St. Frances de Sales, the patron saint of journalists and writers, once said, “Half an hour’s meditation each day is essential, except when you are busy. Then a full hour is needed.”

I’ve been thinking about statement almost obsessively over the past five days for two reasons: One, I read this article on the “radical idea” of people taking 24 hours of absolute solitude and, two, I got hurt exercising and have been confined against my will as my injury heals.

While every person’s road to happiness is different, there are some things that research shows increase happiness in general, and one of them is a little bit of silence. Not every day, necessarily, and not necessarily for a long time, but some silence sometime. Some of us – the ones already prone to overthinking everything – might actually be harmed by too much solitude, too much “think time.” These folks might be better aimed toward happiness by actively helping other people.

The most amazing group of teenagers I've ever worked with, at the end of our week of gutting two homes destroyed by Katrina so they could be reconstructed on the inside

I’m a middle-of-the-roader here: I need both active engagement and time alone, and I’ve found that as I’ve gotten older, the need for the latter has increased greatly, something I could never have imagined when I was 20. The times I’ve felt happiest (except for the births of each of my kids) have been when I’ve actually DONE something to help someone out, like when I helped gut houses in New Orleans with a bunch of teenagers after Hurricane Katrina.

I need evidence of my work, to see that I’ve done something concrete to make the world a better place, in order to get the hit of happiness that keeps me going in this life. Writing a check to a charity just doesn’t do it, nor does sitting on a board of a charity that does good work I never touch. I’m a hands-on, get-it-done girl who doesn’t like to be told “No,” or “Let’s have a meeting” or “Perhaps we should pray about it.”

Exhausted after a days work gutting houses, sleeping on the floor of a parish rectory that still, a year after Katrina, had no hot water and sporadic electricity

That said, I’ve found that if I don’t have some reflection time – about 60 minutes/week – my hamster-wheel brain jumps from one idea to another with not a whole lot of direction. I need silence, pure and uninterrupted, to prioritize where my energy would best be spent in this world of need.

I think for most folks, distracted by texting, tweeting, Web surfing, IMing, Face Book and every other technological do-dad, a little silence could go a long way toward offering some perspective and peace.

And most importantly, that silence would give us time to think, as opposed to having our brains be constantly revved up by outside stimuli. Great ideas don’t just jump into one’s mind fully formed, all the nits worked out. Creativity – be it in the science lab or the art studio – is fed by the ability to daydream. And daydreaming can’t happen when one’s mind (or a section of one’s mind) is distracted by NOISE.

One of the many New Orleans homes devastated by Hurricane Katrina. This was one of the first things we saw coming into the city.

So, all you happiness seekers out there, some questions for today: Have you ever sought out absolute solitude (no outside stimulation at all, including books) as a means toward peacefulness, happiness or a more contented life? When was the last time you just laid on your back looking at clouds, or, at night, looking at the stars? How does silence – or the lack thereof – affected your overall well-being? Or, are you a person who needs action more than silence for happiness?

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…)

OK, truth-in-advertising time: I am not a naturally happy person. I wish I was (oh how I wish I was!), but I’m not. There are specific causes for this trend toward crisis/critical-mode thinking, but blaming one’s circumstances of early childhood is like spitting in the wind: you just get slobbered on, and nothing really changes. No, things change when you recognize a pattern and decide what you want to do – if anything – about it. That’s what happened to me at exactly 11:43 a.m. yesterday, when I decided that, in terms of this Happiness Project, I’ve got to start over.

As I’ve said before, I’m a Human Do-ing more than a Human Be-ing. This can be a good thing, of course: Few social and political movements have been started by people just “being” in the moment. No, they are started – and finished – by people DOING something. Rosa Parks, after all, didn’t just stand there – she took action and sat down.

But this human doing-ness can also cause problems, because we do-ers look at a new projects as One More Thing To Do, and can get further stressed, which does not increase one’s overall happiness quotient. When I first joined the international Happiness Project movement and agreed to launch a virtual group here at TC.com, I patterned everything after the founder of the movement (all hail the kind and brilliant Gretchen Rubin!), not knowing any other way to go. There was one major difference – most Happiness Project groups only meet once/month, whereas we’re meeting – such as we are in this virtual space – once/week. That in and of itself causes performance anxiety for Type-A, high-strung, performance-driven folks like me. Especially when you lay things out as ‘to do’ lists: Make resolutions, make commandments, make progress…..

I figured this out, as I said, yesterday, when I was looking at my commandments and realizing they are all wrong, especially the first: Be Renee. If I truly followed that commandment, I would just naturally be melancholy, introspective, cynical and anxious. If I’m those things, I can’t even get to my other five guiding commandments because melancholy, cynical folks DON’T accept imperfection (especially in ourselves); we AREN’T naturally kind; we DON’T let anger go; and we certainly don’t do real well in the ‘act-as-if’ arena.

“Be Renee” on its face, leads me to think things like, “Well, like Hemingway, I’m just naturally full of angst and woe, so just deal with it world!” Trust me, no one – least of all the really fun people – wants to be around a gray cloud. Heck, I don’t want to be around a gray cloud, which is why I got interested in the Happiness Project in the first place! (I still think exclamation marks make you happy almost instantaneously, btw.)

So, I’ve completely tossed my commandments list – especially the whole idea that I must have at least six guiding principles in my life – and I’ve begun anew with just two: 1. Find the good in the moment, and 2. Be kind.

Swimming up close with wildlfe definitely makes me happy/Credit: Robin Horton

I may be stretching it to even have two, but I’m going to give it a shot, nonetheless for this next week. I think if I can do #1, I will be able to naturally do #2. For people like me, who wake up petrified each day and go to bed with a hamster wheel of worry digging a trench in their brain, we have to take serious, concentrated ACTION to change our in-born pattern. Some people think it is a wasted effort, that it is impossible to change who you are, that everyone has a set-point for happiness and if you got a bad deal in the genetic roulette wheel of birth and parenting, too bad. You might be able to change little, but not much.

If I thought like that (which, in my deeply tired and sad moments I admit I sometimes do), I would have to go to my editor and say, “Stab me with your x-acto knife and beat me with a pica ruler because I just can’t take it anymore!” Since the mess that would make is highly unacceptable, I’m going to buy into this proposal instead, that small, baby steps in positive thinking – ones that won’t overwhelm my get-it-done persona – will make a difference. Every time my crazy hyperactive brain tries to pull me to the past or regret or push me to the future or worry, I’m going to gently toss those thoughts aside and look at flowers or pictures of people I love or the essay in front of me and breathe in the good. Like exercising, I will just practice, practice, practice, and eventually, I’ll build some natural happiness muscle. Finding the good in this exact space and being kind – will guide my life and then, I hope, the resolutions I pick to head me toward happiness and joy will come more easily.

What about you – did you discover anything this past week about what “works” for you as you test-drive happiness theories? Have you discovered you need to change or adapt what you originally planned? Let me know in the comments or through the ‘contact me’ link. (Postscript: Gretchen offers a tip each Wednesday at her site, and I think this “Secrets of Adulthood” is worth the read if you have some time.)