, rare species becoming increasingly extinct because we level their habitats for spurious reasons, spectator lives consumed by watching other people live their lives – there’s plenty to be disturbed by.?

These realities are typically ignored in personal and professional growth literature. This is wise in that global trends generally feel out of our circle of influence. I can however think of ONE mention the topic gets in one of the bestselling business books of all time by Marshall Goldsmith. He notes that much of the belief one needs to be successful is a:?

“Wacky delusional belief in our godlike omniscience (that) instills us with confidence, however unearned it may be. It blinds us to the risks and challenges in our work. If we had a complete grip on reality, seeing every situation for exactly what it is, we wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning. After all, the most realistic people in our society are the chronically depressed.”

Ouch. So, when you do pause and reflect about what’s going on in the world and it starts to depress you and you do not know where to start, go back to the beginning and the longest study ever done on lifestyles, habits, relationships, work, and happiness about what makes a good life – first started in 1938 at Harvard Medical School:?relationship satisfaction is the key to health and longevity.?

The long-time study director, George Valliant, described the most important element:?“Happiness is love. Full stop. The other is finding a way of coping with life that does not push love away.”?And where does this start????

Here’s an excerpt from my latest book:?The 5 Habits to Mine Your Gold:

Loving yourself is the start. Then you can love others and be loved.?

The first thing to?know?is this: You are lovable.?It’s really?remembering?that you are loveable – as you were as a new-born baby. We are more than a body, a self-image, and a story. A Benedictine nun called Macrina Wiederkehr created this prayer: “O God, help me to believe the truth about myself no matter how beautiful it is!”

The first thing to?do?is this: Decide to be a truly loving presence in your life and everyone else’s.?This helps you know love (not try to ‘find’ it) because love is your true nature. It’s already inside you.

The challenge with being an achiever type is it can be unhealthy if you’re always trying to prove something because deep down you don’t feel good enough. In his book?Loveability, Robert Holden warns:?“You keep trying to change yourself into something better, but nothing really changes because you haven’t stopped telling yourself: ‘I am not loveable’.”

?To rekindle these fires, Holden suggests that you journal with these sentence starters:

If I really loved myself, I would…

One way I could love myself more is…

He notes that feeling some resistance to these statements is common and “is an expression of the basic fear ‘I am not loveable.’ This fear deserves your compassion. It is a call for love.”

This fear is not the real you though:?A Course in Miracles states:?“The ego does not love you. It is unaware of who you are.”

Shortly into the Pandemic, my son started getting angry with the world. A year ago, he was diagnosed with ADHD and as being on the autism spectrum and since then he takes it very personally when other kids call him ‘weird’. One week I started telling my (then) 8-year-old son he was lovable. I put my hand on his heart. It wasn’t long before he was telling me he was lovable. I replied: “This is the most important thing for you to know in life. Many grown-ups don’t believe they are lovable, and it causes them a lot of problems.”

Meditation can be an act of loving yourself. “It helps me turn off the airwaves in my head – I spend too much time worrying and second guessing,” said Kristin, a lawyer in my?Choosing Love Over Fear?program. At first, I couldn’t quite connect how quieting worry related to being a more loving person, so I asked her what she meant. “Everything I need I already have,” she said, explaining that by turning down the volume on her ego voice jabbering away, she could pay attention to the love she already had inside her - her Unconditioned Self that was born as love.

“The quality of your relationship with yourself determines the quality of your relationship with everything else.”?Robert Holden points out that this applies to our food choices, exercise, relationship to money, emotional well-being, the pace you set for your life, the time you make for yourself, and how lovable you feel, spiritual wellbeing, relationship to God, your creativity and how happy you are. He adds:?“Your capacity to love yourself also influences how much you let yourself be loved by others.”

?Everything starts with knowing you are loveable. The better you feel about yourself, the better you treat others. This knock-on effect can only help you mine your gold.

?To loving yourself despite the insanity of global events!

Matt

Copyright Matt Anderson, 2023