I was watching a rerun of the old TV show Frasier. There is a scene where Niles (Frasier’s brother) asks Frasier, “are you happy?” and Frasier frowns and says “that is a complex question.” Niles says, “no it’s not, you either are or are NOT happy.” Frasier asks Niles the same question and Niles says “no, but we aren’t talking about me.” Comedy ensues…as they both look at the answer to this question. Frasier questions what happy means to him. If you ever saw the show, Frasier is divorced, lives with his father (whom he does not get along well with) and is struggling with not being able to see his son and on and on…lots of reasons (he muses) to NOT be happy. But as the show goes on, he looks at his WHOLE life, where he is ON BALANCE, not just those things that are UN-happy things, but also the happy things, the good things. He decides, even though his life is not perfect he is, on balance, happy.
What did I glean from this? That what makes us Happy isn’t one answer, or one moment…it’s more a choice…a choice to SEE what is GOOD in our lives…and NOT just what is BAD, or if not bad, then not where we’d like it to be. Frasier would like to be in a relationship, and he is not. So, does that mean he CANNOT be happy? Nope, just means that there is one area that he’d like to change…and that ONE area does NOT have to KEEP him from being HAPPY.
I think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves, that we put a lot of pressure on the word “happy” or the concept of happy, what it means and what it takes to BE happy. We make it, ONE spot…or maybe we only see if it we have NAILED IT (whatever it is). We only see HAPPY as being possible, if ALL our ducks are in that proverbial ROW, all lined up nice and neat and JUST how we want them. THEN we can say we are HAPPY.
Well folks…I’m here to tell you (what you already know) it is a RARE moment when those Ducks line up JUST RIGHT! AND even if we do get that nice perfect line, it usually ONLY lasts a moment! So, if we ONLY allow ourselves to be HAPPY when that happens…happiness will be this illusive moment that rarely becomes a reality. Or if it DOES, it is so temporary and fleeting that we are not in that space very often or for very long and we find ourselves CHASING that happy moment over and over. Then when someone says to us “are you happy” our answer is much more likely to be NO. Or “I was two months ago when x, y and z were all lined up!”
NOT IDEAL. NOT a great way to go about our lives…chasing the illusive “all my ducks in a row” happiness. Interspersed with, what? Being UN-happy? Waiting for HAPPY? Chasing those crazy ducks all over the place, trying HARD to line them up…and NOT letting ourselves BE happy until we get them JUST RIGHT?!
Doesn’t sound good to me! Lets flip this narrative, lets look at happy in a whole new way. Lets EXPAND what we see as “happy,” lets make it MORE likely that when we are asked the question: “are you happy” we can respond with YES! Ok, even if we have some qualifiers, that is better than NO, I’m not happy!
So, I am a realist, and know when we change a paradigm in our heads…we need to do it one step at a time. So, first:
How would YOU answer the question: “are you happy?”
Think about it. I’ll wait……………………………………………………………….
Was it a complex answer, with all sorts of qualifiers? Did you have to really really chew on it? Did you say YES (if so GO YOU!) Did you say NO, if so read on! Actually, I’d say read on regardless of how you responded, after all doesn’t hurt to find MORE happy 🙂
First, I want to respect and honor those HAPPY moments when the ducks DO line up. Those moments are indeed marvelous, few and far between, but marvelous. I’m not saying don’t have those…I just don’t want those to be the ONLY sort of “happy” you have. So, we are going to:
EXPAND WHAT HAPPY IS
We are going to look at different SORTS of “happy” at allowing ourselves to be HAPPY even if there are one, two or even several ducks that are NOT in a row.
So, to expand what it means to be happy lets create a new method of defining happy.
OLD definition of happy: My ducks (the things that are important to me) are ALL lined up, things in my life are ALL good, each area of my life is going well, nothing yucky/bad/negative is going on, I have everything I need. Not a single duck is out of place.
I know, you are saying, “Kelly, that’s NOT how I define happy!” ok…maybe it’s not, maybe you are less global than that. But, I can tell you, even if we don’t ADMIT it or say it out loud, folks that have a hard time FINDING happy USUALLY do have some sort of definition that is HARD if not impossible to EVER actually accomplish or to maintain for any length of time, even IF they do get those ducks lined up just right.
NEW DEFINIION OF HAPPY: Not ALL ducks need to be lined up perfectly in a neat little row. I can look at each duck (thing that is important) and allow myself to find HAPPY with just ONE duck at a time. I can look at areas of my life and see that it is ok to be happy in ONE area, in that one moment even if it is NOT perfect and even if OTHER area’s are not going how I’d like. I can accept HAPPY even if there ARE yucky/bad/negative things going on and I don’t have EVERYTHING I need.
Ok. Breath that in.
Now, read it again
Back to Frasier. Niles uses an example of a documentary about the “dust bowl” era. There was this young boy and he and his family have been walking for weeks, miles and miles to get where they wanted to go. Their life is HARD, water is scarce, food is scarce, folks are dying as they travel, his shoes have holes in them. This kid gets to a town and someone gives him a pair of shoes and the kid is HAPPY, more than HAPPY, he is ECSTATIC! In the middle of all the terrible, horrible things happening to him and around him, he FINDS happy in a simple pair of shoes.
Niles then says “I have NEVER had that level of happy in my whole life.” He points to his own shoes, and says “I paid $400 for these shoes, and I did NOT get HAPPY like that.”
So, what is the deal? Well, a couple of things. The kids bar was low. Right? He had so LITTLE that ANYTHING is going to LOOK like an amazing gift. He likely NEEDED the shoes, his feet probably HURT and the shoes were going to make a huge difference in his life. Maybe part of it is that his expectations were SO LOW, that even a small thing (and I’d argue shoes for him were NO small) would make him HAPPY. Plus, it was a long time ago and I will admit that times are different. Now, Niles does NOT know scarcity, he makes a good living and is married to a woman with a trust fund. He has a LOT of STUFF, so MORE means less to him than it did to the kid. He also lives in our modern world, where frankly, we can be a bit…ok, I’ll say it, spoiled. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a terrible thing to get the $400 shoes, (if he can afford them) but really they brought NO JOY? No smile even? Nope. In fact he says in the show he doesn’t even really like them!
Where is the disconnect? What did that boy know that we seem to have forgotten? And maybe more importantly how can we get at least SOME of that boys joy back!?!
Ok. I know, we are not going to be like the dust bowl boy. We live in a different world, most of us have shoes, typically more than one pair, so ANOTHER pair just won’t give us the same JOY as they did for the dust bowl boy. BUT my point here is that this kid FOUND HAPPY in the midst of a lot of UNHAPPY things going on in his life. He didn’t have to have ALL his problems SOLVED, he didn’t have to have 100% happy things in his life. He didn’t say, “ok fine shoes, but I’m still hungry, thirsty and tired” instead he said, “NEW SHOES!!!! YAY!!!!!” Period. He was able to the HAPPY in this one thing.
So, that is where our shift starts.
WE CAN FIND POCKETS OF JOY, even when things are not perfect
A pocket of joy is: a moment, a single thing, a time when even just ONE DUCK is in the row even if the OTHER ducks are NOT even remotely in any sort of thing resembling a row.
The challenge for us today is we SEE all the other ducks (issues in our lives) that are NOT in a row (in the right place) and we put our focus on the non-lined up ducks. Often disregarding/ignoring/discounting the one duck that is in the right spot! Or somehow we have decided ONE duck being in the right spot, is simply NOT ENOUGH, not good enough, not complete enough, not PERFECT enough to give us a joyful moment.
SO, that means we can ONLY be happy, only have joy, IF ALL THE DUCKS ARE IN A ROW!!! But those damn ducks just never seem to behave and GET IN A ROW! Or at least not very often.
Yet, despite KNOWING this (that ducks don’t tend to line up often or for long) we keep telling ourselves “true happiness” is only possible when those damned ducks behave themselves and line up!
So, we keep trying to wrangle the ducks, keep struggling to get ALL (or MOST) of them in a row BEFORE we allow ourselves to be happy.
And this is yet another example of the Cycle of Insanity. The statement is:
ALL Ducks must be in a row to be.
It looks like this:
Once I get ALL my ducks in a row, I’ll be happy. So, I will chase the ducks, maybe line up one or two, then keep chasing the rest of them and by the time I’ve lined up the third one, the first one is out of line! So, I’ll go back, get it back in line, then go back to the third one, only to see it is now out of line! I’ll keep chasing the ducks, back and forth, up and down the line, only to get to a HOPELESS place, where I give UP, thinking “I’ll NEVER get those damn ducks all lined up!!! So, I’ll NEVER be happy!!!!” Until next time, when we start the whole process OVER again.
Funny story I had ducks growing up…and this is indeed an impossible task, ducks just DO NOT LINE UP IN A ROW!!!! Period. But, we THINK they SHOULD, that we should be able to MAKE them, so we keep trying to make it happen over and over and then over again. Which actually takes us AWAY from the goal of being happy!!!! And KEEPS us in the cycle of insanity!!!
Lets STOP THE MADDNESS!!!!! Lets completely change the way we look at this!!! Lets give ourselves, and the Ducks we are trying to line up, a BREAK!
HOW you may ask?
By finding another way to look at this whole duck deal!
Remember the new definition of happy:
Not ALL ducks need to be lined up perfectly in a neat little row. I can look at each duck (thing that is important) and allow myself to find a pocket of joy even if just ONE duck is lined up. I can look at areas of of my life and see that it is ok to be happy in ONE area, in that one moment even if it is NOT perfect and even if OTHER area’s are not going how I’d like. I can accept HAPPY even if there ARE yucky/bad/negative things going on and I don’t have EVERYTHING I need.
KEY concept: EACH DUCK HAS THE POTENTIAL TO PROVIDE A POCKET OF JOY ALL ON IT’S OWN.
Yep. Even just ONE duck behaving, lining up, can bring us a pocket of joy.
Now. I know that you don’t have actual DUCKS you are trying to line up 🙂 So, lets use an example. I’m going to start super simple.
A common issue (Duck) is a clean house.
Now, a clean house means: Kitchen, bathrooms, floors, all surfaces CLEAN. Not a THING out of place, laundry done and all put away, no shoes on the floor, coats where they go, beds made, it even smells CLEAN. Or maybe that is just MY definition 🙂 We used to call this “company clean” when my kids were small 🙂 Still, you get the idea it is FULLY clean. A clean house is ONE DUCK. Now, we can get there and it does feel good right? BUT it likely doesn’t LAST that long because MOST of us LIVE in our homes and well, humans make messes!!! So, if we can’t be HAPPY unless the house is this sort of CLEAN, we aren’t going to be HAPPY all that often!
POCKET OF JOY METHOD: Instead we can see this as SEVERAL ducks, NOT just one and then find pockets of joy in EACH of these new smaller ducks getting in a row. This one is pretty easy to separate. One duck could be the kitchen, or it could be the kitchen counters or just the dishes, or or or…separate it in a way that works for YOU. The key here is we want small manageable Ducks, Ducks we can fairly easily get in a row. Because each time ONE duck gets in a row (we finish the dishes, or clear off the counters etc…) we are going to PAUSE and allow ourselves to experience a Pocket of JOY! We are NOT going to wait until ALL the ducks line up, we are going to deal with ONE Duck, pause and be joyful!
Ok, I know. JUST cleaning the counters is not the end all and be all. That is why it’s a “POCKET of Joy” not the best day ever! Pockets of joy, however, add up and in fact can be even more impactful to us than a “best day ever” sort of joy. They are easier to achieve make us feel good in that moment, and oeer time hose moments add up to a happier life. Lets fact it, ONE day at Disneyland is GREAT, but that is what MAYBE once a YEAR if we are LUCKY! Whereas the simple joy of dishes being done, a bed being made, taking a walk, enjoying the first sip of coffee…SMALL thing can happen MANY times in a SINGLE day and that, in the end, creates a happier life much more so than ONE Disneyland day!
Need a more complex example? Ok. Lets say a family member or loved one was diagnosed with cancer. It’s awful. I’m not going to pretend otherwise, its just terrible. ALL the Ducks in a row would be…what…a cure? That the cancer is GONE. But, we don’t CONTROL that. We can’t make those ducks line up, no matter how much we want them to or how hard we try. What we CAN control is ONE duck. For example, going to see them and playing their favorite card game, or watching a show with them, or going for a drive or or or. There are MANY possible ducks (things we can DO) here, that could bring a pocket of joy (for you and them), in the middle of a terrible thing. I’d also argue that during times like this, we need those pockets of joy perhaps more than ever.
Another thing happens when we step OUT of the Cycle of Insanity of chasing ducks….we start to FEEL better. And then those particularly UNRULY ducks actually can become easier to manage.
So, lets stop CHASING all our ducks all at once. Lets stop assuming we can’t be happy UNLESS they are ALL lined up just “so.” Lets break things down in to smaller, oh, I was going to say Bite sized ducks, but that sounds AWFUL!!!! So, let me say this instead:
- INTENTIONALLY MANAGE YOUR DUCKS.
- Be honest with yourself, are you ducks HUGE?
- Find a way to shrink them, make them smaller.
- Try to see not ONE duck but MANY smaller ducks that are easier to manage.
- Then MANAGE the new smaller duck(s) one by one
- SMILE, see the pocket of JOY when even ONE duck is managed, or even partially managed
- STOP waiting until they are ALL LINED UP to SMILE
- FIND POCKETS OF JOY ALL OVER THE PLACE
- PAUSE, enjoy each pocket
- Sit with your smile, don’t rush to the next duck, enjoy the moment
- Write down Pocket of joy, put it in your phone or text yourself. Then at the end of the day go back over all those little pockets of joy and they will add up even faster, mean even more.
- Share them with others, “one good thing” conversations have POWER, they solidify the pocket of joy, make it stay around longer
- 30 SECOND SMILE
- Think of something that makes you smile, whatever it IS and hold that thought for 30 seconds. Set a timer, it’s longer than it seems. This will create a lovely chemical flood in your brain that will stay with you long past the 30 seconds.
- Share this tool with someone else. Speak of your pocket of joy for 30 seconds, have them share one with you.
- SHARE A SMILE. With a stranger in line, with someone at the store, at the gym. SMILLING can change YOUR day and the day of the person you smiled at.
- Did you know even a FAKE smile can trigger positive chemicals in your brain? So, fake it till you make it actually has some merit!
No, this will not solve all your problems. And no, you likely won’t be like the little dust bowl boy appreciating every single scrap you get. But, at least you can be less like Niles.
The goal is: FIND ENOUGH POCKETS OF JOY so when someone asks, “are you happy?” you can answer YES I AM!!!
What duck will you wrangle today? How will you bring a pocket of joy in to your life?
For me, I think I’ll go buy a new pair of shoes…and enjoy the Pocket of Joy that brings me!!!!
805 Therapy 