Sitting on the patio of The Cup Cafe this morning in a post-student-teaching reward-yourself moment, I overheard a few suits talking about a local version of Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity to be held Saturday at Tucson’s Historic Hotel Congress. (The schedule for the national event, held in D.C., was reported today by the Christian Science Monitor if you’re wanting to grab a ticket still.)

My “former journalist” ears perked up and tilted themselves in the general direction of the aforementioned gentlemen while I tried to focus on the data set I was producing from the surveys from my student teaching. This is old news for those of you who have not been buried the requirements (aka “hazing”) of student teaching, but it was thrilling news to me! Tucson Progressive or Blog for Arizona both announced the local Rally to Restore Sanity a couple of weeks ago, as I discovered in looking for good links for this post, but in case you DON’T read those blogs, here are the basics for this Saturday’s local rally:

Oct. 30, 9 to noon, 311 E Congress St., big-screen TV with a live feed of the D.C. rally, food, drinks and a costume contest. (It is a famous allegedly haunted hotel and the day before Halloween – of COURSE there will be costumes.) Additionally, according to the flyer at the Hotel’s welcome desk, there will be “surprise guests.” The manager wouldn’t say exactly who the surprise guests would be, although he mentioned Rodney Glassman, “other local politicians,” and hinted a national figure or two might swing by.

I’m so excited about this because there’s no way I can get to D.C.  Let’s give kudos to Club Congress for being Tucson’s local host for polite discourse about the upcoming elections. I’m going to ride my bike down there (exercise is my key to restoring sanity) so I’ll look like I’m in a costume without having to think up one. It should be a lot of fun and I hope Tucsonans of all political stripes show up to demonstrate that we can have civil conversation once more. Lord knows we need it this political season.

If you’re reading this and have no idea what the Rally to Restore Sanity (or the simultaneous March to Keep Fear Alive) is about, here’s a snippet from the Rally’s official website:

Ours is a rally for the people who’ve been too busy to go to rallies, who actually have lives and families and jobs (or are looking for jobs) — not so much the Silent Majority as the Busy Majority. If we had to sum up the political view of our participants in a single sentence… we couldn’t. That’s sort of the point.

Exactly.

The beginning of a happiness journey.

As promised, I’m going to blog my thoughts as I work my way through Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project. I’m only through the first chapter, but I’ve already discovered my major problem where it comes to being happy: I am not really sure what makes me happy.

I know what brings me pleasure, and I can even point to moments of contentment, and the rush of uncovering something no other reporter knows and bringing it to light is freaking AMAZING … but are those things really happiness? I’ve passed on the wisdom before regarding the difference between happiness and pleasure (at least where moral issues are concerned), and if you ask 10 different people to define “happiness” you’d get 10 different answers, methinks. Hence the need for individual happiness projects; what rings my bells, may not ring yours. Yet, like folks who’ve said they know obscenity when they see it, Rubin says (and I agree) that we probably each know happiness when we see it. Problem is, at least for moi, I don’t pay close enough attention.

So, that’s the first step: Setting aside some time to think about what really TRULY makes me happy. And that thinking can make you a little crazy, Rubin writes. From the book:

“…as I thought about happiness, I kept running up against paradoxes. I wanted to change myself but accept myself. I wanted to take myself less seriously – and also more seriously. I wanted to use my time well, but I also wanted to wander, to play, to read at whim. … I was always on the edge of agitation; I wanted to let go of envy and anxiety about the future, yet keep my energy and ambition.”

“The laws of happiness are as fixed as the laws of chemistry,” Rubin writes, but even if one isn’t making up the laws from scratch, one needs to wrestle with those laws in light of one’s particular circumstance to develop a happiness plan and then figure out steps to implement that plan in one’s life. Use the research – i.e. one of the most important elements to happiness is social bonds – and find a way to apply that to your life. Then, baby stepping it, add something else that is particular to your happiness and figure out a plan to get more of that in your life.

For instance, I now know that work is key to my happiness; life after the closure of the Citizen has taught me that. But since I’ve not found fulltime employment, I’ve found that if I treat my training as “work” it increases my happiness as if it were a job. Not perfect, but in the right direction.

One of the best parts of Rubin’s first chapter was her list of Secrets to Adulthood. (Some of the secrets in the book are not included in the online link above and so I mention them here: Bring a sweater; do good, feel good; and people actually prefer that you buy wedding gifts from their registry.) Another great insight was her discovery that one goal of her happiness project was “to prepare for adversity – to develop the self-discipline and the mental habits to deal with a bad thing when it happened.” She didn’t want to wait for a crisis to remake her life. I think that’s great advice, although, for me, being unemployed has turned out to be more of a crisis than I imagined, so I’m going to start where I am.

If you’re wondering just how happy you might be, you can take the Authentic Happiness Inventory Questionnaire (you have to register online to take it), but keep in mind Rubin’s words: you don’t have to be unhappy to start a happiness project. You just have to want to make a change. And for me, for this week or so, I’m going to just focus on writing down the times I feel happy (and unhappy) and see if I can come up with a list of what makes me happy so I can move onto the next section of the book where resolutions are developed out of those happiness goals.

Hiking in Pima Canyon over Thanksgiving with family and friends

POSTSCRIPT: I just got back from riding seven miles on the Rillito River bike trail, something I’ve wanted to do ever since we moved to Tucson 10 years ago. I went with my rock-n-roll son, and at one point I heard myself say, “This is great, I’m so happy!” Upon reflection, I realized I am always happy when I’m enjoying outside exercise, if I’m with family or friends. So, that’s top of the aforementioned “What makes me happy” list: Exercising outside with family or friends.

The How of Happiness book cover

Hello Everyone! I hope you all are thrilled to be alive this gorgeous Wednesday. How is everyone doing on their quest for increasing their daily happiness quotient? Anyone? Anyone?

OK, I’ll start. As you may recall, my adjusted Happiness Project goals are focusing on the good in the moment and being kind. I’d love to report that I’m kicking tail with these goals, but truth be told, I keep forgetting. I realize, for instance, after I leave the grocery store, that the checker was really nice and I wasn’t friendly back.

I’m not mean, mind you, I’ve just allowed the buildup of stress from three months of unemployment and job rejections to take up way too much space in my brain. The good news is that I have NOTICED that I’m forgetting, thus making me more conscious of the fact that I need to pay attention to kindness and focusing on good stuff. That noticing is all part of intentional living, which brings me to the subject of this post.

I’ve been busy delving into “The How of Happiness” (not to be confused with the Tao of Happiness),  and I’ve come to an epiphany: Increasing your happiness takes work. Likewise, if you ain’t willing to do the work, you might as well just stop whining about not being happy. The epiphany really wasn’t that hard, since it was written right there on page 24:

“Consider how much time and commitment many people devote to physical exercise, whether it’s going to the gym, jogging, kickboxing, or yoga. My research reveals that if you deire greater happiness, you need to go about it in a similar way. In other words, becoming lastingly happier demands making some permanent changes that require effort and commitment every day of your life.”

Those wise words come from the book’s author, Sonja Lyubomirsky, a research psychologist and University of California-Riverside professor of psychology. She did her graduate work at Stanford and has continued studying the science of happiness for 18 years. The book’s claims are all based in science – double-blind studies and all that rot – which makes it unique among many tomes in the self-help pop-psychology area of your local bookstore. (more…)