World Happiness Summit
I was talking and listening to a fellow colleague and he had just come back from speaking at the world happiness summit! Howard Martin of the Institute of HeartMath of course!(he has been my teacher, trainer and now friend) Can you imagine being in a room with others who were committed to bringing and being “happier”? Some of the speakers were Lynn McTaggat world leader in consciousness, Tal Ben-Shahar, Harvard professor on Positive Psychology, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.
Can you imagine our country having more happiness? Or you?
There is a country called , Bhutan it is no ordinary place. It is the last great Himalayan kingdom, shrouded in mystery and magic, where a traditional Buddhist culture carefully embraces global developments. They don’t have a GDP like the rest of the world, which is about how much production of stuff you can create and sell. And how happy can I really be with acquiring more stuff? Oh yeah, I can then rent a storage barn to store all my goodies and perhaps never go there, then my relatives have to deal with all that stuff (yes I am laughing at this thought)They have a GNP , which is gross national happiness! They love it when tourists and even natives measure their lives by how happy they truly are!!!
So, what my friend found out were 3 things that actually made people more happy. Here is what he shared with me:
- Happiness is when I give more than I take.
- Manifest more heart qualities throughout the day.
- Have more self compassion.
So what does having more heart qualities mean to you?
What does having more self-compassion mean to you?
Over the past decade or so, more and more people have rejected the idea of happiness as something that is merely a by-product of our external circumstances, in favor of seeing happiness as something we can systematically develop within us.
I know I was one who would go “shop” for that rush of what I perceived as making me “happy” only for the realization a day later, or sometimes even an hour later having the rush go away. It was an external fix for something that I have now learned is an internal state. One that I could develop and train myself into.
The Dalai Lama invited me to ask the question: Does this make me happy? Now I can truly access my own heart’s intelligence to find that answer. To be truthful, most things as I shop for, the answer is a resounding NO.
What will you do this day to access your happiness? It can be learned, we truly can train ourselves out of the negativity bias our brains have! The most important use of intelligence and knowledge is to use this to engage in more wholesome actions, bring discipline to our minds and develop a good heart!
