Happiness 2.0: The Zero Stress System

So often I talk to people who are devastated by any sense that they have failed. There seems to be this programming of people by society that they have to be perfect.

The central theme of the Happiness 2.0 report was about the need to be right rather than happy. And part of that is that when people perceive failure in themselves, whether it’s a failed result, a failed judgement or a failed theory, they beat themselves up for not being perfect. No one gets it right all the time and you really wouldn’t want to be perfect. Perfection means the games over. Imperfection means you get to try again.

So here’s a video to bookmark and return to when you fail.

This post about practising happiness is the second point raised in Brian’s questions. The question of how to apply what you know.

I talked a while back about the 10,000 hour principle. The idea that to become a true expert at something takes 10,000 hours of practice. That’s true in every area of life.

Professional athletes work every day for years to condition themselves and their mental co-ordination so that on a set occasion they can bring out the very best performance.

Musicians and artists spend years honing their skills and getting in the right emotional state to perform at their highest levels.

Image By http://www.flickr.com/photos/babasteve/

Becoming skilled at life takes just the same practice.

We walk into situations with our attention scattered in ten different ways, with our hormones pulsing around us and then beat ourselves up for not being perfect.

If you want perfection, then you have to do what Olympians do in their discipline, go spend 15 years away from the world training your brain, set up some situation, prepare for it by making everything just right and then walk into the situation.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hi-tekznologik/

Even then they’ll always be another level, just as every athletics record is broken eventually.

The more you practice and the more you prepare, the better you will respond. But it takes time to change habits.

Say someone of 40 years old has been responding with a certain belief, from habit. Then when you give the idea serious thought you realise that actually the belief is false. So intellectually you believe one thing, habitually though you act a different way.

I read something recently that our capacity to hold things in our heads is either lower than previously thought or is shrinking. It used to be that people could remember 7 items (+/- 2). New research suggests it might only be 4. The point is we are easily distracted from an idea by the events in our life.

Intellectual knowledge is only of any value while you are giving it attention. That’s why so many books and seminars have no effect. Because you go off and do something else and you go back to your old habits, because that’s how your brain is wired up.

So you have to consciously change directions. Again and again, until the new idea becomes more habitual than the last.

The brain works from one neuron firing to another. Imagine someone in an adventure film, being chased at full speed on rooftops and jumping from one to another. They don’t stop and wonder which is the best roof to jump on. Any roof will do, preferably the next available one.

Now when you think as you normally do, your brain will follow the path it usually takes because that’s the way it’s wired up. When we moved home a couple of years ago, I missed a couple of turn-offs because I wasn’t paying attention and I just drove the way I’d got used to driving.

So while you might intellectually be capable of being more evolved, when you’re caught up ina situation, before you know it, you’ve trod down the Ego’s path and you feel bad (jumped the same rooftops).

So to make a different chain of thoughts, a new neural pathway, you have to be able to change directions, and jump to a different rooftop. To interrupt the sequence of thoughts before they take you where they usually do

That’s why I asked everyone to put down their thoughts on the survey before and after reading the report. Because the more involved you become, the more it stains your neurology. You have to catch yourself quicker and quicker, so that it becomes an effort for your brain to think the way it used to. Then you have a new habit.

Do this a few times and that will become the default way of thinking on this topic.

There’s an idea called the Triune Brain Theory developed by Paul MacLean. His theory is that the earliest animals had a reptilian brain, then as species evolved others needed a Limbic brain, to moderate emotional responses and eventually a Neo-cortex that could handle language and abstract thought.

It is more complex than we need to go into, but if for our purposes we simplify it, it can help us to understand why we seem weak willed or fail to live up to our principles.

If your life seems to be, under threat, the Reptilian brain will send you into fight or flight and override your more evolved thought. But you don’t have to be in mortal peril. The threat of embarassment or loss will have much the same effect.

If you really, really want that sumptious chocolate cake, but know your hips say no, the emotions can make you feel you have no willpower. Really it is just your emotions overiding your logic.

So how do you prevent this happening. You have to so much want peace, happiness and growth more than that which the Ego promises that, it stains through to the core of your brain. That you hold the idea of wanting to be happier over being right, in the forefront of your mind in any circumstances.

People generally want this intellectually. But emotionally they are more tempted by the Ego. That is why allowing is so important.

When someone continually chooses the Ego over their more evolved thought and no-one interferes between their choices and the consequences, they get to link the Ego to pain. But what often happens, is that some well meaning person interferes. So any resulting pain, either gets prevented or, the person has the Interferer to blame for any negative consequences.

So you have to learn from pain. Or you can learn from other’s pain or you can review situations from your past in the light of Ego choices and the consequences. Eventually this will have a sufficient impact that you’ll link the Ego’s choices with pain and more evolved choices with pleasure.

Thanks to those people who took the time to comment after reading the Happiness 2.0 Report. Brian asked some questions that I think we all struggle with from time to time. I’m going to address the first one here and follow on with the second.

If I let go, is that the same as letting bad things happen?

Sometimes people ask this in the sense of I should be more active in helping people? Should I do more? Here’s my answer to that part of Brian’s question;

In the sense that I’m understanding your view of allowing, it’s looking at a situation, seeing something you believe is wrong and letting it go.

To want to control, or be responsible for, what anyone else does, even to judge another, is an attempt of the Ego to want to be in control. It’s the Ego saying

‘I’m right. I know more, am more important than this person and so I can put this right’.

The next step is, ‘Actually I should put this right. It’s my duty to’.

And then start the Crusades and wars. Or sometimes the charities that intend good things, but end up making people feel less independent and less able.

It is to believe in the illusion of perception, more than the invincibility, eternalness and indestructability of life. It is to value the transitory nature of material things, more than the true nature of life, which is freedom. It is to worry more about the stain on the bedroom wall than the development of the child.

To allow is a sign of trusting the intelligence of the universe. It is to know that I’m a part of this stream of life, no more or less worthy than any other part and we can all find our way through it, make our mistakes, see them play out and grow from the process.

To interfere, is to impose your view on the world. It is an attempt by the Ego to say. ‘No. I’m in charge here. This world must conform to my idea of right and wrong. Anything other than that is a threat to my wellbeing’.

When my Daughters were born, there used to be an advertising campaign for a washing powder that made an impact on my wife and I. The ads showed a child making a complete mess of her clothes. And when the Dad was nearly blowing his top, the Mum would say ‘Learning’ in a tone that reminded him that the dirt and mess was a small price to pay for their child to learn and grow.

What are we, but the children of life. To interfere, therefore is to attempt to become the Father. Which is another way of saying the Ego is trying to usurp God’s role.

The first step in life is to accept where you are. You look at your life or at the situation you are in and accept it is, what it is. This is the baseline. Everything from there is progress.

What the Ego wants to do, is to say. ‘No. No. That’s not how it should be. Put this here and that there. Then it will be right’.

But you can’t change everything around and so you run into brick walls and make everything a fight, a battle of wills.

To let go and allow is the greatest action we can take. It is to acknowledge your indestructability and eternalness and to trust in life.

However, having said that our vision and purpose in life will come mostly from fixing wrongs. It’s the wrongs that give us work to do.

Should we walk past a woman being raped or a child being beaten because we don’t want to impose our views on others?

In such a circumstance, I think there’s two elements. I’m going to use a personal example to relay them. The area where I most struggle with this idea is as a Parent.

On the one hand I don’t want to be controlling my kids, but on the other I have to, at some level, parent them. The way I look at it, there’s two elements to parenting.

First, there’s nurturing. There’s helping them to step up a level in growth. Letting them do tasks, so that they become more independent. Talking with them to help them think more expansively and at a more evolved level.

Then there’s damage limitation.

I don’t want them hit by a car, so I pull them back from the road. I don’t want them hurt by playing with a knife so I take it off them. If they have a tantrum in the supermarket I want to minimise the embarrassment and disruption. All this is damage control.

The more, I nurture my Daughter’s (and they accept) the better they will react to a given situation and so the less need for damage control.

Damage control won’t shape the child or mature them. They are in a frame of mind that’s so closed off that they just aren’t open to growth. So any action you take is really about limiting the damage or embrassment to you.

So in the same way, when you come across someone behaving in a way that you feel is wrong. You can let it go and wait for the situation to play itself out. Or you can step in to limit the damage.

Some people have the ability to do both at the same time.

For example, Jesus, when they were about to stone the Adultress. He didn’t jump in and tell them how wrong they were. He was able to evolve the crowd’s thinking, because he never made them his enemy, he just displayed a higher level of thinking to them.

Socrates was the master at this. His method of Socratic Questioning is an incredible way to evolve people’s thinking. I think it works because the intention behind it and the posture it takes, doesn’t conflict with the other person. There’s no level of accusation or judgment. He would just let the other person’s ideas play out until it became apparent that they were flawed. When people feel understood and given the opportunity to fully explore their idea, it enables them to see it more dimensionally.

False ideas are like fires. When you allow a fire to burn, it dies out if it lacks substance. When you meet fire with fire, you feed it and so prolong it. Once an idea is proven false then the other needs a better idea to replace it and so they upgrade their thinking. Much as when our cupboards are empty we need to shop for more food.

When you instead jump in to fix a situation, it becomes Ego vs Ego. And so people get closed off to opportunities to grow and relate. Instead they bash heads for the sake of being right. And that just makes for a soul destroying destructive experience.

I just realised I’d said to leave your comments below the link to the Happiness Report, but there wasn’t a place to leave them. So I’m setting this up for any questions or comments.

In case you haven’t yet read it, here’s the Happiness Report.

While I was doing this, I thought of another idea that I think could help you. Let me put it into context first.

I’ve always read a lot. When I was a kid I used to read a book a night. I started with Bobby Brewster (a kids story), then the Famous Five, then the Secret Seven. When I’d read all the children’s section, I started reading Footballer’s biographies. By the time I was 11 I’d burned through them and I started reading Peter Drucker and other Business books. Up until about 4 or 5 years ago I’d always read a lot.

Now though, I don’t actually read that much. But whenever I do read, I always have a pen and paper by me. Because after a couple of pages, I’ll start getting ideas of new concept and ideas. Just a little stimulation will spark off my own thoughts.

So I thought we could collect the insights you and everyone else got while reading the report. Then if there are enough, I’ll publish the responses. It could be very interesting.

Reading can be a passive activity and bring you little reward. Or it can be active and with a little more effort bring you a much greater return. Reading is just entertainment. But when you get involved, it then has the power to change your life.

You might think the report sucked. You might think I got everything wrong. It doesn’t matter whether you liked it or agreed with it. What matters is what insights it triggered in you. In the right frame of mind anything can trigger insights.

To get in that frame of mind then, write down your biggest insights, realizations and new perspectives you got while reading the report. Here’s a form I made to capture your thoughts;

Do it now while it’s fresh in your mind and it will be like sowing seeds for your future happiness.

Just so we’re clear. Questions or comments go below. Insights go in the form at;

All week I’ve been working furiously to finish the Happiness 2.0 report. The trouble is that I’m a terrible editor. I start to read through it to make sure it makes sense and I just keep finding more to add to it. So late last night I said enough is enough and I’ve banned myself from adding in anything new to it.

I just need to leave it a couple of days to detach a little from it so I can read through it again and check it makes some sense. I’m hoping it will be ready for you for Monday. But in the meantime I have an idea for a mini project that I think will benefit you greatly.

I’ve given a lot of thought to this report. Not just the writing of it, but the way to deliver it, so it has most impact on you. You see, I think I know what’s going to happen to a lot of people who read it;

• Some will read it quickly while they are checking their email, having a conversation and eating their lunch. They’ll miss most of the subtle insights and never look back at it because they’ve read it.
• Others will read it, find something they disagree with and disregard the rest of it because of that one piece.
• And some others will read it nod along and do nothing with it.

I know that for a few these insights will change their way of thinking and so their lives. And so I want to do as much as I can to make a bigger impact on you. And the biggest part of how this impacts you doesn’t come from my writing, but from how involved you are in actively reading it.

So, I have come up with a way that you can get your brain ready to make best use of this report. And I think it could be a really interesting project for us to do for a lot of reasons. I’ve set up a short, anonymous survey asking you a few questions to get you thinking.

The idea is that this will set your views on the subject and then when you get the report you’ll already have an opinion and so you’ll be more discerning.

Plus then I’ll publish the aggregated results. It’s an anonymous survey and so I won’t see your individual answers, just the total figures. Then we’ll have some information to work on more practical steps to really make it sink in. I think this could be very valuable to us and so I hope you get involved today or over the weekend.

You’ll find the form here;

http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pneWRKNL9dICXMsJ9MRa_VA&email=true

Sometimes I’ve been asked ‘what my biggest regret is’. I used to think I didn’t regret. I’m not the sort of person to look back. Perhaps there is a mild feeling of regret that particularly in my past business, that I allowed myself to be talked out of strategies that instinctively I knew were right, but were revolutionary. Time proved my instincts were correct. But that doesn’t really bother me.

Recently I have become aware of a regret. It’s a deep regret. But not one from the past. It’s a regret that lives with me daily and I’m aware of more and more. It’s this;

My deep regret is what I used to call the Knowing-Doing gap. By this, I mean the gap between what I know and what I actually live up to. But after a tough day, when the universe seems to be thwarting everything I do, when nothing gets done because it’s taken hours to work out some computer bug, with my mind somewhere else, the kids fighting and demanding attention, the dog blocking my way at every step and my wife having the cheek to do things her way, when I know my way is better…

I don’t always act in the most loving, understandable and enlightened being. Actually my Daughter would state that a little more harshly… and frequently does.

I am in awe of people like Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tsu and so on seem to have lived what they know without being tainted by the gap between mind and actuality. I don’t believe they were born any different to us. I believe that through the course of their life they achieved their specialness.

And I’m going to make an educated guess and say that you are pretty much the same as me. That you intellectually know something, but fear or greed or something more primal makes you act differently. This knowledge/Doing gap is where your greatest potential to change your life lies.

How do you close that gap?

By living with integrity. Integrity is the action of choosing the highest and best choice in every situation. Start doing that and you’ll move out of the neighborhood of fear and greed and into the more enlightened territories. With which comes a lighter, happier more fulfilling life.

You have to decide to commit to a higher standard of behavior.

Decide = To settle conclusively all contention or uncertainty about

Decide comes from the latin word deicidere, which means to cut off from. Meaning there’s no going back.

The classic example is Capitan Hernando Cortes, who in 1519 faced his men after landing on an island they were invading, showed them their boats were on fire and told them they either won the fight or perished on the island.

You see most of us don’t commit at that level. We sit on the fence and hedge our bets.

Your happiness depends on your integrity. Your integrity demands that you cut out any possibility of going back to what your level of knowing has evolved past.

For instance, I’ve written some posts with some fairly strong statements. I meant them and would not go back on them. But when a number of people have commented on them and emailed me privately, I have found that, not only is there no going back, but your discernment becomes ever finer. So you have to live an evermore refined level of integrity.

And at home, my wife and kids make me live up to certain standards. If I’m in a bad mood, one day, they’ll remind me that I write about happiness to thousands of readers and ask how I can honestly do this and still be grouchy.

So how can you burn your boats?

You could make stronger statements to friends and family and allow them to remind you when you don’t live them.

You could put in writing a personal code of behaviour and put it where it’s publicly viewable.

Or you could…

Remember if you have a message to share with the world, don’t let anyone, or anything, hold you back from sharing it.  Sing your song regardless.

Aren’t we all seeking wisdom?

Isn’t that what living is about?

For some wisdom means efficiency or effectiveness. For another it could be more rewarding relationships. And to another still, it may be the meaning of life.

In every age there is the noise of passing fads. The booms and busts. That which is hot and then quickly, ’so last year’. Wisdom is that which is true in any time in any context.

Never fashionable, but also never outdated. It builds on what has gone before block by block. Once the wheel was invented, it doesn’t have to be discovered again with every generation. Wisdom becomes about better ways to use the wheel. So there are layers upon layers of wisdom underpinning our efforts at the cutting edge.

Often though people are so caught up with the excitement of the newest and latest that they overlook the less trendy foundations. I’m amazed that so many people avidly read modern self-help books, yet have never read some of the greatest Classics.

Truth and wisdom, with regard to living with integrity, are timeless. There have always been a few people who got it. Lao Tsu, Buddha, Socrates, Confucius, Sun Tzu and many more like them. To attempt to find truth and wisdom is to join their path. Their work has stood the test of time. When the dust has settled, much of the bestseller’s of today will be long forgotten.

Your time and attention are precious. Invest them as prudently and wisely as you would your nest egg and you will find the answers you seek.

To get you started, if you haven’t read Plato’s Allegory of The Cave, click the link for a taste of wisdom.

Why not share the books that have been most powerful for you, new or old, in developing your wisdom and understanding in the comments below so that others can investigate them.

Is the love of money, truly the root of all evil?

It’s a cliche for men to complain that their wives don’t understand them, but it is also true of writers, philosophers and pretty much everyone. I can recall reading about Karl Marx distancing himself from Marxism because they had misunderstood him. I think it’s true that every great idea and philosophy has been misinterpreted to some degree. That’s why we have 33,820 different denominations of Christianity, many types of Buddhism, Islam and every other major philosophy.

Here’s a clip of my favourite comedian, Ricky Gervais, tackling this exact issue.

I also remember reading a humourous part of Richard Bandler’s book about Neuro Linguistic Programming.

Bandler was sitting on a plane and got talking to the passenger next to him. He asked where he was travelling to and it turned out he was flying to attend the course Bandler was delivering. Without disclosing his identity, he questioned him to see how well his ideas and philosophies were understood. The Student was not a beginner, he was well versed in the subject, but he had completely misunderstood the nature of NLP.

He believed it was about techniques and strategies to get certain outcomes. When really Bandler had intended and saw it as a framework for a deeper understanding of the way that people’s brains work.

Many times we think we understand someone, but we really don’t. That’s why I wanted to write this post. You see I, and people like me, spend a lot of time focused on impressing on people that money won’t lead to happiness. That’s only because the natural default thinking of the world is that happiness is a simple equation.

It isn’t.  Money has little effect on happiness.

However, the stark truth about me and money is that;

I LOVE MONEY

• I would love to have cupboards filled with cash.
• I’d like the postman to deliver sacks more every day.
• And I’d like to sleep on a bed with the mattress filled with cash.

There I’ve said it. It’s out in the open now.

Seriously though, the most common problem, challenge or conflict people have in their live relates to money. Let’s be honest we all want it, don’t we?

Whether it’s to feel secure, to have more time, to avoid certain tasks, whatever we want money to help us do it.

Oh sometimes we’ll struggle without it and say ‘I didn’t really want it anyway’ as a justification.

The fact is, is that money is a part of our experience. And the secret to living happily is to live without hate or conflict. You have to love every part of life, the good or the bad. Whenever you try to cut a whole chunk out of your life, you diminish your integrity. It is actually the least ’spiritual’ thing you can do.

Love all, does not just relate to people. It relates to every idea, symbol, object and so on that you come across.

To say I don’t like money or whatever else, is in effect the same dynamic as a white person having had bad experience with black people saying ‘I don’t like Blacks’. Or vice versa.

Let’s do our bit for political correctness and stop the moneyism that is endemic in our society.

The path to happiness, nirvana, Godliness, or whatever you want to call it, is through wholeness. Life is holographic. The whole is encapsulated in each aspect. So once you reject one element of it, you reject it all.

We must work to understand what money means at a deeper level, so that we use it as the tool it is supposed to be rather than as our Master.

Money is an idea. An idea that represents;

units of appreciation

Over time people have gone to war, martyred themselves and so on for the right to vote. Yet every time you spend money, you are voting more specifically and more powerfully than you will ever be capable of politically. Products, ideas, and businesses live or die by your economic votes. The landscape of our society is shaped by your, minute by minute, economic decisions.

Of course it is not a perfect tool. Sometimes you will pay out lots to someone who promised far more than they delivered. And sometimes we pay money in anger, from fear and with heavy hearts. But this is a reflection more of our confused operating systems and relationships than of the idea of money itself.

A great drill won’t make perfect holes with a hopeless DIYer. A great car won’t drive safely with a hopeless driver.

Money is magnificent. It means that anyone, in western society at least, can work at a minimum wage rate for one hour and feed themselves. Much more efficient than hunting for a day to hopefully eat.

But the real reason why we have such a powerful entwinement with money is that we crave appreciation and validation. Money is the default way that we can measure this appreciation. Sure it’s nice that the Boss congratulates us, but when the lazy bugger down the corridor gets a bigger payrise, we feel unappreciated.

The problem with money is that it reflects our true nature. We can lie ourselves into believing what we say, but where we spend our money shows our true thoughts.

We might prefer Open Office (an open source version of MS Office), but donate little or nothing. Yet when we need Microsoft software we pay hundreds because we need it. It is for this reason that Machievelli wrote that, politically, it is better to be feared than loved. Because fear guarantees compliance. Appreciation is too infrequent, too weak and too fickle to be trusted or effective.

It is not the love of money that is at the root of all evil, it is the lack of integrity. It is the fear of not having money, of not being worthy of money that causes people to compromise.

And underlying that…

coming to this blog soon

 I’ve been in this field for a fairly long time now.  And so I’ve seen a lot of people and how they got on over time.  Recently I noticed a distinct difference between two groups. 

The first were people of strong integrity and character.  By this I mean that they strove to find solutions that fitted with their conscience and were in line with who they saw themselves and how they wanted to conduct themselves.

The second group were looking for quick results.  These are the people that want get rich quick schemes.  That want subliminal cds to make life easier.  In other words they have no solid footing.  No grounding to work from.  It’s just opportunistic.  They hop from one whim to the next.  These are the people that make self-help books bestsellers, because they buy into every big promise.

My observation is that the first group, the people of strong integrity may have difficulties.  But these are only temporary patches.  The people in the second group will have temporary high notes, but will always return to a struggle.

Because they are skipping all over the place they never place down deep roots and so they never build any momentum towards anything.  In business they have no competitive advantage, because they’re just following the crowd. 

And in life they struggle because they have no central theme.  No criteria to decide on beyond the promised result.   

Integrity is having every area that you consider being consistent with your ideal of yourself.  So the way you are at work, in your relationships and alone is all an expression of you in different contexts.

Someone from the second group of people behaves in their work in the way that they believe will bring them most reward.  Then in one relationship they behave in the way that will get them the result they want.  In another relationship they behave differently.  So in every context they act not from integrity, but from what they believe will bring them the greatest reward. 

They don’t beat to the drum of their conscience.  Instead they try to bend their conscience to the beat of what they think will bring a result they want.

It’s a recipe to drive yourself crazy.  I know.  Every failure in my life as I look back, has been where I allowed myself to be talked out of following my instincts for a more conventional appraoch. 

You have to trust yourself, but it’s beyond that.  You have to be you, regardless of the consequences..